James A. Brundage

Medieval Canon Law

Law in the early Christian Church canon law in the early Middle Ages Gratian and the schools of law in the classical period, 1140-1375 canon law and private life canon law and public life canonical courts and procedure canonical jurisprudence canon law and western societies. Appendices: major canonists of the classical period.

Authority and power : studies on medieval law and government presented to Walter Ullmann on his seventieth birthday

Foreword List of abbreviations 1. The alleged territoriality of Visigothic law P. D. King 2. Some Carolingian law-books and their function Rosamond McKitterick 3. The earliest surviving royal Ordo: some liturgical and historical aspects Janet L. Nelson 4. The Epistola Widonis, ecclesiastical reform and canonistic enterprise 1049-1141 John Gilchrist 5. Ralph de Diceto, Henry II and Beckett (with an appendix on decretal letters) Charles Duggan and Anne Duggan 6. Fides et culpa: the use of Roman law in ecclesiastical ideology E. F. Vodola 7. Hostiensis on Per venerabilem: the role of the College of Cardinals J. A. Watt 8. Centre and locality: aspects of papal administration in England in the later thirteenth century Jane Sayers 9. The Spanish Church revisited: the episcopal gravamina of 1279 Peter Linehan 10. Ockham and the birth of individual rights Arthur Stephen McGrade 11. Public expediency and natural law: a fourteenth-century discussion on the origins of government and property Brian Tierney 12. The Kings Hall, Cambridge and English medieval collegiate history Alan B. Cobban 13. A fourteenth-century contribution to the theory of citizenship: political man and the problem of created citizenship in the thought of Baldus de Ubaldis Joseph P. Canning 14. What was conciliarism? Conciliar theory in historical perspective A. J. Black 15. The problem of the cardinalate in the Great Schism R. N. Swanson 16. Paulus Vladimiris attack on the just war: a case study in legal polemics Frederick H. Russell Bibliography of the writings of Walter Ullmann Peter Linehan.

Intermarriage between Christians and Jews in medieval canon law

Restrictions on contact between Christians and Jews appeared early in Christian history and remained a prominent feature of ecclesiastical law throughout the Middle Ages. Many of the Churchs members during the earliest generations of the Christian era were converts from Judaism, and Church authorities sought to assure that when Jews became Christians they severed their former ties and discontinued the religious practices they had observed prior to baptism. From a very early period the Church was particularly anxious about the dangers that marriage ties might pose when one partner converted to Christianity while the other did not.1 As the numbers of non-Jewish converts grew during the second and third centuries, canon law also attempted to insulate gentile Christians from exposure to Jewish beliefs and practices.

Let me count the ways: canonists and theologians contemplate coital positions

The fascinated horror that characterized treatments of sexual problems by medieval Churchmen is particularly evident in their attempts to provide guidance for Christians concerning the intimate details of marital relations. Christian moralists, canonists, and theologians from the patristic period onward commonly maintained that only one posture was appropriate and natural for human sexual intercourse. This article examines the efforts of successive generations of Christian teachers to account for this belief and to discourage variations from the prescribed coital position. The article concludes with a brief discussion of some survivals of medieval sex law in modern U.S. statutes and decisions.

Concubinage and marriage in medieval canon law

The medieval canon law adopted an ambivaient attitude toward concubinage among the laity. While the canonists disapproved of concubinage on moral grounds, they sought to assimilate the status of the concubine to that of the married woman and thus to legitimize concubinous relationships. In this process of assimilation the canonists made use of the institution of clandestine marriage, which created problems of its own. The crucial difficulty lay in constructing a satisfactory system of proof, so that it would be clear whether or not a given couple should be treated as married, or whether they should be considered legally as unmarried. The Council of Trent abolished lay concubinage and clandestine marriage, but thereby created a system of marriage law flawed with defects almost as serious as those experienced under the medieval law.

