William Lyndwood

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William Lyndwood (c. 1375 – 21/22 October 1446) was an

canonist
, most notable for the publication of the Provinciale.

Early life

Lyndwood was born in

doctor of laws.[1]

Lyndwood was educated at

Holy Orders and was ordained deacon in 1404 and priest in 1407.[1]

Career

Lyndwood had a distinguished ecclesiastical career. In 1408,

Council of Basle in 1433 and taking a prominent part as negotiator in arranging political and commercial treaties.[3]

He was also Keeper of the Privy Seal from 1432 to 1443.[4] Despite the fact that so much of Lyndwood's energies were spent upon purely secular concerns nothing seems ever to have been said against his moral or religious character.[3] He was buried in St Mary Undercroft, the crypt of St Stephen's Chapel, where his body was found in 1852, wrapped in a ceremonial cloth and allegedly "almost without signs of corruption".[3]

The Provinciale

Lyndwood, however, is chiefly remembered for his great commentary upon the ecclesiastical decrees enacted in English provincial councils under the presidency of the Archbishops of Canterbury. This elaborate work, commonly known as the Provinciale, follows the arrangement of the titles of the Decretals of Gregory IX in the Corpus Juris, and copies of much of the medieval English legislation enacted, in view of special needs and local conditions, to supplement the jus commune. Lyndwood's gloss gives an account of the views accepted among the English clergy of his day upon all sorts of subjects.[3] It should be read together with John of Acton's gloss, composed circa 1333–1335, on the Legatine Constitutions of the thirteenth century papal legates, Cardinals Otto and Ottobuono for England, which was published with the Provinciale by Wynkyn de Worde.

The Provinciale was published as Constituciones prouinciales ecclesie anglica[n]e by Wynkyn de Worde in London in 1496). The work was frequently reprinted in the early years of the sixteenth century, but the edition produced at Oxford in 1679 is sometimes seen as the best.[3]

The

Catholic Encyclopaedia[3] saw the work as important in the controversy over the attitude of the Ecclesia Anglicana towards the jurisdiction of the pope. Frederic William Maitland controversially appealed to Lyndwood's authority against the view that the "Canon Law of Rome, though always regarded as of great authority in England, was not held to be binding on the English ecclesiastical courts".[5] The Catholic Encyclopaedia also contends that Maitland's arguments had found broader acceptance in English law
:

In pre-

Reformation times no dignitary of the Church, no archbishop, or bishop could repeal or vary the Papal decrees [and, after quoting Lyndwood's explicit statement to this effect, the account continues] Much of the Canon Law set forth in archiepiscopal constitutions is merely a repetition of the Papal canons, and passed for the purpose of making them better known in remote localities; part was ultra vires, and the rest consisted of local regulations which were only valid in so far as they did not contravene the jus commune, i.e. the Roman Canon Law.

— Halsbury's Laws of England
(1910) vol. 11, p. 377.

However, Maitland's view of Lyndwood's authority was attacked by Ogle.[6]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Helmholz (2006)
  2. ^ "Lyndwood, William (LNDT375W)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Thurston (1913)
  4. ^ Powicke Handbook of British Chronology p. 92
  5. ^ English Historical Review 1896, p. 446.
  6. ^ Ogle [1912]

Bibliography

  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "William Lynwood". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Political offices
Preceded by Lord Privy Seal
1432–1443 		Succeeded by
Church in Wales titles
Preceded by
Thomas Rodburn
Bishop of St David's

1442–1446 		Succeeded by
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