ABSTRACT
No one doubts that under Innocent III the papacy brought about many great changes in Latin Christendom, which this conference is celebrating. Our celebrations are haunted, however, by the spectre raised by Kenneth Pennington, who has led us to wonder about the extent of Innocent's knowledge of canon law. Pennington began, in 1974, by pointing out that there is no firm evidence that Innocent studied law under the great canonist Huguccio.1 His conclusions were challenged in 1983 by Wilhelm Imkamp,2 and Pennington defended them persuasively in 1986,3 so today no one can assume that Innocent's debt to Huguccio is a proven fact. But gradually and cautiously Pennington has pursued the implications of his original thesis, probing to see just how extensive Innocent's knowledge of canon law really was. One approach has been to argue that cit is unlikely that two years would have been an adequate period of study to learn Roman and canon law well enough to have produced some of the superb
Kenneth Pennington, 'The Legal Education of Pope Innocent IIP, BMCL 4 (1974):70-7; reprinted in idem, Popes, Canonists and Texts, 1150-1550, Variorum Collected Series 412 (Aldershot, 1993), art. 1. My references are to the reprint.
