Father Ignacio Gordon, SJ, taught canon law (the Catholic Church’s law) from 1960 until 1985 at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, with a concentration on procedural law, or the laws on ...trials. By all testimonies, he was outstanding for the clarity of his teaching, his humble affection for his students, his indefatigable and hidden service to the Apostolic See, and his priestly zeal. Notable among his endeavors was an educational initiative for the ongoing formation of judges and other ministers of justice in ecclesiastical tribunals. In his teaching, he stressed the ecclesial importance and supernatural implications of procedural law in general, and the indispensability of the judicial protection of marriage in particular. Special efforts were made to make procedural law understandable to his students and to canonists in general, at a time when the Church was celebrating and implementing the teachings of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, as a result of which her law was undergoing a major revision. Father Gordon taught from the consistent canonical tradition, while also laying bare the latest developments in law and jurisprudence. He taught the entirety of the law on trials, producing numerous scholarly works on questions both timeless and new, giving marked emphasis to the problem of the excessive length of trials and the causes of delayed justice. An area of his particular attention and dedication was the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura—of which he was a consultor (referendary and later votans )—including both its proper law and its history. This history displayed, in part, why that Tribunal was the natural one to function as the supreme administrative tribunal of the Church. Father Gordon’s contribution to the question of ecclesiastical administrative justice was among those leading the novel and dynamic discussion about it in the 1960s and 1970s.
Focusing on Piers Plowman's preoccupation with wrongdoing in the B and C versions, Arvind Thomas argues that the poem's mobilization of juridical concepts not only engenders a poetics informed by ...canonist thought but also expresses an alternative vision of canon law from that proposed by medieval jurists and today's medievalists.
The Decretum Gratiani is the cornerstone of medieval canon law, and the manuscript St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 673 an essential witness to its evolution. The studies in this volume focus on that ...manuscript, providing critical insights into its genesis, linguistic features, and use of Roman Law, while evaluating its attraction to medieval readers and modern scholars. Together, these studies offer a fascinating view on the evolution of the Decretum Gratiani, as well as granting new insights on the complex dynamics and processes by which legal knowledge was first created and then transferred in medieval jurisprudence. Contributors are Enrique de León, Stephan Dusil, Melodie H. Eichbauer, Atria A. Larson, Titus Lenherr, Philipp Lenz, Kenneth Pennington, Andreas Thier, José Miguel Viejo-Ximénez, John C. Wei, and Anders Winroth.
By the end of the thirteenth century, court procedure in continental Europe in secular and ecclesiastical courts shared many characteristics. As the academic jurists of the Ius commune began to ...excavate the norms of procedure from Justinian's great codification of law and then to expound them in the classroom and in their writings, they shaped the structure of ecclesiastical courts and secular courts as well. These essays also illuminate striking differences in the sources that we find in different parts of Europe. In northern Europe the archives are rich but do not always provide the details we need to understand a particular case. In Italy and Southern France the documentation is more detailed than in other parts of Europe but here too the historical records do not answer every question we might pose to them. In Spain, detailed documentation is strangely lacking, if not altogether absent. Iberian conciliar canons and tracts on procedure tell us much about practice in Spanish courts. As these essays demonstrate, scholars who want to peer into the medieval courtroom, must also read letters, papal decretals, chronicles, conciliar canons, and consilia to provide a nuanced and complete picture of what happened in medieval trials. This volume will give sophisticated guidance to all readers with an interest in European law and courts.
In the language of most superior jurisdictions in the end of the Middle Ages, the concept of enormitas included the most serious breaches of the legitimate order. It is suggested here that this ...concept was created during the 12th century in the practice of papal government and ecclesiastical reform. First, around 1130-1150, an « enormity » refered to a simple canonical irregularity without indicating any level of seriousness. From 1150-1160 on, the meaning changed. « Enormity » started to denote a blend of breach of rules or law, sin or stain and potentially radical subversion of the christian order. Although it remained typical of the ecclesiastical sphere, this new concept quickly spread broadly in the secular world, with a sense that was very similar to that of roman « atrocity » but had specific features. The enormitas of the 13th and 14th centuries was structurally unstable and protean. The perimeter of its field as a legal definition was variable, just as were its procedural implications. In many cases, the concept tended to embrace the whole criminal sphere (or « grand criminel », as it was called in France). Its use developed in concomitance with the rise of inquisitorial or « extraordinary » procedures, which were defined by an unprecedented expansion of the arbitrium judicis and therefore by situations of more or less generalized exceptionality with regard to traditional rules. While contributing to delimit the criminal sphere, enormitas thus created a continuum between the restricted field of crime of lese-majesty and that of ordinary crimes.
What is the purpose of a church? Who owns a church? Mary K. Farag persuasively demonstrates that three groups in late antiquity were concerned with these questions: Christian leaders, wealthy ...laypersons, and lawmakers. Conflicting answers usually coexisted, but from time to time they clashed and caused significant tension. In these disputes, juridical regulations and opinions mattered more than has been traditionally recognized. Considering familiar Christian controversies in novel ways, Farag’s investigation shows that scholarship has misunderstood well-known religious figures by ignoring the legal issues they faced. This seminal text nuances vital aspects of scholarly conversations on sacred space, gift giving, wealth, and poverty in the late antique Mediterranean world, making use not only of Latin and Greek sources but also Coptic and Arabic evidence.
Katharine Cleland's Irregular Unions provides the first sustained literary history of clandestine marriage in early modern England and reveals its controversial nature in the wake of the Elizabethan ...Religious Settlement, which standardized the marriage ritual for the first time. Cleland examines many examples of clandestine marriage across genres. Discussing such classic works as The Faerie Queene, Othello, and The Merchant of Venice, she argues that early modern authors used clandestine marriage to explore the intersection between the self and the marriage ritual in post-Reformation England.
The ways in which authors grappled with the political and social complexities of clandestine marriage, Cleland finds, suggest that these narratives were far more than interesting plot devices or scandalous stories ripped from the headlines. Instead, after the Reformation, fictions of clandestine marriage allowed early modern authors to explore topics of identity formation in new and different ways.
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