verse by the other. But Guillaume de Machaut was Granson’s great model for forms,
imagery, and expression. The “Isabelle” he refers to in several poems may be Isabeau of
Bavaria, Charles VI’s queen. Four manuscript collections have a substantial number of
Granson’s poems, which have been gathered into an edition that includes ninety ballades,
nineteen rondeaux, a virelai, six complaintes, a lengthy pastourelle, three lais, and two
dits amoureux. The longer dit, the Livre de messire Ode (2,495 lines), a combination of
narrative and inserted lyrics in a dream vision, represents an original development. In
general, though, Granson is a skilled amateur whose work is derivative and modest in
scope.
James I.Wimsatt
[See also: GARENCIÈRES, JEAN DE; JARDIN DE PLAISANCE ET FLEUR DE
RÉTHORIQUE]
Granson, Oton de. Oton de Grandson: sa vie et ses poésies, ed. Arthur Piaget. Geneva: Payot,
- [Full edition of the poetry, along with information on Granson’s life, the manuscripts,
etc.]
GRATIAN
(fl. early 12th c.). The father of the science of canon law remains a shadowy figure. Most
of the scanty evidence suggests that he was a monk, possibly affiliated with the
monastery of SS.Felix and Nabor in Bologna. The role of Bologna as the nursery of
canonistic science lends this tradition credibility. Gratian participated in the larger
scholastic culture that produced Peter Abélard’s Sic et non and Peter Lombard’s
Sententiae. His Concord of Discordant Canons, or Decretum, had the same purpose as
those theological works, the reconciliation of a diverse and often contradictory heritage
of thought through the application of dialectic. This private collection combined conciliar
canons, papal decretals (many of them spurious), and patristic texts with Gratian’s own
comments, or dicta. Texts marked for exclusion from lectures, called palae, or “chaff,”
included the so-called Donation of Constantine. In its final form, the Decretum is divided
into a treatise on law, the Distinctiones, a series of hypothetical cases; the Causae,
including a distinct tract on penance; and a sacramental tract, De consecratione. The
compilation became the first textbook of canon law at Bologna and Paris. The teachers of
canon law brought to the interpretation of this work of disciplinary theology the
principles and procedures of Roman law, prbducing a distinctive legal science.
Connections between Gratian and the Roman curia are difficult to demonstrate, but
students of canon law were presented with a papalist viewpoint on key questions of
ecclesiastical structure. Dante would place Gratian in Heaven in the Paradiso, as a
counterweight to later canonists, some of whom emphasized papal temporal power.
Thomas M.Izbicki
[See also: ABÉLARD, PETER; CANON LAW; CONCILIAR MOVEMENT; IVO
OF CHARTRES; LAW AND JUSTICE; PETER LOMBARD]
Corpus iuris canonici, ed. Emil Friedberg. Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1879,Vol.1.
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