ABSTRACT

This chapter provides a brief introduction to Burchard's Decretum. It summarizes the secondary literature on the subject of the collection's authorship, its dating, the textual development of the earliest manuscripts, the manuscript tradition, and the Decretum's influence on other canonical collections. The Decretum can be dated to the decade between 1012 and 1023, and possibly between 1015 and 1020. Burchard's collection was certainly in existence before the council of Seligenstadt, because the canons of this council appear as late additions in the earliest Decretum manuscripts. Until the creation of the Panormia attributed to Ivo of Chartres, probably at the very end of the century, the Decretum was the most popular canon law collection in Western Europe. The Decretum (in the form of the Frankfurt manuscript) moved quickly beyond the boundaries of the see of Worms, first to Germany and then to Italy.