Church Courts Research Articles

Criminal-Inquisitorial Trials in English Church Courts: From the Middle Ages to the Reformation. By Henry Ansgar Kelly

Criminal-Inquisitorial Trials in English Church Courts: From the Middle Ages to the Reformation. By Henry Ansgar Kelly

Church Courts and the People in Seventeenth-Century England: Ecclesiastical Justice in Peril at Winchester, Worcester and Wells, by Andrew Thomson

<i>Church Courts and the People in Seventeenth-Century England: Ecclesiastical Justice in Peril at Winchester, Worcester and Wells</i>, by Andrew Thomson

Andrew Thomson. Church Courts and the People in Seventeenth-Century England: Ecclesiastical Justice in Peril at Winchester, Worcester and Wells London: UCL Press, 2022. Pp. 269. $45.00 (paper).

Andrew Thomson. Church Courts and the People in Seventeenth-Century England: Ecclesiastical Justice in Peril at Winchester, Worcester and Wells London: UCL Press, 2022. Pp. 269. $45.00 (paper).

Сurrent discussionsons the jurisdiction of disputes with a religious component in the practice of the Supreme Court

The dynamics of social relations in the religious sphere today is of epoch-making importance, which in turn leads to the involvement of the state in church affairs. Due to conflicts and gaps, obsolescence and imperfection of national legislation, there are attempts to replace the norms of canon law with the norms of positive law, as well as attempts to resolve canonical disputes through the mediation of the latter. That is why the Supreme Court plays a crucial role in preventing such situations. It is the Supreme Court that currently bears the burden of responsibility for extending the judicial jurisdiction of national courts to disputes with a religious component.&#x0D; It is also important to formulate the conceptual principles that the Supreme Court implements when determining the jurisdiction of a dispute; this approach should not be based on the example of only one case, but should have universal features and be a guide for national courts.&#x0D; In this context, it should be noted that such an approach, in particular, may be the differentiation of relations with a religious component on the basis of the primary (basic) and secondary (derivative) relations, as emphasized in the dissenting opinion of the Supreme Court judges. Accordingly, it can be postulated that if relations arise from the religious sphere and then formally acquire other legal features, then in the event of a dispute, the latter is subject to consideration by a church court, not a state court. If relations arise on the basis of positive law (purchase of a land plot for the construction of a temple, lease of a building used as a place of worship, etc.), then such relations cannot be transformed into religious relations only because of this component.&#x0D; The above naturally raises the question, if we take as a basis the thesis that relations with a religious component should be resolved in national courts only on the grounds that they guarantee a person the right to a fair trial (access to court), what results do we expect? The question of whether a court can move a former nun into a monastery cell is not rhetorical, since the court of first instance did so, but isn’t such a court decision an interference by the state through the court in church affairs? Whether such decisions will not undermine the delicate balance of separation of church and state is a question that we have yet to answer.&#x0D; Obviously, one of the tasks of the Supreme Court in resolving disputes with a religious component is the progressive secularization of judicial practice.&#x0D; We must also recognize as a general observation that the normative approach to resolving disputes with a religious component is not very helpful and effective, and may even lead to false conclusions. In this sense, the comprehensive, combinatorial and interdisciplinary approaches, etc., are helpful.

‘Came to her dressed in mans cloaths’: transgender histories and queer approaches to the family in eighteenth-century Ireland

ABSTRACT This article engages with queer and trans scholarship to produce a methodological think-piece on how to queer the Irish family. It draws on a case study of alleged crossdressing and attempted intimacy that was recorded in the Kirk Session (church court) minute book of the Irish Presbyterian congregation of Templepatrick, County Antrim. In March 1706, a woman named Margaret McCal appeared before Templepatrick Kirk Session and lodged a complaint against a fellow church member. Margaret alleged that an individual known to her as Elizabeth McIlroy had approached her ‘Dressed in mans cloaths’, called themselves ‘David Campbell’ and ‘pretend[ed] courtship to her’. How do we understand this case? What can Margaret’s story tell us about gender, sex, and relationships in eighteenth century Ireland? Moving beyond a reading of the Templepatrick case as a simple instance of crossdressing, this article opens up new discursive pathways in histories of gender and the Irish family by situating it within a trans historical framework. In response to the calls of trans and queer scholars to ‘denaturalise the cisgender turn’, the article begins by interrogating the Presbyterian archive as a cisnormative and heteronormative construction. Next, it offers a trans reading of the case and situates David Campbell, not simply as a woman dressed in men’s clothing but as an individual who moved through the world at particular points in time as a man. Finally, the article ends by queering our understanding of female desire by unsettling the relationship between sex and gender in the pursuit of its fulfilment. Albeit based on one case-study, the story of David and Margaret captures an extraordinary – yet, as I will argue, very ordinary, intimate encounter that has important implications for our understanding of the family in Ireland.

