The Middle Ages are often viewed as a repository of tradition, yet what we think of as traditional marriage was far from the only available alternative to the single state in medieval Europe. Many ...people lived together in long-term, quasimarital heterosexual relationships, unable to marry if one was in holy orders or if the partners were of different religions. Social norms militated against the marriage of master to slave or between individuals of very different classes, or when the couple was so poor that they could not establish an independent household. Such unions, where the protections that medieval law furnished to wives (and their children) were absent, were fraught with danger for women in particular, but they also provided a degree of flexibility and demonstrate the adaptability of social customs in the face of slowly changing religious doctrine.Unmarriagesdraws on a wide range of sources from across Europe and the entire medieval millennium in order to investigate structures and relations that medieval authors and record keepers did not address directly, either in order to minimize them or because they were so common as not to be worth mentioning. Author Ruth Mazo Karras pays particular attention to the ways women and men experienced forms of opposite-sex union differently and to the implications for power relations between the genders. She treats legal and theological discussions that applied to all of Europe and presents a vivid series of case studies of how unions operated in specific circumstances to illustrate concretely what we can conclude, how far we can speculate, and what we can never know.
The institution of marriage is commonly thought to have fallen into crisis in late medieval northern France. While prior scholarship has identified the pervasiveness of clandestine marriage as the ...cause, Sara McDougall contends that the pressure came overwhelmingly from the prevalence of remarriage in violation of the Christian ban on divorce, a practice we might call "bigamy." Throughout the fifteenth century in Christian Europe, husbands and wives married to absent or distant spouses found new spouses to wed. In the church courts of northern France, many of the individuals so married were criminally prosecuted. InBigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne, McDougall traces the history of this conflict in the diocese of Troyes and places it in the larger context of Christian theology and culture. Multiple marriage was both inevitable and repugnant in a Christian world that forbade divorce and associated bigamy with the unchristian practices of Islam or Judaism. The prevalence of bigamy might seem to suggest a failure of Christianization in late medieval northern France, but careful study of the sources shows otherwise: Clergy and laity alike valued marriage highly. Indeed, some members of the laity placed such a high value on the institution that they were willing to risk criminal punishment by entering into illegal remarriage. The risk was great: the Bishop of Troyes's judicial court prosecuted bigamy with unprecedented severity, although this prosecution broke down along gender lines. The court treated male bigamy, and only male bigamy, as a grave crime, while female bigamy was almost completely excluded from harsh punishment. As this suggests, the Church was primarily concerned with imposing a high standard on men as heads of Christian households, responsible for their own behavior and also that of their wives.
While the Spanish Inquisition has laid the greatest claim to both scholarly attention and the popular imagination, the Roman Inquisition, established in 1542 and a key instrument of papal authority, ...was more powerful, important, and long-lived. Founded by Paul III and originally aimed to eradicate Protestant heresy, it followed medieval antecedents but went beyond them by becoming a highly articulated centralized organ directly dependent on the pope. By the late sixteenth century the Roman Inquisition had developed its own distinctive procedures, legal process, and personnel, the congregation of cardinals and a professional staff. Its legal process grew out of the technique ofinquisitioformulated by Innocent III in the early thirteenth century, it became the most precocious papal bureaucracy on the road to the first "absolutist" state. As Thomas F. Mayer demonstrates, the Inquisition underwent constant modification as it expanded. The new institution modeled its case management and other procedures on those of another medieval ancestor, the Roman supreme court, the Rota. With unparalleled attention to archival sources and detail, Mayer portrays a highly articulated corporate bureaucracy with the pope at its head. He profiles the Cardinal Inquisitors, including those who would play a major role in Galileo's trials, and details their social and geographical origins, their education, economic status, earlier careers in the Church, and networks of patronage. At the point this study ends, circa 1640, Pope Urban VIII had made the Roman Inquisition his personal instrument and dominated it to a degree none of his predecessors had approached.
