Folia Theologica et Canonica 2. 24/16 (2013)
RECENSIONS
RECENSIONS 281 and the Church in proper sense has not begun by the modem secularized age, but we could find this principle already in the early time of the Church, particularly based on the Western normative canonical concept. Prof. Szuromi points on one of the most important examples in this book concerning the clear concept of separation, which is the theoretical activity of Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-604) who argued in many of his letters - using the Roman law references - against the influence of the civil authority into the merely internal canonical regulations. Obviously, there are many overlaps between the two systems during the history because the subjects of the systems are basically the same peoples who are members of both (civil and ecclesiastical) societies; however the goal of the two legislations is not the same. The concept of the origin of legislative power and the common Roman law heritage made conflict in many times between the two authorities, and the independent status of them was fragile too. This situation had been changed radically through the establishment of the secularized state, and by the introduction of the different constitutional models for separation between Church and state. This is that theoretical basis which gives reason for the two authors to summarize the contemporary - current - relation the two law systems, but not by the traditional way. Prof. Szabolcs Anzelm Szuromi is the President of the Pázmány Péter Catholic University and he is in the same time the President of the Canon Law Institute “ad instar facultatis” of the same university. Rita Ferenczy is a Hungarian and European private law expert who is finishing now her fundamental PhD dissertation on the Hungarian and European Union labor law with particular attention to the ecclesiastical employees and their rights and obligations. Both of the Authors have published several articles since 2002 about the Hungarian ecclesiastical law, nevertheless they did not used the general “constitutional” approach but the analysis based on the private law principles. They use this scientific-technique in this volume too. This special horizon makes unique their new book which is primary dedicated - within the European Union system - to those questions when the canonical norms of the Church and the Hungarian private law regulate the same subject, mainly by different ways. Many essential handbooks, monographs, collected volumes have been published in the last years about the European ecclesiastical law, including on the Eastem-European post-communist countries (e.g., Erdő, P. [ed.], Mission et culture, Budapest 2007. 93-113; NËmec, D., Concordat Agreements between the Holy See and the Post-Communist Countries [1990-2010]: Law and Religion Studies 8, Leuven-Paris-Walpole, MA 2012; Schanda, B., Állami egyházjog. Vallásszabadság és vallási közösségek a mai Magyar jogban [Ecclesiastical Law: Religious Freedom and Religious Communities in the Hungarian Contemporary Law], Budapest 2012; Rees, W. - Roca, M. - Schanda, B. [Hrsg.], Neure Entwicklungen im Religionsrecht europäischer Staaten, Berlin 2013; Schanda, B. (ed.), The mutucd roles of religions and