The Prosecution of Heresy in the Henrician Reformation

ABSTRACT At the beginning of Henry VIII’s reign, the prosecution of heresy was based on three statutes of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Under this system, the Church tried the crime with the assistance of secular authority. Juries presented suspects, whose cases were then transferred to the church courts for determination. In 1532, the Supplication against the Ordinaries challenged the conduct of heresy trials. It invoked common-law principles about due process and standards of proof. Two years later, a new statute modified the system, although less drastically than had been proposed. The royal supremacy and new religious policies changed the context in which heresy was prosecuted. Up until 1539, however, the church courts still determined accusations. Thereafter, in the case of specified heresies, the Act of Six Articles made lay juries responsible for determining guilt or innocence. Commissions under this act combined elements of canon law and common law. These reforms were, however, not seen to have improved the conduct of heresy trials. It proved easier to criticize the traditional method of prosecution than to devise a better one.

Criminal-Inquisitorial Trials in English Church Courts: From the Middle Ages to the Reformation by Henry Ansgar Kelly (review)

Criminal-Inquisitorial Trials in English Church Courts: From the Middle Ages to the Reformation by Henry Ansgar Kelly (review)

Church courts and the people in seventeenth-century England. Ecclesiastical justice in peril at Winchester, Worcester and Wells. By Andrew Thomson. Pp. xvi + 251 incl. 1 map. London: UCL Press, 2022. £25 (paper). 978 1 80008 314 1

Church courts and the people in seventeenth-century England. Ecclesiastical justice in peril at Winchester, Worcester and Wells. By Andrew Thomson. Pp. xvi + 251 incl. 1 map. London: UCL Press, 2022. £25 (paper). 978 1 80008 314 1

Reconstructing the Labour of Care in Early Modern England

AbstractUncertainty about what constitutes work in the past has led to the labour of care occupying a shadowy place in the histories of both medicine and the economy. This article takes a microhistorical approach to shed new light on care in early modern England. Using depositions and other surviving records of a testamentary dispute heard in the Hereford diocesan church court in 1674–5, the article reconstructs the care received by a single, labouring man named Richard Howell. Focusing on forms of care that lay outside institutions, it unpicks the varieties of informal labour that society understood as care work in early modern England, including maintenance (provision of economic support for the sick, including lodging, food, and drink); physical or practical care (watching or attending the sick); and the emotional labour of care. The article challenges the idea that care work was simply undertaken by the family or carried out within a system of social obligation. It demonstrates that all forms of care in this pre-industrial society implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) held economic value, which could be leveraged as grounds for economic recompense in the early modern courts.

Blitz interview with Archpriest Vladislav Tsypin, professor emeritus of the Moscow Theological Academy, on the appointment of a church court

Blitz interview with Archpriest Vladislav Tsypin, professor emeritus of the Moscow Theological Academy, on the appointment of a church court

Church Courts and the People in Seventeenth Century England. Ecclesiastical Justice in Peril at Winchester, Worcester and Wells. By Andrew Thomson. London: UCL Press, 2022. Xvi + 251 pp. £25 paper.

Church Courts and the People in Seventeenth Century England. Ecclesiastical Justice in Peril at Winchester, Worcester and Wells. By Andrew Thomson. London: UCL Press, 2022. Xvi + 251 pp. £25 paper.

Профессора церковного права в российских университетах и духовных академиях в 1906–1917 гг.

The article examines the scientific potential of higher schools of the Russian Empire, universities and theological academies, in the field of ecclesiastical law during the active discussion of church reforms in 1906-1917. The author comes to the conclusion that at the beginning of the XX century it is necessary to talk about three developed scientific schools of ecclesiastical law: the St. Petersburg University school of M.I. Gorchakov, associated with it the Moscow University school of N.S. Suvorov and the Kazan School of I.S. Berdnikov. At the same time, only the latter one can be described as having preserved a close connection between the academy and the university. Universities were aimed at replacing the staff of the departments of ecclesiastical law with their graduates. In St. Petersburg and Moscow, it was possible to do this at the beginning of the XX century: V.N. Beneshevich and P.V. Gidulyanov, university graduates, became professors of the Department of Ecclesiastical Law. And the statistics of doctoral dissertations reveal the special role of Moscow University in the training of secular specialists in ecclesiastical law and shows that university scientific schools should be recognized as dominant in science. Strict administrative control and frequent changes of professorial staff at the departments of ecclesiastical law in the St. Petersburg and Moscow Theological Academies in the examined period obviously hindered the development of their own stable scientific traditions. Some stagnation is also noticeable in the Kiev Academy, where M.I. Mishchenko, the Master of Theology, was permanently at the similar department during this period. The inclusion of ecclesiastical law in the list of legal sciences has significantly expanded the scope of research: in addition to the actual study of history or the interpretation of the canons, church-state relations, problems of freedom of conscience, the relationship of the church court and state jurisdiction, as well as civil and family law began to be studied. Scientific achievements turned out to be relevant in the preparation of church reform in pre-Council forums, where university professors were invited mainly.

