Folia Theologica et Canonica 6. 28/20 (2017)
RECENSIONS
274 RECENSIONS cipline is explained in a united structure from the beginning to the current canon law by Szabolcs Anzelm Szuromi - Rector of the Pázmány Péter Catholic University (Budapest, Hungary) - within his new handbook. This new handbook obviously is not without antecedent works, even in Hungary. The first handbook about the institutional history of the Church in Hungary was also published by Prof. Szuromi in 2003, within the series of the Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Institute of Canon Law “ad instar facultatis” (.Egyházi intézménytörténet, Saint Stephan Society, Budapest 2003, pp. 237). The international literature of handbooks is much richer indeed, mentioning here only the most significant classical canonical institutional history writings: Bertrand Kurtscheid, História iuris canonici. História institutorum ab Ecclesiae fundatione usque ad Gratianum (Roma 1951); Jean Gaudemet, Eglise et cité. Histoire du droit canonique (Paris 1994); moreover the Histoire du Droit et des Institutions de l’Eglise en Occident (Paris 1955ff) monumental series, edited by Gabriel Le Bras and Jean Gaudemet. Nevertheless, these listed handbooks and series are not precisely met the requirements of the technical term “institutional history of the Church”. Bertrand Kurtscheid’s widely used work describes its theme and material only until the Decretum Gratiani (a. 1140), nonetheless it focuses precisely on the analysis of the ecclesiastical institutional history of this epoch. Jean Gaudemet’s brilliant one volume is still the best overview on the alteration of the institutional history of the Church. Moreover, this work’ thematic classification is also very well organized and disciplined. However, Jean Gaudemet explains not only data regarding ecclesiastical institutes, but he gives significant emphasize on description of the social life of the Church of every single epoch. On other hand, the structure and thematic of Gaudemet’s work had made important effect on the 2003 volume of Szabolcs Szuromi on institutional history, wherein Prof. Szuromi had corrected systematically the dates, location and contents of those numerous councils which were misdated, erroneous located, or mentioned with imprecise contents in Gaudemet’s work. We can see those essential changing in the 2017 edition of Szuromi’s handbook, in particular regarding the division of its material, which has conserved the most important organizing elements taken from Jean Gaudemet (i.e. explaining the Modern Age in united form), but forming his own - without Gaudemet’s influence - independent method for description. That ecclesiastical institutional history series which publishing has been started by Gabriel Le Bras and Jean Gaudemet is a unique combination of the institutional- and the source history of the Church, which contains also extensive chapters on Church history. This method breaks the classical - traditional - meaning of the institutional history. Likewise, this is that particular series which gives more significance to the development of the hierarchical system of the Church and its relation to the contemporary society than to the crystallizing process of the discipline on administering the sacraments and sacramentals.
