It was obviously essential for this new movement of papal centralisation that it should rest on a solid basis of law, not new law, which would be suspect and resisted, but old law coming from authority that could not be gainsaid. The attitude of the Popes was quite sincere. As Gregory VII again and again repeated, they were not attempting to introduce something that was new; they wished to reveal what to them was implicit in the old decretals. The putting together of the old law of the Church so as to make it a solid foundation for the papal central government is a most interesting feature of the movement. That it is possible to trace it is due to the brilliant work of M. Paul Fournier, and anything that I can say, or that anybody can say, on this subject must be largely based on his exhaustive and very illuminating researches.

In the first place, of what did the law of the Church consist? There was no single code of law. There were a vast number of canons of Councils and decrees of Popes, genuine and false (though, of course, all were believed to be equally genuine), from which numerous collections had been made by individuals. There was not even agreement as to which councils were universally binding, and the independence of local churches is marked by the importance of decrees of their own provincial councils in the law that governed them.