Folia Theologica et Canonica 10. 32/24 (2021)
Ius canonicum
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION OF MEDIEVAL HOLY SEES 141 et emendationem diffitebatur et asseruit, se non nascere sigilla eidem litere appensa (...) reus vero adprobandam veritatem dicte litere quasdam literas super contractibus inter actores et quasdam alias personas factis coram nobis produxit cum sigillis consimilibus signatis (...) ipsi vero actores iurati deposuerunt, se non fuisse nec esse conscios litere prelibate ac dicta sigilla fore [= esse] furtiva vel adulterina. Tandem a partibus in causa conclusum exstitit hinc inde (...) quia invenimus, reum dictum sacrilegium commississe ex confessione eius ut est dictum, de iurisperitorum cons ilio procuratore actorum predictorum in nostra presentia constituto et sententiam diffinitivam pro dominis suis ferri diligenter postulante, dicta exceptione non obstante eundem reum condempnamus ad penam condignam sacrilegii predicti quam nostro arbitrio in posterum reservamus, condempnantes reum eisdem actoribus in expensis litis, ipsorum taxatione et declaratione nobis in posterum reservata, per nostram diffinitivam sententiam [etc.]” (102, 2). The interesting thing about the above case is that although it is apparently a criminal lawsuit, the court has treated the case as a private fact. This is linked to the claim of the plaintiff, who claimed nine times the amount of damages. This theorem is unknown both in Augsburg city law and in Saxon and Swabian mirrors (these all provide the death penalty for the thief), nor does it comply with the provisions of canon law. However, it corresponds exactly to the former pagan people’s rights (leges barbarorum), where we find this amount in the system of compositio. In the legal geographically closest wellspring, the Bavarian Law Book (lex Baiuvariorum) we read: “If a free man steals anything, redeem it with ninefold money, that is, give nine instead of one.”6 From here, it also becomes clear why the court treated the case more as private law content: the contemporary counterpart of the former compositio, the emenda, remedied the crime committed by property, ignoring the brutal toolbox of criminal law in the strict sense. This is an instructive historical paradox: the Christian ecclesiastical court applied the late pagan solution mutatis mutandis because the educated and humane clerical judges saw it as a more appropriate solution than in the papal decrees or secular laws in force. 2. Eichstätt After the extinction of the last Vogt family in Eichstätt, the Hirschberger counts (1305), the so-called high judgment passed to the Prince of Bavaria. However, the bishops of Eichstätt did their best to embrace this form of legislation more and more widely. At the beginning of the 14th century, this juris6 Original text: “Si quis liber aliquid furaverit qualecunque re, niungeldo conponat, hoc est nove capita restituat.”; cf. Nótári, T., The Early Medieval Bavarian Legal System in the Mirror of the lex Baiuvariorum, Szeged 2014. 356.
