It is true, the decretals of GRATIAN were not yet published. But Ivo had made a collection of them in the reign of HENRY I; and we may be sure that some code of this sort would privately go about amongst the clergy, from what was before observed of the pains taken by INNOCENT II, to propagate the decretals. We may further observe, that THEOBALD had been in high favour with INNOCENT; and that his school, at _Lambeth_, was opened immediately on his return from _Rome_, whither he had been to receive his pall from this pope, on his appointment to the see of _Canterbury_[135]. All which makes it probable, that STEPHEN’S displeasure was not so much at the civil, as _canon_ law, which he might well conclude had no friendly aspect on his sovereignty.
And we have the greater reason to believe that this was the fact, from observing what afterwards happened in the reign of HENRY III, when a prohibition of the same nature was again issued out against the teachers of the _Roman_ laws in _London_[136]. The true cause of the royal mandate is well known. GREGORY IX had just then published a new code of the decretals; which, like all former collections of this sort, was calculated to serve the papal interest, and depress the rights of princes.
However, these edicts, if we suppose them levelled against the civil law, had no effect, any more than those of the popes ALEXANDER and HONORIUS, before mentioned. For the imperial law, being generally well received by the princes of _Europe_, presently became a kind of _Jus gentium_. And the clergy, who aspired to power and dignities, either abroad or at home, studied it with an inconceivable rage; insomuch, that ROGER BACON tells us, that, in his time for forty years together, the seculars, who were the ecclesiastics employed in business, never published a single treatise in divinity[137].
The truth is, whatever shew the popes or our own princes might make, at times, of discountenancing the civil law, it was not the design of either absolutely and universally to suppress it. It was properly, not the civil, but the canon law, which was discountenanced by our kings. And the case of the popes was, that, when they found the imperial law opposed to the _common_, they were ready to favour it; when it was opposed to the _canon_, and brought that into neglect, they forbad ecclesiastics the study of it.