Ecclesiastical Courts Research Articles

On the Issue of the Aesthetics of the Pre-Mongol Russia’s Ecclesiastical Court (formulating the problem)

On the Issue of the Aesthetics of the Pre-Mongol Russia’s Ecclesiastical Court (formulating the problem)

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>

Episcopal Power and Authority in Communication with the City of Bardejov in the Late Middle Ages

This study deals with communications between the town of Bardejov and bishops in the Middle Ages. The author examines how the ecclesiastical power and authority of the bishops was demonstrated in their communications with the royal city of Bardejov. The bishops’ power toward medieval towns in the Kingdom of Hungary was primarily manifested in the tithes and exemptions granted in the rights of archdeacons. In the case of Bardejov, there can be found some areas where the power of bishops of Eger (frequently represented by episcopal vicars) was demonstrated. First of all, the episcopal tithe collection caused permanent disputes between the parish priest, town representatives and the bishop. The author describes how the problems were solved and the machinery of episcopal powers in these cases. Another area of communication and the manifestation of episcopal authority was that of judicial cases between burghers, which were occasionally brought before ecclesiastical court contrary to town law. A further, greatly signifi cant manifestation of episcopal power in the area of the city was that of ecclesiastical rituals and symbolic communication. The study mentions various examples of episcopal presence in the consecration of churches, chapels, altars and liturgical dress.

Viešas reikalas? Bylos dėl impotencijos XVII–XVIII a. Vilniaus ir Žemaitijos katalikų konsistorijose

Matter of Public Concern? Impotence-Related Cases in the Catholic Consistories of Vilnius and Samogitia in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Since the time of Paul the Apostle, Christians regarded marriage as a medium in which a couple’s legitimate offspring are born and which prevents the risk of fornication (Lat. fornicatio). With the development of canon law, the concept of conjugal debt (Lat. debitum conjugale) was defined in the middle of the twelfth century, which stated that upon marrying, a man and a woman undertook to have sexual relations with each other. At the same time, theologians and canonists debated about the essential condition for marriage: whether it was consent (Lat. consensus) or consummation of marriage via sexual intercourse (Lat. consummatio). In this context, various sexual pathologies that interfered with a couple’s sexual life were treated not only as a medical but also as a legal problem affecting the continuity and validity of marriage. In Catholic canon law, the terms used to refer to the sexual disorders causing difficulties in marriage were “impotence” (Lat. impotentia) or “frigidity” (Lat. frigiditas). These terms, although not gendered, were nevertheless most often used to describe men’s physiological problems. In the ninth century, impotence was divided into natural, permanent, and temporary, the latter thought to be caused by magic (Lat. maleficium). The decisions of the popes collected in Decretales (Liber Extra) of Pope Gregory IX, the most important collection of medieval canon law, defined modus operandi of the Church in dealing with impotence-related cases. Only permanent impotence could become legal grounds for declaring a marriage null and void; if the disorder was temporary, the couple had to live together for three years and attempt to consummate marriage. The very nature of the condition had to be proven by a specialist examination or a witness testimony, and in this respect, the impotence-related cases were rather a definitive example of institutional intervention in a seemingly very private sphere. In the Catholic consistories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, impotencerelated cases were perhaps the rarest category of all marital litigation. In the surviving sources of the seventeenth-eighteenth-century ecclesiastical courts, it was possible to find data on ten such cases, of which seven were examined. Due to the scarcity and chronological inconsistency of the data drawing generalising conclusions is problematic, nonetheless, it is possible to observe certain trends and to reveal aspects that are relevant from the point of view of micro-history. All bar one of the cases involved male impotence, and five out of seven resulted in the decisions declaring the marriages null and void. The analysis of case materials clearly reveals an aspect of publicity characteristic of this type of cases that had evolved in canon law since the Middle Ages, namely, third-party inspections. It was the expert insights of women or doctors that had a decisive influence on the decisions on whether to annul the marriage or to order the spouses to stay in it. This rather unwanted limelight may have precluded many of the cases from ever reaching the courts. Keywords: Impotence, ecclesiastical courts, Catholic Church, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, canon law.

