Professor Emeritus Brian Tierney, who taught medieval history at Cornell for 33 years and was recognized as a leading authority on medieval church law and political thought, died Nov. 30 in Syracuse. He was 97.

Tierney taught in the Department of History from 1959 until his retirement in 1992 as the Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies.

He was an internationally renowned scholar whose teaching and research included a specialization in the interactions of the medieval church and the medieval state, and the resulting influence on Western institutions and constitutional thought.

“Brian left an important legacy to Cornell,” said R. Laurence Moore, the Howard A. Newman Professor of American Studies Emeritus. “He became one of the most celebrated medieval historians of his generation, sought out by many universities. Cornell managed to keep him on the faculty, in part, because he loved Ithaca and the opportunities it afforded him to ski, to sail, and to hunt.”