The Medieval Court of Arches (review)

Abstract

The Medieval Court of Arches. Edited by F. Donald Logan. [The Canterbury and York Society,Volume 95.] (Rochester, NewYork:The Boydell Press. 2005. Pp. xlviii, 240. $49.95.) The metropolitan appellate court of the archbishop of Canterbury, the Court of Arches (or the Arches, for short) that met in St. Mary le Bow church in central London, was the most important medieval English ecclesiastical tribunal. Logan's study of the court ranges from its creation sometime in the midthirteenth century until the early sixteenth century, when Henrician statutes prohibited legal recourse in ecclesiastical matters from England to the pope. The volume contains an excellent lengthy introductory essay, wherein Logan not only offers a summary history of the Arches, but also provides an analysis of the court's structure, personnel, administrative routine, and trial procedures. He has collected and carefully edited an impressive range of Latin documents, which he has grouped in three sections after his introduction: archiepiscopal statutes concerning the Arches, the customs of the court, and procedural treatises designed for practitioners in this tribunal. Two further sections follow the edited texts. One lists the names, ordered chronologically and by office, of several hundred court personnel (officiates Cantuariensis, deans of the Arches, examiners general, registrars, scribes of the acts, apparitors, proctors, and advocates).The other briefly describes the court's calendar of sessions. While the existence of the Court of Arches dates at least from 1251, Logan suggests that disputes concerning appeals could have spurred Archbishop Boniface of Savoy after his 1245 consecration to establish a provincial appellate tribunal fixed at St. Mary le Bow: By the end of the century the Court of Arches had presiding officers (the archbishop's officialis and the latter's commissary-general, the dean of the Arches) as well as a professional-and probably already closed-group of sworn practitioners, namely, the advocates and proctors who functioned roughly in the same manner as modern barristers and solicitors. Several archbishops had already issued statutes; the customs of the court had been redacted in written form, and several procedural treatises had been composed. During this early period the Arches heard three kinds of cases: appeals from diocesan courts, direct complaints, and so-called tuitorial appeals, whereby a litigant appealed the main issue in dispute directly to the pope, while requesting protection (or tuition) from the archbishop in the interim.The second and third kinds of cases periodically caused friction between the archbishop and his suffragans. In the early 1280's the latter charged that direct complaints to the Arches bypassed their own diocesan courts, and that the appellate court's summary procedure of granting tuition permitted frivolous appeals. Arbitration settled this conflict in 1282; apart from intermittent disputes, Canterbury archbishops and suffragans managed to co-operate in the smooth functioning of the court. …