Folia Theologica et Canonica 10. 32/24 (2021)
Ius canonicum
146 ELEMER BALOGH to the municipal authorities and the cleric to the bishop’s prison, as decreed by a provincial synod (1281). In Salzburg, the archbishop himself almost always presided over the proceedings against persons accused of forging diplomas. The medieval church also supervised the moral conditions of society and people’s lives. Proceedings for crimes against morality were usually conducted in the archbishop’s chairs rather than before the ojficialatus. This included crimes against modesty such as stuprumu, adultery, bigamy, fornicatio, incest, etc., where the guilty were banned from the church as a first degree punishment. The parish priests had to warn the offenders concerned on the first Sunday of Lent, year after year, in the context of a monitio generalis. If the man in concubinage (concubinatus) did not marry the woman within a strict time limit and did not leave her, he was ipso facto excommunicated. Elemér Balogh University of Szeged baloghe@j uris. u-szeged. hu Abstract The ecclesiastical criminal justice was very widespread in the Middle Ages. These included, in particular, torts related to the violation of the Christian faith: ‘simonia sacrilege, bigamy, incest, etc. There were a good number of miscreants of mixed classification, such as usury, blasphemy, duel, fire - in such and similar cases, due to the nature of the act, a secular forum could be used. It should be noted that in the Middle Ages the jurisdiction ofsecular and ecclesiastical courts and churches differed only approximately and usually only on the basis of customary law. This is also an addition to the history of the principle of ‘nullum crimen sine lege ’, insofar as there was no exhaustive list in a modern sense of the individual acts, including the forum system, or which authority is entitled or obliged to act on a given occasion. In general, it can be said that at the height of the power of the medieval church, it formed a needfor a moral and criminal judgment of essentially all kinds of human conduct. The most controversial institution of ecclesiastical criminal law was a sanction, excommunication, because it had the widest impact on the socio-legal situation of those affected. The ‘interdictum ’was a less frequently used but more frightening punishment. In connection with this sanction, the aspect that has become more and more emphasized (and especially in the late Middle Ages) is that it is specifically an injustice, since the punishment also affects the masses of the innocent personally. 12 Two forms of stuprum are mentioned by Gratian: stuprum non violentum and stuprum violentum; cf. C. 36 q. 1 c 2; 16; C. 32 q. 5 cc. 3-7, 9.
