Brian Tierney

Who is Brian Tierney?

Brian Tierney is a historian and a medievalist. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was a member of the faculty of the Catholic University of America for eight years until becoming professor of medieval history at Cornell University in 1959, becoming the Goldwin Smith Professor of Medieval History in 1969 and the first Bowmar Professor of Humanistic Studies in 1977.

His speciality is medieval church history, focusing on the structure of the medieval church and the medieval state, and the influences of the interaction between these on the development of Western institutions. His most recent book on this theme is Liberty and Law: The Idea of Permissive Natural Law, 1100-1800.

He gave the Wiles Lectures at the Queen's University of Belfast in 1972, which appeared in print in 1982 as Religion, law, and the growth of constitutional thought, 1150-1650.

According to a festschrift published in his honour, his Foundations of the Conciliar Theory and Origins of Papal Infallibility have found their way beyond the confines of academia, helping to shape the modern Roman Catholic Church debate on ecclesiology.