Half a Century of Research on the First Papal Decretals (to c. 440)

A review article can be useful when contributions to a field are not only numerous but also too widely scattered for a specialist in the field, but not on that particular theme, to hold them easily before the mind. Articles and books on early papal decretals are scattered in more than one sense. They have appeared in a large number of journals not closely connected in theme, as well as in a recent burst of books, and they have come out of several different historiographical and national scholarly traditions. The object of all this research, on the other hand, can be tightly defined: the emergence of a tradition of papal decretals. The aim of the survey that follows is to bring these books and articles within a common frame. To list some highpoints of the recent work: in answer to the question ‘what was the first decretal’ there are scholarly answers by Christian Hornung, Alberto Ferreiro, Dominic Moreau and Yves-Marie Duval. For the key pontificate of Innocent I there is the unpublished thesis of Malcolm Green. On the development of papal power and ideology, key names are Walter Ullmann, Geoffrey Dunn, George Demacopoulos and Kristina Sessa. For the setting in late Roman imperial governmental culture, the compressed comments by Caroline Humfress can hardly be bettered. In her book Caroline Humfress puts the spotlight on a legal mentality around the papacy in a broad context of the pervasive influence of late Roman legal training:2