This book reconstructs the scholastic arguments about marital indissolubility and papal power that lay behind John XXII's 1322 constitution Antique Concertationi. It illustrates the dynamic ...relationship between canon law and theology, and the tensions between papal authority and academic expertise, that animated a controversial pontificate.
Thomas Izbicki presents a new examination of the relationship between the adoration of the sacrament and canon law from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries. The medieval Church believed Christ's ...glorified body was present in the Eucharist, the most central of the seven sacraments, and the Real Presence became explained as transubstantiation by university-trained theologians. Expressions of this belief included the drama of the elevated host and chalice, as well as processions with a host in an elaborate monstrance on the Feast of Corpus Christi. These affirmations of doctrine were governed by canon law, promulgated by popes and councils; and liturgical regulations were enforced by popes, bishops, archdeacons and inquisitors. Drawing on canon law collections and commentaries, synodal enactments, legal manuals and books about ecclesiastical offices, Izbicki presents the first systematic analysis of the Church's teaching about the regulation of the practice of the Eucharist.
ABSTRACT This article presents a panoramic view of the positions held by the Spanish Canon Law Study in relation to The 1917 Code of Canon Law throughout the decades preceding and following the ...promulgation of the Code of Canon Law. The methodological approach taken in this study is mainly bibliographic: from textbooks and other specialized works published in Spain as well as from articles of scientific and ecclesiastical journals by Spanish authors. The basic biography of most of the authors presented has also been studied, pointing out the educational institution where they studied and taught or developed their activities related to the canon law. ...there is a brief recount the work of the Spanish authors that participated in the canon law cod ing.
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.
The rights of victims of sexual abuse as minors in penal proceedings is gaining increasing attention. International standards have been developed and national judicial systems have implemented them ...and developed them further. This book presents the standards, the provisions of nine different countries as well as four studies suggesting possible improvements to the role of victims in the canonical penal proceedings of the Roman Catholic Church. This unique collection of studies, written by leading authorities in the field of rights of victims of sexual abuse as minors in the civil realm, offers fascinating proposals by outstanding canon lawyers for improvements to the penal procedural law of the Roman Catholic Church. With contributions by Mark L. Bartchak | Jorge Cardona Llorens| Nicholas Cowdery | María Inés Franck | Jane Goodman-Delahunty | Aidan McGrath | Mary Graw Leary | Ma. Liza Miscala Jorda | Gianpaolo Montini | Raphaële Parizot | Livia Pomodoro | Frauke Rostalski | Fabián Salvioli | Charles J. Scicluna | Malgorzata Skorzewska-Amberg | Myriam Wijlens
El ensayo se centra en la evolución contemporánea del ordenamiento jurídico canónico: de una frenética producción legislativa que, implicando a múltiples sectores de la experiencia eclesial y ...afectando también ampliamente al Codex Iuris Canonici, conduce no pocas veces a problemas de coordinación y racionalización sistemática, a fenómenos recientes y diversificados que no parecen comportar lesiones secundarias a la certeza del derecho en la Iglesia. A la luz de este cuadro compuesto, retomamos algunas consideraciones de ilustres juristas italianos de los veinte años anteriores a la segunda guerra mundial, que comparaban la certeza del derecho en los ordenamientos estatales coetáneos con la certeza absolutamente específica e irreductible del derecho en el ordenamiento eclesial. El objetivo es preguntarnos si estas reflexiones, aunque estrechamente ligadas al contexto histórico en el que se desarrollaron, pueden ser también fuente de inspiración ante el actual impasse en el que se encuentra el derecho canónico.
Se da noticia de los principales documentos y actos jurídicos dados en el año 2023 por el Romano Pontífice y los distintos dicasterios de la curia romana, así como de los acuerdos internacionales ...suscritos por la Santa Sede. También se hace referencia a la actividad canónica en el ámbito de la Conferencia Episcopal Española.
PDF
