Beschreibung:

Leaf from a Gratian, Decretum, with gloss, in Latin, manuscript on parchment [France, last decades of twelfth century or early decades of thirteenth century] Single leaf, with double column of main text with 42 lines of a thin and exquisitely precise early gothic bookhand, with biting curves and the pronounced angularity of gothic script, red rubrics, tall and thin initials in red, gloss added in thirteenth century in smaller more angular script in margins, prickings visible down one upright edge, the other trimmed with small losses to end of one main column there (as well as removal of adjacent marginal gloss), small holes, tears and stains, overall fair and presentable condition, 290 by 220mm. This leaf is a notably early witness to this crucially important legal text. It was composed in Bologna in an initial version after 1139, followed by a second recension in the 1150s. We know little about the author, apart from his name: Gratian. He attempted to resolve discordant parts of the law, and after the incorporation of the text into the Corpus Juris Canonici it came to form the bedrock for all medieval ecclesiastical law, and remained the established text until the early twentieth century. By 1143 the text was in use in legal disputes in Venice, and spread rapidly across the rest of Europe, being cited c. 1180 by Robert of Torigny, the abbot of Mont Saint Michel in Normandy, in his chronicle. For other early leaves of it, see that dated to c. 1170-80 sold in our rooms, 9 December 2015, lot 23, and another leaf copied before c. 1180 sold in our rooms, 6 July 2016, lot 22. The text here is Decretum II, 1,1, cap. xxii.