Enclosure of nuns: the decretal Periculoso and its commentators

Boniface VIIIs decretal, Periculoso (1298) prescribed new and more rigorous standards for the enclosure of religious women than the Western church had previously demanded. Earlier claustration regulations had sought to shelter religious women behind walls in order to provide them with a safe haven from the violence of the outside world. Periculoso, on the other hand, was concerned above all with isolating nuns from opportunities for sexual transgressions in order to protect their fragile virtue from overwhelming temptations to sin. Canonistic writers overwhelmingly favored a strict interpretation of this decretal. Their observations on the text reflected current fears that women were inherently passionate and lusted after sexual fulfillment even more ardently than men. Canonistic comments of Periculoso illustrate changes in gender stereotypes that were becoming current in the fourteenth century. Writers on Periculoso also reflected upon the circumstances under which the pope may empower princes and other...

Sumptuary laws and prostitution in late medieval Italy

Abstract Although ancient Roman lawmakers had often adopted statutes designed to curb conspicuous displays of wealth, sumptuary legislation was uncommon in medieval Europe prior to 1300. Then statutes imposing limits on ostentation and extravagance, particularly in womens clothing, suddenly appeared in large numbers. This article analyzes the principal themes of this legislation, concentrating particularly on the sumptuary statutes of fifteen northern Italian towns. The author concludes that the reappearance of legislative concern with dress and related matters reflected the new prosperity of the period, as well as new social developments, including a constriction of the marriage market for young women, apprehensions about social cohesion among successful merchants and tradesmen, and a desire to channel resources into more productive kinds of investment. In addition, he argues, sumptuary statutes mirrored new fashions in jurisprudence during the post-Bartolist period and a desire to employ legislation to affirm the moral aspirations, although not necessarily the actual practices, of communities.*

‘Cruce Signari’: The Rite for Taking the Cross in England *

A Crusader, both etymologically and historically, was a person who had ‘taken the Cross.’ The symbolic act of taking the Cross was practiced routinely from 1095 onward by all those who had made a vow to participate in the expeditions to the Holy Land and elsewhere which were proclaimed, sanctioned, and indulgenced by the papacy. In the eyes of the canonists, when they came to analyse the institutions of the Crusade, the formal taking of the Cross was viewed as a ceremony which solemnized the vow by which the Crusader bound himself, both morally and legally, to serve in the ranks of the Crusade.

The Medieval Advocate's Profession

Medieval poets heaped scorn and derision on the advocate. He fared little better at the hands of theologians, who often dismissed members of the legal profession as moral lepers, comparable to usurers and adulterers. Yet medieval advocates were often wealthy, learned, and powerful, attributes that normally attract admiration rather than scorn. How and why did legal practitioners acquire their unsavory image?l The advocate was, by definition, a professional lawyer. Is it possible that the advocates gamey reputation was somehow linked to the professionalization of his vocation? This question, in turn, raises the problem of what we mean by a profession and what constitutes professionalization. A profession is usually an occupation that enjoys high social esteem, and whose practitioners, therefore, command high social status. Professional prestige, in turn, is predicated upon the belief (often fostered by the professionals themselves) that their occupation benefits society as a whole. The professional persons prestige is further enhanced by his or her presumed mastery of a body of esoteric knowledge, unknown and unavailable to nonprofessionals. The technical competence of the professional person implies superiority over those who do not share that knowledge. It also permits the professional to exercise authority over other people, even over social and political superiors. The exercise of authority is justified by an implied threat that those who fail to follow

An errant crusader : Stephen of Blois

The history of the First Crusade is, in large part, the history of mass movements of men. The deeds of any individual in the Crusade, even those of the major leaders, cannot be traced in their entirety. The part played by any individual in the Crusade can only be sketched in outline and even then, puzzling gaps in the record can be expected to show up as a matter of course. Since this is true of the tangible, external actions of the Crusading leaders, it is no great surprise to find the same thing true of their thoughts, attitudes, and plans. It is true enough, again, in this context that something can be done to characterize the attitudes of the masses of the Crusaders, as these attitudes are reflected by chroniclers, poets, and popular writers of various kinds. But to try to recover the personal thoughts and attitudes of one or another of the major leaders of the Crusade is a far more difficult problem. On a few topics, where attitudes may easily and unequivocally be reflected by external acts, it is possible to make a fairly sure estimate of the thoughts and beliefs of one or another of the Crusading princes. When one speculates on such subjects, the only conclusion which can be reached is that these questions are unanswerable or that answers to them can be deduced only with great hesitation and circumspection from data which do not bear directly upon the central question at all.