Gratian, ?-c.1160.

Italian Scholastic jurist and teacher at Bologna, Gratian was  the great compiler of Canon Law (Church law), and effective founder of that field.

Next to nothing is known of Gratian's life.  We know merely that he was one of the earliest teachers in Bologna.  Legendarily at least, it is said Gratian was a monk in the Camaldolese monastery of St. Felix in Bologna, although there is little trace of that and he has alternatively been thought to be just a secular jurist in Bologna. 

Not long after the recovery of Justinian's Corpus and the development of (Roman) Civil Law at Bologna, spearheaded by the jurist Irnerius, Gratian tried his hand at compiling canon (ecclesiastical) law, imitating much the same style and ambition.  Gratian's motivation may have also been influenced by political events.  Since the late 1000s, the Pope and Emperor had been engaged in a conflict over the right of investiture of bishops. Although this was temporarily resolved by the 1122 Concordat of Worms, the more general conflict over the competing jurisdiction and authority of Church and State was still smoldering.  The recovery of Justinian's Corpus, exalting the Emperor as the source of law, had assisted the imperial case.  Gratian may have sought to counterbalance it, and bolster the papal camp, compiling papal decrees and providing the Church with its own, no-less-magnificent body of law.

Gratian was not the first to try his hand.  Earlier partial compilations of papal decrees had been attempted, such as the Decretum of Burchard of Worms (c.1023), the Collectio Canonum of Anselm of Lucca (c.1086), the Collectio Canonum of Cardinal Deusdedit (c.1086-7) and, perhaps most famously, the Panormia and Decretum of Ivo of Chartres (c.1115).  But Gratian outdid them all in comprehensiveness, organization and method.

Gratian probably began this project sometime in the 1120s, and completed it  around 1140 (although early tradition states it was published in 1151, the most probable date is 1142).  The result was Gratian's great compendium Concordia discordantium canonum ('concordance of discordant canons'), better known simply as the Decretum Gratiani.  Using the Scholastic method, Gratian sorted through the Holy Scriptures, the writings of the Church fathers, papal letters and church council decisions, not refraining from pointing out inconsistencies and contradictions between authorities (in this, his method was undoubtedly inspired by Abelard). The resulting compendium was presented not as a codex of church law, but rather as a textbook for students, scholars, jurists and clerics.

 Gratian's Decretum is divided into three parts

- 1. Ministeria, divided into 101 distinciones, deals with the main outlines of the law.  The first 20 distinciones are known as tractatus decretalium (general principles of canonical law).  Gratian opened with his famous distinction between natural law (ius naturale) and customary usage (mos):

 "The Human Race is ruled by two things: namely, natural law and usages. Natural law is what is contained in the law and the Gospel. By it, each person is commanded to do to others what he wants done to himself and is prohibited from inflicting on others what he does not want done to himself."  (Dict. prec. D.1.c1)

Gratian's identification of 'natural law' with the 'Golden Rule' (Matthew 7:12) departs from the definition in Justinian's civil code, which defines (from Ulpian) that natural law is what “nature teaches all animals,” (Justinian, Digest, 1.2)

- 2 - Negotia, dealing with ecclesiastical administration, is set out in the form of disputations. It contains 36 causoe (causes, or imaginary cases), each of which gives rises to to a number of questiones, which are debated in Scholastic fashion.

-  3. Sacramenta deals with sacraments and other sacred things, divided into 5 distinctiones.

each of which contains dicta Graitani (maxims of Gratian) and canones from auctoritates: the canons of councils, decretals of the popes, texts of the Scripture or the writings of the Church Fathers).

Gratian's Decretum started to be taught and used at Bologna in the 1140s, and, while practically treated as authoritative by canon lawyers and ecclesiastical courts for centuries to come, the Decretum was never given official force of law by papal bull.  In other words, the 'law' is contained in the original texts, and not in the transcriptions and words of Gratian's compendium. Indeed, using original texts, later scholars have corrected numerous errors and mis-transcriptions in Gratian's book.   The Decretum, however great its reputation, remained just a textbook. 

In spite of this, Gratian's Decretum is considered the first volume of the Corpus Juris Canonici, or recognized body of canon law.  The other volumes are the Five Books of Decretals ordered by Pope Gregory IX and compiled by Raymond de Peñafort in 1234, the Liber Sextus of Pope Boniface XIII (1298), the Clementine Constitutions of Pope Clement V (1317), all three of which were given official force of law by papal bull (that is, the law is as stated in these compilations, and not in the original texts).  Two unofficial volumes, the Vingiti Extravagantes of Pope John XXII (1325) and the Extravagantes communes compiled by Jean Chappuis (1505), are frequently also considered part of the Corpus.  By and large, these volumes are just updates on Gratian's Decretum, that is compilations of papal decretals promulgated after 1140, although some of the volumes also added pre-1140 decretals and sources overlooked by Gratian in the original Decretum.

The immediate effect of Gratian's Decretum was to separate canon law from theology, and thus congealing the specializations of the two great Medieval universities - with Bologna increasingly focused on civil and canon law, leaving Paris to claim high theology and philosophy.

The definitive grand collection of glosses (marginal notes) of Gratian's Decretum was the Glossa Ordinaria compiled by Johannes Teutonicus around 1217, and revised by Bartholomew of Brescia c.1245..  

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