About the Digital Decretals
Introduction, scope and parameters of the project — Edward A. Reno III
The project
The Digital Decretals renders into electronic form Bernard of Parma's Glossa Ordinaria to the Liber extra (the Decretals of Gregory IX, 1234), based on the 1582 Editio Romana — Books 1–5 in their entirety, with the tens of thousands of legal allegations standardized so they can be searched and quantified. The full introduction appears on the search page (this site's home); the citation system is explained on Legal Allegations; transcription conventions and downloads are on The Text.
Mission statement
While proprietary databases and online search portals for digital texts certainly have their place, I know from personal experience that end users usually come up with more creative ways of exploiting the material than could ever be imagined by the original project designers. This creativity requires, however, that they have the full text at their disposal on their own devices. That is why I have decided to make the files available for direct download and public use (see The Text).
Origo operis
The project launched in August 2017 when Book 4 went online. The decision to start with Book 4 arose from several considerations. First, it provided a compact set of texts on which to test the method of standardizing legal allegations developed for the project. Second, the marriage material offers — in my opinion — the broadest potential appeal to scholars whose focus is not exclusively on medieval Canon Law. Furthermore, it has been my experience that many graduate students entering upon the study of medieval Canon Law are drawn first to Book 4, since it provides one of the clearest demonstrations of the Church's role in structuring family and social life in the medieval period. With this in mind it is hoped that the Digital Decretals, in addition to assisting researchers in legal history, will serve as a useful pedagogical tool for introducing the fascinating study of our discipline to a new generation of scholars.
Over the next 6 years Books 1, 5, 3 and finally 2 were added, bringing the project to completion in September 2023. The text presented on this site is the complete, revised text of the entire gloss, Books 1–5 (rev. 9/23).
Opera ventura
A longer essay discussing in greater detail the editorial protocols of the Digital Decretals — with particular focus on the implications for the manuscript transmission and early printing of the gloss — is in preparation; drafts are made available on Prof. Reno's Academia page.
Project updates
- 6/26: The Digital Decretals relaunched as this web application: in-browser search of the complete gloss (exact-punctuation allegation matching, with ignore-punctuation / case / whole-word modes and book → title → chapter filters); a browse-and-read view of all 1,970 glossed capitula with register-backed inscriptions and one-click retrieval of each capitulum's allegations; the abbreviations spreadsheet reborn as a live explorer; shareable deep links to any search or passage; and the project documentation migrated in full. The Word/PDF/Excel files — now joined by per-book Word files and a single-file offline edition — remain downloadable on The Text.
- 9/23: A revised text of the entire gloss, Books 1–5, and an updated corresponding spreadsheet were released; they are the text and data presented throughout this site (downloads on The Text).
- 3/23: The abbreviations spreadsheet gained a tab listing all the extravagantes cited in the gloss — now also browsable in the Abbreviations explorer.
- 8/17: Project launch, with Book 4 first online.
The author
Edward A. Reno III, Associate Professor of Medieval History, Department of History, Adelphi University. See Contact for feedback, suggestions for improvement, and ideas for expansion and collaboration.