Stephan Kuttner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since March 2007. |
 |
The external links in this article may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links. Please remove this tag when this is done. This article has been tagged since March 2007. (talk) |
Stephan George Kuttner (March 24, 1907 – August 12, 1996), an expert in Canon Law, was recognized as a leader in the discovery, interpretation and analysis of important texts and manuscripts that are key to understanding the evolution of legal systems from Roman to modern constitutional law. To organize the field of textual scholarship in medieval canon law he founded the Institute of Medieval Canon Law in 1955, which he presided over for 25 years and which now is affiliated to the University of Munich and bears his name. He also launched a series of international congresses in medieval canon law, the tenth of which was in session at the time of his death. He was appointed by Pope Paul VI to serve on the initial Commission for the Reform of the Code of Canon Law.
Born in Bonn, Germany, into a family of Jewish ancestry, Kuttner was raised as a Lutheran and converted to Roman Catholicism as a young man. He received his law degree from Berlin University in 1931. Two years later he fled Nazi Germany for Italy, where he worked as a research fellow at the Vatican Library and taught at the Lateran University in Rome. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1940 with his young family. He was a professor at Washington, D.C.'s Catholic University of America from 1940 to 1964, where a chair in canon law is named in his honor. At Yale University he was the first occupant of the T. Lawrason Riggs Chair of Catholic Studies, which he held for five years. Thereafter he became the first Director of the Robbins Collection in Roman and Canon Law in the Law School of the University of California at Berkeley (1970-1988), and continued as Emeritus Professor of Law until his death.
The author of many scholarly works, Kuttner received **numerous academic awards and honors in the U.S. and abroad. He held honorary degrees from Cambridge, Paris, Bologna and Salamanca universities and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, and the Medieval Academy, L'Academie Francaise. Kuttner was recognized for his life's work by his 1969 induction into the prestigious Order Pour le Mérite, Germany's highest honor to bestow on artists, scholars, and scientists.
Kuttner had a large family and at the time of his death was survived by his wife, Eva (nee Illch), eight of nine children, twenty grandchildren, 14 great grandchildren and a sister.
[edit] Kuttner's Offprints and Scholarly Correspondence
The library of the Stephan Kuttner Institute of Medieval Canon Law has Kuttner's extensive Collection of scholarly off-prints as well as his scholarly correspondence. A data base of these titles is now available at the Institute thanks to the efforts of Birgit Gilcher and Johannes Raue, and as soon finances permit, the database will be accessible via the Internet.
The preparation of a Register of Kuttner's scholarly correspondence has also been completed through the efforts of Andreas Hetzenecker. A catalogue of the correspondence are available at the institute. If there is sufficient demand, an index will be prepared for this work. Also, Andreas Hetzenecker has written a preliminary evaluation of the correspondence that is scheduled to appear in monograph form in the near future.
[edit] External links
Major Works
1. Gratian and the Schools of Law, 1140-1234 by Stephan Kuttner
ISBN 0860784088 Publisher: Ashgate Pub Co
2. Pope Urban II: The Collectio Gritannica, and the Council of Melfi (1089) by Stephan Kuttner and Robert Somerville
ISBN 0198205694 Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr on Demand
3. Studies in the History of Medieval Canon Law by Stephan Kuttner
ISBN 0860782743 Publisher: Ashgate Pub Co.
4. A Catalogue of Canon and Roman Law Manuscripts in the Vatican Library by Stephan Kuttner
Publisher: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, Reinhard Elze, Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rome
Complete Bibliography
1. Earlier bibliographies
2. Books and articles
3. Reviews
4. Selected Essays
5. Reviews
6. Proceedings
7. Necrologies
8. Editing of Festschriften
9. Festschriften for Kuttner
10. Necrologies on Stephan Kuttner
Annual Memorial Lectures and Meetings
There is a Stephan-Kuttner-Memorial-Lecture within every International Congresses of Medieval Canon Law
A Stephan-Kuttner Memorial Session is regulary hold at the meetings of the Medieval Acadamie of America at Kalamazoo
