ABSTRACT
The study of canon law and canonical collections of the post-Roman Latin West continues to contend with a number of fundamental unresolved questions: When did contemporaries begin to recognise ‘canon law’ as a concept and for what purposes? How clear a demarcation can be drawn between ‘canon law’ and ‘secular law’ in the first millennium? Even if it were possible to arrive at a compelling definition of ‘canon law’ then one would still be left wondering about the extent to which texts pertaining to this category would be considered to be legally binding or to possess authority to any degree. By contrast, texts classified as canonical collections from the early medieval period, including the Hibernensis, can rarely be shown to have been binding. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
