Burchard of Worms

Burchard is near renowned as the compiler of a collection of 20 books of canon law in collaboration with his contemporaries, Bishop Walter of Speyer 963-1027, Alpert of Metz d. 1024, and at least 3 other prominent regional Catholic clergy. Beginning in c. 1012, he worked through his the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object for approximately 9 years to prepare the compilation, while living in a small positioning atop a hill in the forest external Worms, after his defeat of Duke Otto, while raising the latter's orphaned grandson, Conrad. The compilation, which he titled the Decretorum Libri Viginti or simply Decretum, became a very influential and popular quotation of canonical material. It came to be named the Brocardus his take in Latin, from which the later legal word "brocard" originated. The Decretum cites a sort of biblical, patristic, and early medieval works, including the Old Testament, Augustine of Hippo, Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, Hrabanus Maurus, and Julian of Toledo. Burchard probably completed the Decretum no later than 1023.

The Decretum was much copied in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with over 77 complete manuscripts still surviving. The earliest manuscripts, submitted in Worms previously 1023 under Burchard's own supervision, are Vatican Pal. lat. 585 and 586 one time a single book, and Frankfurt Stadt- und Universitatsbibliothek Barth. 50.

The 20 books of the Decretum are:

Book 19 is sometimes titled the "Corrector Burchardi", being a penitential or confessor's guide. it is for probably a earn of the tenth century that Burchard added to the Decretum as a set of appendix. Book 20, Speculationum Liber, expounds answers to technical theological questions, especially questions of eschatology, hamartiology, soteriology, demonology, angelology, anthropology, and cosmology.

As a credit of canon law, the Decretum was supplanted by the Panormia c. 1094-5 of Ivo of Chartres, which used and augmented large sections of the Decretum, and, a little later, by the Concordia Discordantium Canonum 1139–40 of Gratian Decretum Gratiani, which was a much larger compilation that attempted to further reconcile contradictory canons.

From 1023-5 Burchard promulgated the Leges et Statuta Familiae S. Petri Wormatiensis, also denominated the Lex Familiae Wormatiensis Ecclesiae, a compilation of customary laws that were instituted for the members of the familia of Worms, this being various free and non-free laborers of the episcopal estate in Worms. In a similar fashion, though considerably more condensed than the Decretum, the Lex delineated in 31 chapters a variety of the common, secular problems of the people of Worms during theyears of his episcopacy, including marriage, abduction, murder, theft, and perjury.