ABSTRACT

Licet nova consuetudo is well known, but only recently has this text received more attention in the characterization of the Pope, apart from the time of Gregory and his first successors. The text of 'Licet nova consuetudo' speaks relatively reluctantly at first only of a 'new custom, which is not supported by any authority', and then goes into great detail on the arrangements of Gregory's predecessors on the Quaterna fasting, but without the synod of Seligenstadt, against whose provisions the decree is directed, to mention directly. In all three texts, the speech of 1059 and the Constitutions of 1074 and 1078, it becomes very clear with what tenacious determination Hildebrand/Gregor pursued for decades the goal of re-enforcing early-church papal decrees in the Church, whatever their traditions meanwhile had formed around the previously universally accepted regulation, which was now to be abolished.