The present publication is an augmented form of a data bank and accompanying text published in
2003 and provides now access to the incipits explicits rubrics and inscriptions of slightly
over 100.000 canons taken from the canon law collections compiled before 1140. Of special
interest to the historian is the ability to filter out within minutes the use of specific
concepts such as usury or primacy in the rubrics and the ability to filter out all the texts
attributed to a specific source in either one particular collection or in all collections in
the data bank. Of special interest to librarians and the cataloguers of manuscript collections
is the ability to place newly discovered collections even when only excerpts have survived or
when critical parts of the manuscripts have been damaged and are illegible. The text
accompanying the data bank contains descriptions of the canon law collections found in the data
bank and is primarily intended to support its use but it can also be read from beginning to
end as a history of the genre collectio canonum. It is based on recent research and is intended
not only for canonists but also for church historians legal historians and medieval historians
in general. The data bank is provided online at https: data.mgh.de ext clavis.