The concept of equity in early modern canon law: theologians, humanists and canonists

Charles Lefebvre famously argued that the concepts of aequitas and epieikeia were only assimilated by canon lawyers after the sixteenth century, and identified that period as that where the modern concept of equity in canon law emerged. My paper looks at the re-emergence of aequitas as epieikeia in early-modern canon law and relates the reasons for this change to developments among sixteenth-century humanist jurists and early modern Thomists.