«Things sinful and spiritual» (private life in Russia based on the materials of the church court of the 17th century)

The article is devoted to the study of the circumstances of the private life of people in Russia in the 17th century. when considering "family" cases in the church court. From the time of Ancient Rus', as V. O. Klyuchevsky wrote, the conduct of “sinful and spiritual affairs” was subject to the Church. Researchers studied primarily legislative monuments, and there are practically no targeted attempts to study the clerical documentation of the Spiritual Orders (“Prikazy”) of the 17th century. Based on newly discovered documents, the work reveals the most common situations that arose during marriage, reveals the reasons for divorces associated with adultery, abandonment of each other by spouses, illnesses, family violence and forced tonsure in a monastery. The study of church legal proceedings shows the important role of the Church in organizing the normal life of society. The presented analysis allows us to abandon the restrictions of "women's history", and return to the study of this topic within the framework of social history.

Procedural Law of Medieval Church (ordo iudiciarius) in the Context of the Defendant’s Right to Due Process

The paper examines the development of the Church’s procedural law ordo iudiciarius in the period from the middle of the 12th century to the end of 13th century. By looking from the perspective of the defendant’s right to a due process, the author aims to reveal circumstances for the formation of ordo iudiciarius and its main features in the stages when the opposing procedure models (accusatorial and inquisitorial) were applied in the Church courts.

Women, Marriage and Sex in Early Tudor Ireland: Evidence from an Irish Act Book

Preserved among the so-called ‘Armagh registers’ is an act book of the consistory and metropolitan court of Armagh that was compiled in the early sixteenth century. Its fortuitous survival facilitates a systematic study of how an Irish church court processed litigation concerning women's marriages or other sexual relationships, and their sexual reputations, and in doing so reveals a great deal about important aspects of the lives of women in early Tudor Ireland.

Enfeoffment to Use, Legalism, and Humanism in Gower's Mirour de l'Omme

Enfeoffment to Use, Legalism, and Humanism in Gower's <i>Mirour de l'Omme</i>

Self-Defense in Fifteenth-Century Church Courts: The Requirement of Acting 'with the Moderation of Lawful Protection'( cum moderamine inculpate tutele )

Self-Defense in Fifteenth-Century Church Courts: The Requirement of Acting 'with the Moderation of Lawful Protection'( cum moderamine inculpate tutele )

Clergy Widows in Early Modern Scotland

This article explores the way that widows of Scottish ministers negotiated the legal structure of the Presbyterian church courts in the seventeenth century. Making extensive use of presbytery records it locates clerical widows in relation to their kin and community networks and explores their ability to assert rights established in civil and ecclesiastical laws. This offers important insights into the experience of women, and particularly the widows of ministers, within the structures of church governance in early modern Scotland.

To the Question of Key Features of Court Proceedings in the Old Russian State

The article reflects the author’s approach to summarizing and identifying characteristic features of court organization and proceedings in the Old Russian state. In addition to the characteristic features of court organization and proceedings in the Old Russian State, the author also discusses the theories of organizing the judiciary power in Russian tribal principalities of law historian D.Ya. Samokvasov, and analyzes the establishment of the Old Russian court system. Several types of courts are discussed: a Princely court, a church court, a communal court, a manorial court; judicial offices, procedural status of some proceedings’ participants, their functions and roles in the administration of justice are described. The author also examines the problematic issue of the participation of the community in the administration of justice, singles out the stages of the court process according to “Kratkaya Pravda”, as well as the role of the Princely court in the Old Russian state.

The Cost of Democracy: The Church of Ireland and Its Ritual Canons, 1871–1974

In 1870, disestablishment suddenly turned the Church of Ireland from a state church into a democracy, governed by its “parliament,” the General Synod. The empowerment of the laity left it with a distinctive, indeed unique, feature among the churches of the Anglican communion—a set of disciplinary canons designed to exclude high-church ritualism from its worship. Passed in 1871, these canons, the most radical of which included a ban on the use of the cross, were used by evangelical pressure-groups to prosecute high-church clergy in the church courts. For the dominant low-church lay party, determined to defend the “Reformation heritage” of the Church of Ireland, they represented an essential bulwark against the threat of English high-church ritualism and a “slide towards Rome.” For many clergy and bishops, anxious to allow for a broader range of Anglican churchmanship, the canons unduly narrowed and impoverished the worship of the Church of Ireland. Because of the General Synod's majority voting mechanism, efforts to amend the canons proved fruitless. It was only in 1964 that the ban on the cross was removed, and not until 1974 that the canons as a whole were revised, ending over a hundred years of contention and division.