One last pictorial law and religion post from my recent trip to Rome. If you enter the Stanza della Segnatura, one of the Raphael Rooms, in the Vatican Museums, your attention is likely to be absorbed by “The School of Athens.” But on the wall just to the right of it, you would see two frescoed panels placed on opposite sides.
The first is of the Emperor Justinian receiving the Corpus Juris
The second panel is of Pope Gregory IX receiving the Decretals from
The work of Harold Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (recommended and discussed on this site before), is an important place to learn about the relationship and mutual influence of the civil and canon law. Berman’s emphasis is primarily on the latter’s influence on the development of the former, rather than on the revival of Roman law.