lyn1136

The Decretals.   Gratian is the only lawyer authoritatively known to be in Paradise. Not that he is lonely there, surrounded as he is by theologians & philosophers, Albertus Magnus on one side & Peter Lombard on the other. How did Gratian earn this favored place? Given the scarcity of lawyers in heaven, one may justly query whether it really was his lawyerly qualifications that made Gratian deserve Paradise. After all, he was an expert on canon law, the law of the Church, which exists on the borders between law & theology. Dante, who reported on the inhabitants of the Afterworld, seems to acknowledge the ambiguity inherent in Gratian's vocation by praising his mastery of "both courts," i.e., the exterior, public court of justice & the interior, sacramental court of the confessional (Paradiso X 103-105). Perhaps it was as a theologian, not as a lawyer, that Gratian was admitted, & perhaps this is why he smiled, as Dante tells us he did. The Making of Gratian's Decretum, Winroth,2000