Ecclesiastical Law

The beginnings of ecclesiastical law

Certain religious societies, congregations (ecclesiae) of non-conformists, have been developing law, internal law, with ominous rapidity. We have called it law, and law it was going to be, but as yet it was, if the phrase be tolerable, unlawful law, for these societies had an illegal, a criminal purpose. Spasmodically the imperial law was enforced against them; at other times the utmost that they could hope for from the state was that in the guise of “benefit and burial societies” they would obtain some protection for their communal property. But internally they were developing what was to be a system of constitutional and governmental law, which would endow the overseer (episcopus) of every congregation with manifold powers. Also they were developing a system of punitive law, for the offender might be excluded from all participation in religious rites, if not from worldly intercourse with the faithful.

Moreover, these various communities were becoming united by bonds that were too close to be federal. In particular, that one of them which had its seat in the capital city of the empire was winning a preeminence for itself and its overseer.9 Long indeed would it be before this overseer of a non-conformist congregation would, in the person of his successor, place his heel upon the neck of the prostrate Augustus by virtue of God-made law. This was not to be foreseen; but already a merely human jurisprudence was losing its interest. The intellectual force which some years earlier might have taken a side in the debate between Sabinians and Proculians now invented or refuted a christological heresy. Ulpian’s priesthood10 was not priestly enough.

Source: Sir Frederick Pollock, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I (1895)

The Legal History of Ecclesiastical Law in English Common Law

This section provides an overview of Ecclesiastical Law in English Common Law

The Legal History of Ecclesiastical Law in Roman Law

This section provides an overview of Ecclesiastical Law in Roman Law

Resources

See Also

• Legal Biography
• Legal Traditions
• Historical Laws
• History of Law

Further Reading

• Ecclesiastical Law in English Common Law in the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History (Oxford University Press)
• The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Political and Legal History (Oxford University Press)
• Ecclesiastical Law in English Common Law in the Dictionary of Concepts in History, by Harry Ritter
• A Short History of Western Legal Theory, by John Kelly