Patricians, plebeians and parishioners: parish elections and social conflict in eighteenth-century Chelsea

ABSTRACT This article sheds new light on social relations in early eighteenth-century Britain through a case study of three parish elections held in Chelsea between 1708 and 1723. The results of these elections were disputed in the ecclesiastical courts, generating over 400 folio pages of witness depositions. These depositions reveal a sustained conflict between the local gentry and the middling sort over control of parish offices. At the heart of this conflict was a contest over who could be considered an independent voter. Independence was the central quality required for participation in parish politics and was thought to belong exclusively to heads of household who contributed to local taxes. In election disputes, each side claimed that their opponents’ supporters failed to meet these criteria and that they had benefited from the votes of people who were too poor to make independent political choices. By arguing over voter independence, Chelsea residents contested the boundary between ‘parishioners’ with a right to participate in local government and the poor who were excluded by their dependence on others. Parish elections were both manifestations of social hierarchy and key sites of social conflict.

“They Have Been United As Sisters”: Women Leaders and Political Power in Black Lay Confraternities of Colonial Lima

AbstractIn Lima in the seventeenth century, both free and enslaved black women held elected leadership roles in black confraternities (corporate bodies of lay Catholics). These women occupied a public position generally reserved for men; their Spanish and indigenous counterparts did not hold comparable roles. Though their experiences have not been documented in scholarly literature, they were highly visible in their own lifetimes. In ecclesiastical court, they acted as the confraternity's legal agents. In everyday operations, they were primarily responsible for collecting and managing funds. This gave them a large say in how money ought to be spent, whether on festivals, members’ funerals, medical aid, or financial support for imprisoned members. Though black limeños made up a majority of the city's population, other forms of mutual aid were often inaccessible to them. Confraternity leaders in general, and these women in particular, managed one of their community's only officially recognized spaces for civic organization. As the century wore on, men successfully challenged the women's authority in court, and militia officers became more and more central to leadership. Yet even with that curtailment, these positions gave black women in Lima a degree of publicly acknowledged power highly unusual for early modern women.

“Marriage is No Protection for Crime”: Coverture, Sex, and Marital Rape in Eighteenth-Century England

AbstractIf coverture justified patriarchal control and legally erased many aspects of wives’ separate existence, did this mean that husbands in eighteenth-century England also enjoyed absolute authority over their wives’ sexual bodies? This article examines how contemporaries described the sexual boundaries between spouses and what wives could do when they had been violated by their husbands. Wives had few legal protections and limited social and economic resources to escape unwanted marital sex, but the small number who could afford the high costs turned to the ecclesiastical courts to legally separate from their husbands. The five case studies from the ecclesiastical courts explored here are exceptional, first, because sexual problems were at their core, and second, because unusual collateral evidence survives describing attorneys’ and judges’ opinions about spouses’ bodily rights within marriage. Whether they were seeking relief from reproductive toil, venereal infection, threat of sexual violence, or trauma from marital rape, these wives wanted to escape their husbands—but they faced hurdles. Because English ecclesiastical law did not explicitly identify sexual discord as justifying marital separation, the women's attorneys had to demonstrate that unwanted sexual relations were acts of cruelty. By invoking bodily safety, decorum and propriety, and sensibility and sympathy, advocates argued against husbands’ absolute conjugal authority. The author considers how broader transformations in beliefs about gender and sexuality may have resulted in giving wives slightly more room for protection by the second half of the eighteenth century, particularly when they faced the threat of marital rape or venereal infection.

Women and Parliamentary Divorce in England. From Wife-Sale to the Divorce Act of 1857

The essay is a study of divorce in England in the Modern Period, with particular reference to parliamentary divorce, established since the end of the 17th century. If husbands could get rid of undesired wives through wife-selling, private separation deeds, or separation a mensa et thoro awarded by the ecclesiastical courts, they were not permitted to remarry unless they got a private bill from Parliament. Parliament acted as a real court of justice and, being the procedure extremely long and expensive, parliamentary divorce was in fact a privilege reserved to members of the aristocracy in search of a heir. Only in 1857 the Divorce Act legalized divorce in the country through the establishment of the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes.

‘Weak’ Legal Pluralism and the Eighteenth-Century English Ecclesiastical Courts

ABSTRACT The work of the eighteenth-century English ecclesiastical courts has received very little scholarly attention when compared with their seventeenth- or nineteenth century counterparts or the eighteenth-century temporal courts. And yet there was significant overlap between the two systems, particularly between the ‘disciplinary’ work of the ecclesiastical courts and the ‘criminal’ work of the temporal courts. Using a heuristic of ‘weak’ legal pluralism, this article examines the work of the ecclesiastical courts and shows that neither system can be understood adequately without reference to the other.

