Enactment, Circulation, and Survival of the Canons of Piacenza

This chapter moves into discussion of the legislation from the synod at Piacenza, and is divided into two parts.The first, titled “Enactment and Circulation”, treats what is known about how Piacenza’s canons were enacted and distributed. The information is not plentiful and comes almost exclusively from two sources virtually contemporary with the synod, i.e., Bernold of Constance’s Chronicon , and the Gesta of Cardinal Beno. Neither Bernold nor Bosa was at the council, but both were well informed about what happened there Both also are attentive to the legislation from the assembly, but Bernold’s rendition of the decrees, despite the presence of his bishop Gebhard at Piacenza, differs substantively from any other, whereas the Gesta grumpily provide the well-attested set of canons, dubbed the “textus receptus”, but proceeds to attack it with an array of charges about Pope Urban’s actions and intentions in and after the event. Those charges that are very interesting but cannot be verified in another source. The second section of the chapter, “Survival”, describes the places where various forms of the “textus receptus” occur, i.e., nearly three dozen twelfth-century manuscripts, narrative sources, and in canon law collections. Appendix I offers a translation of the section about Piacenza in Bernold’s Chronicon , and Appendix II discusses the small number of canons attributed to Piacenza that do not appear in the “textus receptus”.