Gratian

Life and ideas

Almost nothing certain is known about Gratian's life, only that he was probably a monk and was active in Bologna around 1140. He wrote the Concordia discordantium canonum, usually called the Decretum: a collection of some four thousand texts from the Bible, church councils, popes and the Church Fathers, set beside each other and compared. Where authorities seemed to contradict one another, he stated the problem and then reconciled the texts with a method taken from the schools, distinguishing the meaning of words, the circumstances of the case and the rank of the source, from natural and divine law down to custom. The book was never officially adopted, but it became the standard text for teaching and the foundation of canon law as a learned subject. His way of setting out opposing authorities and resolving them became the pattern of the scholastic method in law and theology.