Posts Tagged ‘Canon Law’

Remarriage and Ass-F**king: Shifty Byzantine Views of Sex

Remarriage and Ass-F**king: Shifty Byzantine Views of Sex

By Stephen Morris

The Wicked Heart: Studies in the Phenomena of Evil, edited by Sorcha Ni Fhlainn and William Andrew Myers (2006)

Abstract: Patristic canon law condemned remarriage, under any circumstances, in no uncertain terms. Penance for remarriage demanded repudiating the wicked sexual relationship and decades of excommunication. Penances for remarriage were gradually reduced and two Byzantine political/theological crisis in the 8th and 10th centuries allowed these condemned sexual relationships to be eventually tolerated and even accepted.

Same-sex behaviour was condemned as satanic and diabolic by many of these same patristic authorities, often in the same breath and with the same words as they condemned remarriage. Penances assigned were virtually identical. During the 6th century, however, these penances for sex between men (especially “anal sex”) were reduced to little more than a slap on the wrist. These reduced penances suggest that just as remarriage was eventually able to be accepted into polite Byzantine Christian society, same-sex relationships might also come to be accepted in Byzantine/Eastern Christian society.

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17 Jun 2009
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Pope, Bishops and Canon Law: A Study of Gregory VII’s Relationship with the Episcopate and the Consequences for Canon Law

Pope, Bishops and Canon Law: A Study of Gregory VII’s Relationship with the Episcopate and the Consequences for Canon Law

By Alison Sarah Welsby

Leeds History First, Vol.2 (2005)

Introduction: The eleventh-century reform movement was a massive phenomena and the pontificate of Gregory VII alone, constitutes an enormous historical topic. Scholarship has tended to focus on the conflict between regnum and sacerdotium and consequently Gregory VII is best known for his dispute with Henry IV and his attacks on the secular influences in the Church. Gregory is remembered for events such as Canossa and his two excommunications of King Henry. Unfortunately focus here has often been at the expense of studying Gregory’s actions and impact within the Church. As Tellenbach has pointed out, only because Gregory managed to strengthen his hold over the spiritual hierarchy was he able to assert its supremacy over the secular.

Gregory devoted great amounts of time and energy to amending the governmental structure of the Church. His battle cry was centralisation and papal power. For this study we have focused on Gregory’s relationship with the episcopate, examining his efforts to bring all bishops under the direct control and supervision of the apostolic see. We have tried to understand how the canonical tradition was employed to serve this end and how it reflected the changes that were brought about.

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18 May 2009
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Readers, Texts and Compilers in the Earlier Middle Ages

Readers, Texts and Compilers in the Earlier Middle Ages: Studies in Medieval Canon Law in Honour of Linda Fowler-Magerl

Edited by Martin Brett and Kathleen G. Cushing
Ashgate Publishing, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7546-6235-8

Reflecting the focus but also range of their honorand’s work in medieval canon law in the era before Gratian, the essays in this volume explore the creation and transmission of canonical texts and the motives of their compilers but also address the issues of how the law was interpreted and used by diverse audiences in the earlier middle ages, with especial focus on the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. These issues have lain at the heart of Linda Fowler-Magerl’s distinguished body of scholarly work on judicial ordines and procedural literature, on the transmission of canonical texts and their formal sources before Gratian, and perhaps most especially her pioneering role in the creation of a database of canon law manuscripts before Gratian now published as Clavis canonum. Linda Fowler-Magerl’s work has fundamentally transformed our understanding of canonistic activity in the era before Gratian and its reception across the Church throughout Europe.

Individually the scholars whose studies are included in this volume offer new viewpoints on several key issues and questions relating to the creation of canonical texts, the concerns of their compilers and the transmission of their work, as well as the use of such texts by readers with the most various interests in the period. As a whole, the volume contributes to an understanding of the increasing importance of the written law for a far wider circle than Roman reformers and local advocates. These issues are especially highlighted by the editors’ introduction.

Contents

The Notitia Galliarum: an unusual Bavarian version, by Roger E. Reynolds

Useful guilt: canonists and penance on the Carolingian frontier, by Abigail Firey

Authority and the canons in Burchard’s Dectreum and Ivo’ s Decretum, by Greta Austin

The Collection in 74 Titles: a monastic canon law a collection from 11th-century France, by Christof Rolker

‘Intermediate’ and minor collections: the case of the Collectio Canonum Barberiniana, by Kathleen G. Cushing

Poitevin manuscripts, the abbey of Saint-Ruf and ecclesiastical reform in the 11th century, by Uta-Renate Blumenthal

Another re-examination of the council of Pisa, 1135, by Robert Somerville

Marital consent in Gratian’s Decretum, by Anders Winroth

Crimina que episcopis inpingere dicis: the contribution of the Collectio Polycarpus to an early Ordo Iudiciorum, by Bruce C. Brasington

Margin and afterthought: the Clavis in action, by Martin Brett

The origins of legal science in England in the 12th century: Lincoln, Oxford and the career of Vacarius, by Peter Landau

My learned friend: professional etiquette in medieval courtrooms, by James Brundage

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14 Dec 2008
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The Study of Canon Law and the Eclipse of the Lincoln Schools, 1175–1225

The Study of Canon Law and the Eclipse of the Lincoln Schools, 1175–1225

By Frans Van Liere

History of Universities, edited by Mordechai Feingold (Oxford University Press, 2003)

Synopsis: Lincoln was a respectable centre for the study of grammer, canon law, and theology in the period 1175 – 1225, but some fifty years later, it was Cambridge that developed into England’s second university. Why did the cathedral school of Lincoln, by all accounts a flourishing institution of higher learning by the end of the twelfth century, never develiop into a studium generale that could confer a licentria docendi, on par with institutions like Oxford and Cambridge? 

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21 Nov 2008
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