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water … Saliva makes no baptism. Ice or snow make no baptism, unless
one melts it so that it becomes water.”12 Why the difference? What had
happened during the intervening century and a half?
What had happened was that in 1206, Pope Innocent III had been asked
by archbishop tore of trondheim whether a child who had been baptized
with saliva instead of water could be counted as a baptized Christian.13
until that point, general canon law had not contained any rules dealing
explicitly with the question of whether saliva could be used in baptism.
trondheim lies in the norwegian law district of frostathing, and it ap-
pears that the situation foreseen by the law had actually come to pass and
a child had been baptized in nothing but saliva. Pope Innocent explained
that Christ, according to the Gospel of John 3:5, said: “unless a person be
born again of water and the Holy Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of
Heaven.” Interpreting this biblical verse narrowly, the pope declared that
water, and only water, would do for baptism.14
In the first decade of the thirteenth century, a law professor in Bologna
known as Peter of Benevento (Petrus Beneventanus) read through cop-
ies of papal letters which were kept in the registers at the papal curia.
Peter was a professor of canon law and he was looking for letters with
content that might serve as useful legal precedents. He thought the letter
to archbishop tore contained such a precedent. He thus excerpted it and
put it into his collection of decretals, or papal precedents. His decretal
collection was then used as a textbook, conventionally known as the
Compilatio tertia, in the law school of Bologna, the premier law school of
12 “Kristinréttur Árna” ch. 8 (typography simplified here and in subsequent quotations from
this edition): “oc eigi scira nema i uatni… raki gerir onga scirn. Jss eða snǽr gerir oc ønga
scirn nema þat þiðni sva at þar verþi vatn af.” See also pp. 83–84.
13 Die Register Innocenz’ III, vol. 9: Pontifikatsjahr 1206/1207, ed. by andrea Sommerlechner,
Publikationen des Historischen Instituts beim Österreichischen Kulturinstitut in rom, 2
abt.: Quellen, 1 ser., 9 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichische akademie der Wissenschaften,
2004), 15, no. 15; excerpted in Liber extra X 3.42.5 (Potthast 2696), ed. Corpus iuris canonici,
ed. by Emil friedberg (Lipsiae: Ex officina Bernhardi tauchnitz, 1879–1882), 2.647.
14 Liber extra X 3.42.5, ed. Corpus iuris canonici, 2.647: “respondemus, quod, cum in bapt-
ismo duo semper, videlicet verbum et elementum, necessario requirantur, iuxta quod de
verbo Veritas ait: ‘Euntes in mundum universum praedicatae evangelium omni creaturae,
et baptizate omnes gentes in nomine Patris, et filii et Spiritus sancti,’ eademque dicat
de elemento: ‘nisi quis renatus fuerit ex aqua et Spiritu sancto, non intrabit in regnum
coelorum:’ dubitare non debes, illos verum non habere baptismum, in quibus non solum
utrumque praedictorum, sed eorum alterum est omissum.”
THE CANON LAW OF EMERGENCY BAPTISM