ABSTRACT

Burchard's alterations will be located in the history of canon law collections. This chapter provides an overview of the scale of the alterations. It is a caveat to the following discussion that we can never know with absolute certainty that every single 'alteration' was deliberate. Some alterations in the Decretum were inadvertent, resulting from scribal error. Burchard seems to have altered inscriptions for three reasons: perhaps, in some cases, to correct them; to make the canons appear more authoritative; and to keep readers from tracking down canons in his collection, perhaps so that they could not notice his other alterations. Burchard's alterations to the texts of canons enabled him to accomplish the ambitious jurisprudential goals which he set out in the Preface. Thus, Burchard's alterations to texts are better described as 'rectifications' or 'clarifications,' and those to inscriptions as 'misrepresentations.'.