AD AGENDAM PENITENTIAM PERPETUAM DETRUDATUR MONASTIC INCARCERATION OF ADULTEROUS WOMEN IN THIRTEENTH-CENTURY CANONICAL JURISPRUDENCE

Traditio ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 72 ◽  
pp. 301-340
Author(s):  
EDWARD A. RENO
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Medieval Canon Law

Medieval canon law recognized detrusion (detrusio in monasterium) as a sentence for women convicted of adultery. Civil law had made adultery a capital crime, so that detrusio was a milder action. This article traces the history of detrusio in canon law, especially in the thirteenth century, and treats further questions that detrusio raised. Detrusio was originally a pastoral provision, meant to provide a woman rejected by her husband for adultery an opportunity to enter religious life. But in the hands of the jurists detrusio became a coercive ecclesiastical penalty for adultery. The practice raised further concerns, for example: how the woman's property was to be treated; whether the woman sentenced to detrusio became a religious; whether a monastery should be a site of confinement for the laity; and, under what conditions a husband could take his adulterous wife back. The case was also raised of a man who accused his wife of adultery so that he could dissolve his marriage and enter a monastery.

The Political Background to the Establishment of the Slavic Nomocanon in the Thirteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 78-92
Author(s):  
Marija Koprivica
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Slavic Language ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Political Background ◽  
Selection Of

The first collection of canon law translated from the Greek into the Slavic language in the ninth century supported the consolidation of Christianity among the Slav peoples. This article focuses on the nomocanon of St Sava of Serbia (Kormchaia), a collection which was original and specific in its content; its relationship to other contemporary legal historical documents will be considered. The article also explores the political background to the emergence of Orthodox Slav collections of ecclesiastical and civil law. The political context in which these collections originated exercised a determinative influence on their contents, the selection of texts and the interpretation of the canons contained within them. The emergence of the Slavic nomocanon is interpreted within a context in which Balkan Slav states sought to foster their independence and aspired to form autocephalous national churches.

The Slaves of the Churches

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary E. Sommar
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Church History ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
Church Law ◽  
The Church

This is the story of how the church sought to establish norms for slave ownership on the part of ecclesiastical institutions and personnel and for others’ behavior toward such slaves. The story begins in the New Testament era, when the earliest Christian norms were established, and continues through the late Roman Empire, the Germanic kingdoms, and the Carolingian Empire, to the thirteenth-century establishment of a body of ecclesiastical regulations (canon law) that would persist into the twentieth century. Chronicles, letters, and other documents from each of the various historical periods, along with an analysis of the various policies and statutes, provide insight into the situations of these unfree ecclesiastical dependents. The book stops in the thirteenth century, which was a time of great changes, not only in the history of the legal profession, but also in the history of slavery as Europeans began to reach out into the Atlantic. Although this book is a serious scholarly monograph about the history of church law, it has been written in such a way that no specialist knowledge is required of the reader, whether a scholar in another field or a general reader interested in church history or the history of slavery. Historical background is provided, and there is a short Latin lexicon.

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