French illustrated copy of Gratian’s Decretum

Description

The Decretum, meaning a series of decrees, was the first of six volumes of the laws of the Church, known as canon law. Several hundred medieval copies of the Decretum survive today. Little is known of the text’s creator, Gratian (fl. 1140), a legal scholar in Bologna.

This copy of the Decretum contains marginal commentaries known as glosses, explaining the legal concepts of the main text. The commentary in this copy partly derives from the work of Stephen of Tournai (b. 1138, d. 1202), a French legal scholar. Text divisions are marked with decorated initials in the so-called ‘Channel Style’, featuring multi-coloured illustrations with animal or human figures interwoven with foliage.

This manuscript was digitised with the support of The Polonsky Foundation.