Brian Tierney

Brian Tierney (May 7, 1922 – November 30, 2019) was an English historian and medievalist. He was a member of the faculty of the Catholic University of America for eight years until becoming a professor of medieval history at Cornell University in 1959, where he was later appointed as the Goldwin Smith Professor of Medieval History in 1969 and the first Bowmar Professor of Humanistic Studies in 1977. His speciality was 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. He was widely recognized as a leading authority on medieval church law and political thought. His work in these fields also proved relevant to some of the modern debates about Roman Catholic ecclesiology. Tierney's most recent book was Liberty and Law: The Idea of Permissive Natural Law, 1100-1800. (Catholic University Press, 2014). He continued to work on medieval history until the time of his death. Early life and military service Tierney was born in 1922 in Scunthorpe, an industrial town in Lincolnshire, England, and grew up there during the Depression years of the 1930s. He was the second of four boys born to John Patrick and Helena (McGuire) Tierney, both of Irish descent. He left school at 16 to begin working in Bristol in southwest England. In January 1941, his home there was destroyed by a German air raid but fortunately the house was unoccupied at the time and there were no casualties. Tierney enlisted in the Royal Air Force in July 1941 and served in Bomber Command until 1946, attaining the rank of Flight Lieutenant. He trained as an air navigator, partly in the U.S. at an astronavigation school conducted by Pan American Airways in Miami. After returning to England, he completed a tour of thirty missions flying over Europe in Wellington bombers. He next served for a year as a navigation instructor and then returned to operational flying and completed a second tour of sixty missions on Mosquitoes with 105 Squadron of the elite Pathfinder Force. Tierney was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar for his RAF service.