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1.,z ,Viemoria 71/
IN MEMORIAM
john Thornas Gilehrist (1927 1992)
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While travelling to Ottawa in a fiercesome Decernber snowstorm, john Gilcbrist \vas tragically killed in an automobile acciden.t. His death, .following closelv the accidental bicycling death in Toronto of his friend, Michael Sheehan of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, was a severe blow to medieval canonistic scholarship in Ganada. At bis death Gilchrist N:vas engaged in a number of major research projects: a book length manuscript, Low„S'ocletv, and Religion in ¡be Age of ibt.> Investiture Controversv; a study and edition of the late eleventh-century canonical Collection Four .Books; and numerous articles on such subjects as the earlv crusades in canon law and reform canon law collections of the Gregorian period. Gilchrist, born in :England of parents who maintained properties of the Jesuits, received his BA in historv at the tiniversity of Leeds. After two vears in militarv service, he completed work .for a Diploma in Education, and in 1957 he received PhD, the first graduate at the University of Leeds to have been ~arded this degree in medieval historv. Thereafter, he held professorships at the University of Adelaide in South Australia and at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Ganada. Gilchrist vas one of the handful of doctoral students who satisfied the demanding standards of Walter Ullmann, and it vas Ullmann who transmitted to him his loving scepticism oí' the ways of the ecclesiastical establishment and bis deep concern for understanding medieval legal texts. It was also Ullmann who put Gilchrist oil to the canonistic manuscript editing project for \aja he is and will remain best known, the edition and study of the late eleven.th-century Colledíon in Seventv Four Despite its critical ímportance as the first major canonical collection compiled by supporters of the eleventh-centurv reformers of the church, scholars were dependent for the text on Thaner's apparatus in the partíal edition of the Collectio cononum of Anselm. Gilchrist's edition vas the first major canonical collection publisbed in the Monumento [mis Canon/c. 1 edited by Stephan Kuttner, and it set a high standard for canonistic editing in that distinguished series. Gilchrist was not simply a superb text editor; he vas an accomplished historian who could interpret what bis texts said. Time and again, he would mak.e a SWCep through the dozens of canonical collection he liad mastered, looking for theír treatment of, :for example, the jews, crusaders, economic theorv, or a myriad other subjects. All of these sweeps resulted in long, fundamental artícies, manv in the Zeitschnft der Savign y Stlftung. In the view of many scholars Gilchrist's most significant contribution to medieval history in general \vas bis demonstration that what has usually been called die Gregorian reform of the late eleventh centurv was not really Gregoriam as seen iii the eyes of contemporary canonist. Gilchrist demonstrated this throug,h careful and extensive search through dozens of collecdon \\Trinen in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In diese he discovered that the
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