ABSTRACT
Roger Reynolds has been a major contributor to the understanding of the complex world in which the pre-Gratian canon-law collections find their place. The history of the publication of collections compiled between Burchard and Gratian has been in general a lamentable one since 1900. It resembles indeed a crowded and dangerous waterway littered with such highly visible wrecks as the aborted publication of Anselm of Lucca by Thaner or Fornasari's partial text of the Five Books. Speaking in general terms, and ignoring many useful and prudent reservations, the history of canonical studies up to the time of Gratian has been dominated from the time of the Correctores Romani by a method which one might describe as vertical, or evolutionary. The dominant objective has been to map the multiple streams which eventually flowed together into the broad river of Gratian, or now perhaps the Gratians.