Controlling Voices in Fourteenth-Century Salzburg: Singing and Identity in the ‘MÖnch von Salzburg’ Songs

ABSTRACT The songs attributed to the so-called ‘Mönch von Salzburg’ offer a vivid picture of the late fourteenth-century ecclesiastical court of Archbishop Pilgrim von Pucheim. Against the background of historical and legal documentation from Salzburg, this article explores the way these songs negotiate the desires and anxieties of a mixed clerical-courtly milieu with a particular concern for regulating the human voice in both artistic and social senses. Taking as my central example Dy trumpet, one of the earliest pieces of recorded secular polyphony in the German world, I examine how both the singing and composition of song at Pilgrim’s court offered ways to certify one’s vocal interventions as positive and thereby to assure curial kudos. In a final section, I consider how later, non-curial recipients of these songs were able to vehicularize these courtly voices to their own advantage.

“Unable to Defend Him”: Conflicting Views of Female Violence in Swedish Medieval Law

“Unable to Defend Him”: Conflicting Views of Female Violence in Swedish Medieval Law

Kadijustiz in the ecclesiastical courts: Naming, blaming, reclaiming

AbstractThe article analyzes Israel's ecclesiastical court system through the prism of Weberian theory to both empirical and theoretical ends. On the empirical level, it aims to illuminate a grossly understudied socio-legal arena—the communal Christian courts in the Middle-East. On the theoretical level, it seeks to reclaim the Weberian concept of kadijustiz, which refers to “formally irrational” legal systems. In recent decades, scholars have engaged in a process of “blaming” that discredited the conceptualization of Islamic law as kadijustiz and resulted in the concept's erasure from socio-legal theory. After renaming it to the more neutral and non-Orientalist richterjustiz, we employ this new-old concept to analyze Israel's ecclesiastical courts and demonstrate its theoretical and analytical merits. The article concludes with several theoretical propositions, which draw on the empirical case study and contribute to the refinement of Weberian theory.

"A chiare lettere - Confronti” • A proposito di guerra o pace ai tribunali ecclesiastici esistenti in Italia. Quale cultura di riforme organiche sta dietro l’attuale pontificato?

SOMMARIO. 1. Preambolo: perseverare diabolicum? - 2. (segue) I tribunali regionali nella attuazione del regime concordatario, in Italia - 3. Ancora in tema di competenza matrimoniale dell’ordinario diocesano. Intermezzo - 4. Corollari di principio in tema di giurisdizione penale e/o amministrativa - 5. Problematicità di una transizione contraddittoria, a ogni livello - 6. (segue) Dalla frammentazione feudale all’armonia di un moderno ordinamento giudiziario.&#x0D; Regarding peace of war to the italian ecclesiastical courts. Which is the methodical reform background of pope Francis?&#x0D; ABSTRACT: The accentuated tendency of the part of the Vatican (MP Mitis judex) to express a preference for the pastoral attributions of the diocesan bishop in terms of judgment of nullity of canonical marriage, in competition with those of the interdiocesan ecclesiastical tribunals created for the implementation of the concordat regime in Italy (MP Qua cura), could propose in this matter, after the Gospodinoff case (Constitutional Court, dec. N. 1/77) and the Pellegrini case (European Court of Human Rights, sentence 20 July 2001), the risk of a further vulnus to the principles of due process, on the other hand recently renforced in the Italian constitutional order. In dwelling on this inconvenience, the Author observes that the Catholic Church expresses with this, once again, its serious cultural and political delay in relation to the modern systems with which interacts ; and wonders why the Holy See has not decided by now to abandon the institutes and doctrines of ecclesiastical public law with which, starting from the 16th-17th centuries, with intransigence worthy of the better cause is has too often continued to feed the claim to keep on regulate relations with the political authorities on the models , now obsolete and perishable, of the Christian regime. The Author takes the opportunity to indicate how, conversely, the model of the interdiocesan tribunals, even if imperfect, can and should be generalized, in order to begin to solve the set of problems that the lack of modernization of the canonical system proposes, on the subject of the judicial system, in comparison with the level of refinement reached by legislative policy and the science of law (at the state and interstate level), in terms of protection of human rights, in the field of administrative and criminal procedural law.

