Canon law is a set of ordinances and regulations made by ecclesiastical authority for the government of a Christian organization or church and its members. It is the internal ecclesiastical law, or operational policy, governing the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, and the individual national churches within the Anglican Communion. The way that such church law is legislated, interpreted and at times adjudicated varies widely among these four bodies of churches. In all three traditions, a canon was originally a rule adopted by a church council; these canons formed the foundation of canon law.
Excommunication is an institutional act of religious censure used to deprive, suspend, or limit membership in a religious community or to restrict certain rights within it, in particular those of being in communion with other members of the congregation, and of receiving the sacraments.
The Inquisition was a judicial procedure and a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, apostasy, blasphemy, witchcraft, and customs considered deviant. Violence, torture, or the simple threat of its application, were used by the Inquisition to extract confessions and denunciations from heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, but convictions of unrepentant heresy were handed over to the secular courts, which generally resulted in execution or life imprisonment. The Inquisition had its start in the 12th-century Kingdom of France, with the aim of combating religious deviation, particularly among the Cathars and the Waldensians. The inquisitorial courts from this time until the mid-15th century are together known as the Medieval Inquisition. Other groups investigated during the Medieval Inquisition, which primarily took place in France and Italy, include the Spiritual Franciscans, the Hussites, and the Beguines. Beginning in the 1250s, inquisitors were generally chosen from members of the Dominican Order, replacing the earlier practice of using local clergy as judges.
The Medieval Inquisition was a series of Inquisitions from around 1184, including the Episcopal Inquisition (1184–1230s) and later the Papal Inquisition (1230s). The Medieval Inquisition was established in response to movements considered apostate or heretical to Roman Catholicism, in particular Catharism and Waldensians in Southern France and Northern Italy. These were the first movements of many inquisitions that would follow.
The word anathema has two main meanings. One is to describe that something or someone is being hated or avoided. The other refers to a formal excommunication by a church. These meanings come from the New Testament, where an Anathema was a person or thing cursed or condemned by God. In the Old Testament, an Anathema was something or someone dedicated to God as a sacrifice, or cursed and separated from God because of sin. These represent two types of settings, one for devotion, the other for destruction.
An ecclesiastical court, also called court Christian or court spiritual, is any of certain courts having jurisdiction mainly in spiritual or religious matters. In the Middle Ages, these courts had much wider powers in many areas of Europe than before the development of nation states. They were experts in interpreting canon law, a basis of which was the Corpus Juris Civilis of Justinian, which is considered the source of the civil law legal tradition.
In the canon law of the Catholic Church, a distinction is made between the internal forum, where an act of governance is made without publicity, and the external forum, where the act is public and verifiable. In canon law, internal forum, the realm of conscience, is contrasted with the external or outward forum; thus, a marriage might be null and void in the internal forum, but binding outwardly, i.e., in the external forum, for want of judicial proof to the contrary.
The Constitutions of Clarendon were a set of legislative procedures passed by Henry II of England in 1164. The Constitutions were composed of 16 articles and represent an attempt to restrict ecclesiastical privileges and curb the power of the Church courts and the extent of papal authority in England. In the anarchic conditions of Henry II's predecessor, Stephen, the church had extended its jurisdiction by taking advantage of the weakness of royal authority. The Constitutions were claimed to restore the law as it was observed during the reign of Henry I (1100–1135).
De heretico comburendo or the Suppression of Heresy Act 1400 was a law passed by Parliament under King Henry IV of England in 1401 for the suppression of the Lollards. It punished seditious heretics with burning at the stake. This law was one of the strictest religious censorship statutes ever enacted in England, affecting preaching and possession of Lollard literature.
Ecclesiastical jurisdiction is jurisdiction by church leaders over other church leaders and over the laity.
Latae sententiae and ferendae sententiae are ways sentences are imposed in the Catholic Church in its canon law.
Heresy in Christianity denotes the formal denial or doubt of a core doctrine of the Christian faith as defined by one or more of the Christian churches.
Ecclesiastical prisons were penal institutions maintained by the Catholic Church. At various times, they were used for the incarceration both of clergy accused of various crimes, and of laity accused of specifically ecclesiastical crimes; prisoners were sometimes held in custody while awaiting trial, sometimes as part of an imposed sentence. The use of ecclesiastical prisons began as early as the third or fourth century AD, and remained common through the early modern era.
Ad abolendam was a decretal and bull of Pope Lucius III, written at Verona and issued 4 November 1184. It was issued after the Council of Verona settled some jurisdictional differences between the Papacy and Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor. The document prescribes measures to uproot heresy and sparked the efforts which culminated in the Albigensian Crusade and the Inquisitions. Its chief aim was the complete abolition of Christian heresy.
Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, particularly the accepted beliefs or religious law of a religious organization. A heretic is a proponent of heresy.
The ex officio oath developed in the first half of the 17th century, and was used as a form of coercion, persecution, and forcible self-incrimination in the religious trials of that era. It took the form of a religious oath made by the accused prior to questioning by the Star Chamber, to answer truthfully all questions that might be asked. It gave rise to what became known as the cruel trilemma where the accused would find themselves trapped between a breach of religious oath, contempt of court for silence, or self-incrimination. The name derives from the questioner putting the accused on oath ex officio, meaning by virtue of his office or position.
In the canon law of the Catholic Church, excommunication is a form of censure. In the formal sense of the term, excommunication includes being barred not only from the sacraments but also from the fellowship of Christian baptism. The principal and severest censure, excommunication presupposes guilt; and being the most serious penalty that the Catholic Church can inflict, it supposes a grave offense. The excommunicated person is considered by Catholic ecclesiastical authority as an exile from the Church, for a time at least.
A censure, in the canon law of the Catholic Church, is a medicinal and spiritual punishment imposed by the Church on a baptized, delinquent, and contumacious individual. This punishment deprives the person, either wholly or partially, of certain spiritual goods until they resolve their contumacy. These spiritual goods may include access to the sacraments, participation in specific liturgical activities, and involvement in ecclesiastical functions.
The Venetian Inquisition, formally the Holy Office, was the tribunal established jointly by the Venetian government and the Catholic Church to repress heresy throughout the Republic of Venice. The inquisition also intervened in cases of sacrilege, apostasy, prohibited books, superstition, and witchcraft. It was established in the 16th-century and was abolished in 1797.
