Rationale

Collections of canons served manifold contemporary purposes. Yet their precise, calculated impact is sometimes hard to measure from a twenty-first-century vantage. Fortunately, we are occasionally left with descriptions that shed light on: the readers and compilers of these legal compendia; their methodologies and intended audience; and their application in the medieval European world in which they were created. As the best surviving evidence of medieval canon law, prefaces to these collections provide a good starting point to help explain the rationale underpinning it. The late ninth-century Collectio Anselmo dedicata, dedicated to Archbishop Anselm II of Milan (882–896), epitomizes all