Difficult Unions: Marital Cases Before the Consistorial Court of Poznań at the Beginning of the Fifteenth Century

The utilization of consistorial sources is a research postulate that has been voiced repeatedly over the years. These materials comprise a compact volume of data that are both organized serially and mass-produced, while the fact that they touch upon a wealth of topics and thus have considerable cognitive value for interdisciplinary studies cannot be overestimated. Magdalena Biniaś-Szkopek’s book is a pioneering study and, at the same time, a successful attempt at making comprehensive use of the nine oldest registers of the consistorial court of Poznań. The ledgers cover the years 1404–26 and contain entries devoted to ‘marital issues’ in the broadest meaning of the term, with particular consideration being given to the complex position of women who took part in proceedings before mediaeval ecclesiastical courts.

Is Morality above the Law? The Ecclesiastical Court and Nicholas I in the Cases of the Clergy’s Participation in Peasant Uprisings of 1826

Is Morality above the Law? The Ecclesiastical Court and Nicholas I in the Cases of the Clergy’s Participation in Peasant Uprisings of 1826

On Questions about Branches in Church Law and About the Relationship between Confession and the Ecclesiastical Court. A Response to the Articles of Hieromonk Tikhon (Vorobiev) and T. A. Dolgopolova (&lt;i&gt;Christian Reading &lt;/i&gt;No. 3 for 2022)

On Questions about Branches in Church Law and About the Relationship between Confession and the Ecclesiastical Court. A Response to the Articles of Hieromonk Tikhon (Vorobiev) and T. A. Dolgopolova (&lt;i&gt;Christian Reading &lt;/i&gt;No. 3 for 2022)

СТАНОВЛЕННЯ ВІТЧИЗНЯНОГО СУДОУСТРОЮ ТА СУДОЧИНСТВА: ДОБА УКРАЇНИ-РУСИ (ІХ–ХІV ст.)

The article acquaints the readership with the peculiarities of the formation of institutions of the judicial system and the judiciary in the 9th‑14th centuries, when, according to the apt expression of Professor M.Hrushevskyi, a state called Ukraine-Rus was established on the territory of modern Ukraine. The need for its appearance lies in the need to reform judicial institutions, in accordance with the criteria established by the member states of the European Union in order to fulfill the conditions for Ukraine to acquire the full status of a candidate for the European Union. Turning to the historical heritage left by our ancestors shows that the judicial system of Ukraine was formed on national authentic soil, has deep historical roots and it is necessary to reform it first of all in the direction of real assurance of the justice of decisions from the influence of factors of an administrative, corrupt and other illegal nature. The authors of the publication claim that due to the stratified structure of Russian society, there was no single court for all strata of the population in Ukraine-Rus. Secular – public and private courts and ecclesiastical courts with the corresponding category of cases, which were subject to the jurisdiction of the corresponding (secular or ecclesiastical) judiciary, were competent to administer justice within the state-­country. The princely, secular and community courts were public. Private – patrimonial or domain. The basic principles of their activity are established. It is noted that the court proceedings had an accusatory and adversarial nature, but the elements of the detective (investigative) process in criminal cases were separately applied when it was necessary to conduct an investigation on hot leads. The investigative investigative process took place in three stages, each of which is described in detail in the publication. The conclusions emphasize that the doctrine of judicial power was not directly related to princely or church government, but to the implementation of the idea of law as an instrument of a peaceful environment. In addition, it was based on the idea that the guarantor of justice is not only the princely court, but also vervny and secular courts based on customary law. Arbitration proceedings, which had a private-public nature, became widespread. The main purpose of the arbitration court was not to strictly observe the letter of the normative legal act, but to stop enmity and discord by achieving reconciliation between the parties to the conflict. The principles of glasnost, openness, competition of parties, formal equality of all participants in the process before the law, accessibility of the court, initiated by arbitration proceedings on the territory of Russia, have not lost their relevance even in the 21st century. In the doctrine of the modern judiciary in Ukraine, these principles are a marker of the level of democracy in Ukrainian society.

Des Dichters Abschied von der Welt. Das Conversio-Gedicht Ego quondam filius mundi specialis und der Archipoeta

