Books by Brian Tierney

This book explores the canonistic theories especially with conciliar theory, of Church government formulated between Gratian's Decretum (c. 1140) and the Great Schism (1378). It is concerned with the juristic development of the fundamental conciliar doctrine, the assertion that the universal Church was superior to the Church of Rome, with a consequent denial of the Pope's supreme authority.

To understand the growth of Western constitutional thought, we need to consider both ecclesiology and political theory, ideas about the Church as well as ideas about the state. In this book Professor Tierney traces the interplay between ecclesiastical and secular theories of government from the twelfth century to the seventeenth.