The Liber Belial in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries: comparison of legal citations

Resumen

The bishop and canonist Iacopo da Teramo was active in Italy between the 14th and 15th century. In 1382, he wrote the Liber Belial de consolatione peccatorum. The work reconstructs the imaginary trial brought by Satan against Jesus for the latter's appropriation of the souls imprisoned in Hell. Due to the variety of topics covered, the Liber Belial is a work with many possible interpretations. The Belial, however, is first and foremost an agile ‘manual’ of the Roman-canonical procedural discipline established in the late Middle Ages. The work had a European circulation and with the introduction of movable type was printed dozens of times in Italy, France, Germany and Holland. For this reason, the thesis that the Belial was manipulated and systematically adapted to the procedure in force in the place where it was printed was consolidated in the 19th century.  Through a comparison of the apparatus of legal citations found in four ‘versions’ of the Liber Belial (two Italian, one French and one German,) this contribution aims to verify the thesis of the existence of different versions of the work and, incidentally, seeks to offer a tool for the reconstruction of the dissemination of the Roman-Canonical process in Europe.