In the last decades of the 12th century, an educated secular cleric retired from a successful career in the service of some high-ranking prelate to enter an unnamed monastic order. His decision and motives he made known in a Latin poem addressed to his friends. Though his career reflects the reality of life of many intellectuals in the High Middle Ages, the poem’s depth of content and thought as well as its virtuosity of language and form are astonishing. The poem Ego quondam filius mundi specialis (Chevalier 36996; WIC 5269), written in 42 Goliardic stanzas, is the subject of the present essay. An examination of the manuscript tradition, educational background, literary allusions and versification makes it clear that the unknown author ranks with the great modern poets of his time, such as Petrus Abaelardus, Hugh Primas, Alanus de Insulis, Petrus Riga, Peter of Blois, Walter of Châtillon and the Archpoet. Presumably of German extraction, he studied in France, where he became acquainted with the Latin songs from the circle of Petrus Abaelardus (Carmina Florentina) and the poems of Hugh Primas. While serving at some German-speaking ecclesiastical court in the Alpine countries, he probably came into contact with the circle of collectors and poets, from whose initial collections the Carmina Burana ultimately emerged. In addition to a number of allusions and parallels, it is the versification that gives a clear indication of the poet’s identity, who, most likely, is no other than the Archpoet, the brilliant poet at the court of Rainald von Dassel, whose biography and real name have so far eluded all investigations. These results confirm an assumption, which had already been made by Wilhelm Wackernagel in 1845, but fell into oblivion soon after. The essay is followed by editions of the poem Ego quondam filius mundi specialis (according to the three manuscripts: St. Gallen, Kantonsbibliothek Vadiana, Vadianische Sammlung, Ms. 455; Vorau, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 401; Zürich, Zentralbibliothek, Ms. C 58) and the Christmas poem Dum sub mundi uespere dies inclinatus (Chevalier 36900; WIC 4964; Linz, Studienbibliothek, Handschrift 33 [olim Cc.II.15]; Vorau, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 401; Zürich, Zentralbibliothek, Ms. C 58), which are transmitted together in the Vorau and Zurich codices. Whether both poems are the work of the same author is questionable. The identity of an Egidius Magnus, who is credited with the excerpts in St. Gall Ms. 455, remains in the dark.

On the Question of the Possibility of Applying the Adversarial Principle in the Practice of the Modern Ecclesiastical Court of the Russian Orthodox Church

On the Question of the Possibility of Applying the Adversarial Principle in the Practice of the Modern Ecclesiastical Court of the Russian Orthodox Church

Pavojingi ryšiai? Nesusituokusių vyrų ir moterų santykiai Lietuvos katalikiškuose bažnytiniuose teismuose XVIII a.

DANGEROUS LIAISONS? INFORMAL RELATIONS BETWEEN UNMARRIED PERSONS AND THEIR TREATMENT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY LITHUANIAN CATHOLIC ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS Recent decades saw historical scholarship to pay more attention to the phenomena which were earlier considered unimportant or, in some cases, non-existent. Intimate relations between men and women who were not yet married, extramarital affairs, cohabitation, etc. were rediscovered and reassessed as indispensable to the more accurate understanding of the formation of marriages, families and communities. Theoretically, physical and emotional intimacy could only take place in marriage, and as such all relationships that were extraneous to marital status were prosecuted by legal authorities – civil and ecclesiastical alike. This paper seeks to present how one group of these institutions – Lithuanian ecclesiastical courts – treated informal relations between unmarried laymen and women and what kind of penalties they imposed for such delinquencies. At the first glance it seems that neither canon law, nor the law of the Lithuanian Statutes or the Magdeburg law paid much attention to this kind of illicit sexual practices. The legal norms describe them rather vaguely and, as a result, the prescribed punishments seem to be unclear (except for the Third Lithuanian Statute, which, depending on the interpretation of the text, prescribed capital punishment for unmarried women). Analysis of the court material from three consistories (Vilnius, Samogitia and Trakai) has shown that Lithuanian Catholic consistories might not have been very concerned with such cases as there is only a handful of them mentioned and even less addressed. They seem to have been more common among the Catholic population of Samogitia, and men were likely to be condemned more often than women. The penalties for such crimes were mild – the delinquents mainly had to do public penance, pay fines, and observe fasting. The reasons behind such a low number of cases and even lower number of decisions are not clear, yet. It is possible, that while being mainly concerned with the marital litigation ecclesiastical courts left more initiative to the secular authorities, which could also act in the name of good Christian order and provide harsher punishments if necessary. Since most of the plaintiffs were parish clergymen, who generally initiated judicial processes against fornicators, it is plausible that they could take care of such delinquents themselves, without the help of the court. One must not forget that the Church had even more measures at its discretion – for example, missionary activities of the religious orders, during which the missionaries also attended to the illegal sexual practices of the population, and intervened with them. Keywords: the eighteenth century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, informal relations, fornication, ecclesiastical courts, consistories, canon law, the Lithuanian Statutes, the Saxon-Magdeburg law, gender relations.