ABSTRACT
1. Master Bernard, archdeacon of Compostella, and a member of the Canon Law School of Bologna in the early thirteenth century, is generally known as the author of a collection of decretals which he compiled in 1208 at the Roman Curia, with the aid of Pope Innocent III’s registers, covering the first ten years (February 22, 941198–February 21, 1208) of that pontificate. Bernard’s contemporary, the celebrated master Tancred, further tells us that the Spaniard’s compilation was used by the school for some time as Collectio Romana, until in 1210 Pope Innocent promulgated an official collection of his decretals, arranged by his subdeacon and notary, Petrus Collivaccinus of Benevento. One of the Pope’s reasons for issuing the authentic law book—the first of its kind in Church history—had been the fact that some of the decretals in Bernard’s work, though genuine papal letters, were not considered by the Curia as universally binding. 2 The new official collection, commonly known as Compilatio tertia, at once superseded Bernard’s private collection, and for centuries the latter was known only from hearsay until rediscovered in modern times. 3
