Guillaume Durand

In the midst of the struggles between Guelfs and Ghibellines, Durand successfully defended the papal territories, both by diplomacy and by arms.

[2] In 1295 he refused the archbishopric of Ravenna, offered him by Pope Boniface VIII, but accepted the task of pacifying his former provinces of Romagna and the March of Ancona.

It is a remarkable encyclopaedic synthesis of Roman and ecclesiastical law, distinguished by its clarity, its method, and especially its practical sense, and it was long highly regarded in the courts as in the schools.

Another important work by Durand was the Rationale divinorum officiorum, a liturgical treatise written in Italy before 1286, on the origin and symbolic sense of Christian ritual.

It presents a picture of the liturgy of the 13th century in the West, studied in its various forms, its traditional sources, and its relation to the church buildings and furniture.