Type: Person

Name: Raymundus de Pennaforti

Dates: 1175 ca. — 1275

Gender: male

Variant names: Raimundo de Peñafort; Raymond de Peñafort; Raymond of Peñafort

Biographical details: Catalan canon lawyer. After studying and teaching philosophy at Barcelona, he went to study law at Bologna sometime between 1210 and 1221. He entered the Dominican order in 1222 after his return to Barcelona. Called to Rome by Gregory IX in 1230, he presided over the commission which compiled the Liber Extra (the authoritative collection of decretals promulgated by the pope in 1234). Returning again to Catalonia, Raymond was confessor to Jaime I of Aragon (1213–76) and prominent in the activities of the Dominican order, of which he was master-general from 1238 to 1240. Thomas Aquinas wrote his Summa contra Gentiles at Raymond’s insistence. He was canonized in 1601. Raymond’s literary productivity was enormous and so was his success. Besides being commissioned to compile the Decretales Gregorii IX, which were to remain valid church law until 1918, he also had a great influence as the author of a penitential Summa (c.1222–25/34) and as a leading administrator of his order. A full account of his works would include a large number of minor treatises, many of which were composed after 1234 and outside of the orbit of canon law school. To avoid incompleteness and misattributions, the present survey lists only those titles that have a direct bearing on law. During his brief period as a canonist at Bologna (1218–1221), Raymond wrote a Summa iuris which he never finished. Simultaneously, he lectured on Gratian’s Decretum, as is testified by the survival of marginal glosses. There are further glosses on Compilatio quarta. After becoming a Dominican, he composed the penitential Summa de casibus. He later revised it. The printed editions regularly added Raymond’s Summa de matrimonio (c.1235) as Book IV, although the work, an update of the earlier treatise by the Bolognese canonist Tancred, had circulated separately in medieval manuscripts.

References: VIAF 8282151778238118130004; CERL cnp02156284

Editor: CM

See also: https://amesfoundation.law.harvard.edu/BioBibCanonists/Report_Biobib2.php?record_id=a481 https://sip-mirabileweb-it.ezproxy.uniroma1.it/author/raymundus-de-pennaforti-n-1175-1185-m-6-1-1275-author/20419

Start of time period: 12th century AD, 4th quarter

End of time period: 13th century AD, 3rd quarter

Period: late medieval

Characterisation: religious

Profession: clergy; jurist

Country: Spain