— Also termed Decretum Gratiani; Decretum.
“Another body of jurisprudence was coming into being. From humble beginnings the canon law had grown into a mighty system. Already it asserted its right to stand beside or above the civil law. The civil law might be the law of earth, ius soli; here was the law of heaven, ius poli…. Many men had been endeavouring to state that law, but the fame of earlier labourers was eclipsed by that of Gratian. A monk of Bologna, that city which was the centre of the new secular jurisprudence, he published … a book which he called Concordia discordantium canonum, but which was soon to become for all mankind simply the Decretum Gratiani, or yet more simply the Decretum. It is a great law-book. The spirit which animated its author was not that of a theologian, not that of an ecclesiastical ruler, but that of a lawyer…. The Decretum soon became an authoritative text-book and the canonist seldom went behind it…. The canonist had for it rather that reverence which English lawyers have paid to Coke upon Littleton ….” 1 Frederick Pollock & Frederic W. Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I 112–13 (2d ed. 1898).
