Circumspecte Agatis Revisited

1984 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Millon
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Church Courts ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

During the middle ages the church maintained a legal system largely independent of English secular justice. Its primary functions were to enforce canon law as it directed the spiritual welfare of all Christians and to regulate the institutions and personnel of the church. Thus, church courts prosecuted sinners and adjudicated disputes between individuals in which some sacramental matter, such as an oath, marriage or testament, was at stake. In addition, canon law governed appointments, powers and duties of ecclesiastical office holders and the juridical relations among various offices.

Il giuramento di innocenza nel processo canonico medievale

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonia Fiori
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Criminal Offence ◽  
Legal Procedure ◽  
Canonical Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Short Space ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

The oath of innocence, or purgation, constituted a part of canon law for almost a millennium. It has nevertheless been largely neglected by studies on medieval canonical procedure. This book seeks to reconstruct the history of the oath of purgation specifically from the perspective of canon law. Over the centuries, the function of the so-called "purgatio canonica" never changed: priests of the Church were required to swear their innocence when charged with any criminal offence for which evidence of guilt was lacking. It is while dealing with the canonical purgation that the canonists also developed the notion of infamia facti, a concept of social disrepute with real legal significance. Within a short space of time this inspired the most significant innovations in medieval legal procedure: the introduction of the inquisitorial process alongside the accusatorial model, the elaboration of a canonical theory of legal presumptions, and the justification of judicial torture. The history of the oath of purgation thus provides a unique perspective from which to observe the transformations which occurred in canon law procedure and wider legal culture throughout the course of the Middle Ages.

Calvinism and Capitalism

1928 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 163-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kemper Fullerton
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
College Graduates ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
College Sports ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Church And Society ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

Perhaps in nothing, not even in scientific outlook, is the contrast between the Modern Age and the Middle Ages more striking than in the changed attitude toward money and money-making. In the Middle Ages trade was frowned upon and the money-lender despised. In this attitude church and society generally agreed. The church was always castigating the sin of avarice. The making of money was designated by Thomas Aquinas as ‘turpitudo,’ even though he admitted its necessity. The thesis that the shop-keeper could only with difficulty please God was introduced into canon law. Usury, which meant not only extortionate interest but interest of any kind, was prohibited by several councils of the church, and to a usurer the privileges of the sacraments were often denied. Even in those days there were, to be sure, practical qualifications of these theoretical judgments, due to the need of money— a need often as keenly felt by the lords spiritual as by the lords temporal. Nevertheless the generalization is safe that money-making was regarded as socially degrading and morally and religiously dangerous. Today all this is changed. Money-making has become the chief aim of modern civilization. In countless ways, gross or subtle, it determines our lives and thinking. It entices into its service many of the best minds of our college graduates. Even our professions, law, medicine, the ministry (witness the vast development of ecclesiastical advertising), are more and more entangled in its net, while the commercialization of amusements, including our college sports, is notorious.

The ‘Mendicant Problem’ in the Later Middle Ages

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 217-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. N. Swanson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Secular Clergy ◽  
Grass Root ◽  
Fourth Lateran Council ◽  
Mendicant Orders ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

Almost from their foundation, the mendicant orders proved problematic. Their insistence on poverty, their preaching skills, and their responsiveness to contemporary spirituality challenged the Church at many levels, providing standards against which the secular clergy might be judged and found wanting. Their dependence on papal privileges which limited episcopal oversight, and their claims to a special role as confessors and preachers, threatened the Church’s current order, especially in parishes. By undermining the parish priest’s authority — jurisdictionally by offering confession and absolution, financially by encouraging burial in their houses — the friars in fact undercut some of the aims of the early thirteenth-century reformers, most notably by disrupting the demands of Omnis utriusque sexus, the decree requiring annual confession to the ‘proprius sacerdos’, issued at the Fourth Lateran Council. The most important resolution of these ‘grass root’ problems was provided in Boniface VIII’s Super cathedram of 1300, which by 1326 applied to all four of the main mendicant orders, and formally became part of canon law when enshrined in the Clementines. Unfortunately, Super cathedram seemed incompatible with Omnis utriusque sexus, and debate on the resulting discrepancy persisted throughout the Middle Ages, despite attempts at resolution such as Vas electionis of 1321.

scholarly journals Istotne cele małżeństwa katolickiego

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
Tomasz Smoliński
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Code Of Canon Law ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
The Church ◽  
Current Code ◽  
The Middle Ages

Contemporary church legislation indicates two basic purposes of marriage: the good of the spouses and the birth of offspring. Today’s doctrine is based on the teaching of philosophers, theologians and doctors of the Church. In this work, considerations have been made regarding the important purposes of marriage, taking into account the views of scholars from ancient times, through the Middle Ages, to the Code of Canon Law of 1917, the Second Vatican Council and finally, the current Code of Canon Law of 1983.  

Stages in Diplomatic Production

2020 ◽  
pp. 610-618
Author(s):  
Olivier Guyotjeannin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter examines administrative documents of the Middle Ages and the major scholarly studies of them. It surveys the number of preserved documents and the problems surrounding the lack of documents in different periods and places. The author discusses the role and influence of the Church in the increased production and preservation of documents beginning in the eleventh century, leading to an enormous increase in the production of documents during the last three centuries of the Middle Ages.

Church Discipline in the Later Middle Ages: the Priors of Durham as Archdeacons

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 95-105
Author(s):  
Margaret Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Church Discipline ◽  
Full Account ◽  
Church Courts ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

It is often forgotten that the medieval Church imposed public penance and reconciliation by law. The discipline was administered by the church courts, among which one of the most important, because it acted at local level, was that of the archdeacon. In the later Middle Ages and certainly by 1435, the priors of Durham were archdeacons in all the churches appropriated to the monastery. The priors had established their rights in Durham County by the early fourteenth century and in Northumberland slightly later. Although the origins of this peculiar jurisdiction were long ago unravelled by Barlow, there is no full account of how it worked in practice. Yet it is not difficult from the Durham archives to elicit a coherent account, with examples, of the way penance and ecclesiastical justice were administered from day to day in the Durham area in this period. The picture that emerges from these documents, though not in itself unusual, is nevertheless valuable and affords an extraordinary degree of detail which is missing from other places, where the evidence no longer exists. This study should complement the recent work by Larry Poos for Lincoln and Wisbech, drawing attention to an institution which would reward further research. It is only possible here to outline what the court did and how and why it was used.

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