ABSTRACT
As has been noted, from fairly early in the life of the Church it was possible to discern differences between east and west. It is a convenient and accurate distinction to categorise the western, catholic, approach to the relaxation of the strictness of the law as ‘dispensation’ and the eastern approach as ‘economy’. This chapter explores the development of dispensation in the west from the time at which it became a method or mechanism distinct from the economy of the east to the Reformation in the sixteenth century.
