Destroyed but not Lost: A Digital Reconstruction of the Chartrain Copy of Burchard's Liber decretorum (Chartres BM 161)

The Liber decretorum compiled shortly before 1023 by Burchard of Worms was the most influential canon law collection of the eleventh century. It was copied frequently, and many compilers used Burchard's work as a model for their own canonical collections. Thus, not only are there some 100 medieval copies (or fragments thereof) still extant, but also a large number of other collections drawing on the Liber decretorum. Crucially, this group includes the Decretum of Ivo of Chartres, which incorporated most of Burchard's Liber decretorum and in turn became widely influential both in its own right and via the large number of derivative collections drawing on it. In this work authors investigate possible links between the Chartrarian specimen of Burchardus' Liber decretorum and the Ivo of Chartres' Decretum.