Canon Law and Royal Power: A Historical Analysis
- The emperor tried to establish a guardianship of the Church.
- Pope: Church sought to protect itself.
Pope Gregory VII established a set of policy proposals:
- The primacy of the Pope over the bishops.
- The autonomy of the Church and the clergy against temporal powers.
- Their subordination to the protection of Rome.
The autonomy of the Church and the clergy against temporal powers justified the waiver/privilege of the clergy in relation to the temporal forum and the claim of a “special forum” or “privileged forum” for the church. This led to the subjugation of temporal powers to ecclesiastical power, attributing to the Pope the power to depose/deprive kings of their position, and the subjects having a duty to obey.
This supremacy of canon law was challenged in the thirteenth century when theology began to insist on the idea that, in the temporal sphere, pursuits have their own purposes that have nothing to do with post-mortem salvation but rather with good earthly order.
Corrective intervention of canon law should be checked only when the temporal rule on crucial aspects doubted its supernatural character, the same way that the intervention of God (the miracle) was evident only when the operation of the order of nature committed salvation.
Civil lawyers and canon lawyers recognize that if there was a serious conflict between them, the last word would order ecclesiastical canon law to only appear as a senior policy parameter in cases where the application of legal sources proves earthly sin.
The right of kings and the Church was a very powerful factor of uniformity of local rights.
Received Law and Traditional Law
General or local customs of various peoples of Europe contrasted with Roman law.
- Within the right people: the early medieval European law was characterized by the difference of the personal legal status, typical of a society of states:
- Individuals were divided into “states,” some linked to dignity (nobles vs. commoners), others to religion (clergy vs. laity), others to the professions (military, students, farmers, vile offices), and others to sex and age (men, women, elderly).
- Among individuals, bonds of dependence could be forged that limited the legal status of subordinates (lords, vassals, husband, wife).
Roman law, while it recognized the status of slavery and differentiated foreign citizens, was essentially equal with regard to the status of citizens, including the treatment of men and women.
- In the area of economic rights: European local rights are characterized by the strong restrictions on the availability of assets, especially land. This heritage was linked to a family and could not be transferred inter vivos without the consent of relatives, which happened at the time of his death. Succession rules of property that linked them to a particular line were often fixed by contract or by will. In these cases, the owner was a trustee for life of a set of goods that must maintain integrity for subsequent delivery to a default successor. However, one might well be profited by different people for a performance or provide other useful.