Between chaos and codification: Consensus and the content of Carolingian canon law

Modern, western views privilege standardization, systematization, and codification as essential to the identity of "real" law. Awareness of the historical development of those attitudes can aid appreciation of alternative perspectives on law in the early medieval west, especially in the domain of canon law in the Carolingian era. In contrast to attempts made between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries to bring order, system, and standardization to legal texts, the Carolingian imperial context accommodated pluralism in the sources of law as well as variety in translations and phrasing in legal texts. Such untidiness does not seem to have unduly hindered those seeking to learn and apply canon law, or to have damaged confidence in its value. Evidence from medieval manuscripts shows ninth- and tenth-century readers applying strategies for navigating and studying an open, fluid, and often non-standard legal corpus. Furthermore, larger patterns of textual consistency in particular portions of that corpus suggest that informal or organic processes in manuscript production yielded a sort of standardization not imposed programmatically by a governmental authority, but rather by scribal consensus. Examining these aspects of Carolingian canon law can give fresh insights into the effect of standardization in the management of human affairs.