374 impeachment and attainder
knowledge. He held a perfect knowledge given by GODof
all things. This knowledge was identical with that of
MUHAMMAD, but, unlike the Prophet, an imam did not
transmit any new divine revelation. There were 12
imams. The last, the Mahdi, was said to be hiding until
an apocalyptic moment in the future.
Shiite doctrine insisted that the imamate, or imamah,
must descend directly through the line of Ali. Rejecting
the Sunni doctrine of election, the Shia held instead that
the imam could only be designated by God through the
Prophet or another imam.
See alsoISMAILIS.
Further reading:Wilferd Madelung, “Imama,” Ency-
clopedia of Islam3.1163–1169.
impeachment and attainder The legal processes of
impeachment and attainder were used by the English
PARLIAMENTto further its political power, protect its
interests, and punish its enemies. They amounted to a
removal from office, punishment of the accused’s family,
and an attempt to recover damages allegedly done to the
Crown and state. They became important to the law, poli-
tics, and local and national disputes over land tenure in
ENGLANDin the 14th and 15th centuries. Acting out of its
origins as a court, Parliament used the obvious political
potentials of impeachment and attainder to protect and
assert its political status in the last two centuries of
medieval English history.
IMPEACHMENTOriginally impeachment was a means of trial in a pri-
vate dispute, in which the defendant was prosecuted
both by a community and by the Crown as a party to a
case involving the rights of the Crown. Proceedings
tended to be held in the courts of the royal chancery or
in a special council that could bypass the slow com-
mon-law courts altogether. Impeachment was used
effectively by the Good Parliament of 1367 to control
and censure the behavior of the king’s ministers. This
was the first example of what became the procedure of
parliamentary impeachment and indictment. The first
step in this process was taken by the finding of a meri-
torious case against an individual by the Commons as a
whole; then the circumstances of case and the accused
were passed on to the House of Lords for the rendering
of a judgment.
ATTAINDERAttainder developed in particular in the second half of the
15th century as a parliamentary way of ensuring, speed-
ing, and applying penalties according to the ancient com-
mon-law idea of outlawry and reducing delays in
enforcement and punishment. Not only did an outlawed
felon lose chattels or property to the Crown and lands to a
lord, but a blood line and succession could be considered
tainted and thus heirs were to be disinherited forever. Par-
liament and the royal courts imposed these penalties
swiftly without any or much of a chance for a defense by
the accused. In the dynastically obsessed late-15th cen-
tury, it was applied to some of the men who were among
the major players in English politics and were the greatest
landowners of the kingdom. During the Wars of the
Roses, even ordinary people tried to obtain and use parlia-
mentary attainder against their enemies.
Further reading:John G. Bellamy, The Law of Treason
in England in the Later Middle Ages(Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1970); George A. Holmes, The
Good Parliament (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1975).Incarnation See CHRISTOLOGY AND CHRISTOLOGICAL
CONTROVERSY.incest In the Middle Ages incest designated sexual
relations between a man and a woman linked by bonds
of some kind of kinship, who could not then ever marry.
These rules varied over the course of the Middle Ages. In
medieval canon law, it was frequently applied to a wide
circle of kinship, both spiritual and real. The incestuous
character of a union at times was alleged to have a mar-
riage pronounced null, that is, never to have taken place.
This was a convenient vehicle for dissolving unions since
divorce was not accepted by the church, the sole judge of
matrimonial disputes in the Middle Ages.CANON LAW
Roman law had suppressed incest in the penal code as a
public crime against natural law and punishable by exile
to an island. Such a union was not and could never be a
permissible union or a legitimate marriage. Jewish law
in the Old Testament enumerated the degrees of kinship
in detail that forbade sexual relations. Disapproval of
incest was included in the multitude of provisions
issued by COUNCILSin the early Middle Ages. Sexual
union was forbidden between relatives in a direct line
forever. In a collateral line it was applied to the sixth
degree or third cousin, according to Roman computation
of kinship. The violation of these prohibitions exposed a
person to EXCOMMUNICATIONand confiscation of prop-
erty. “Classical” canon law, from the 11th to the 13th
century, oscillated between the seventh degree according
to canonical computation and the fourth degree accord-
ing to canon 50 of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.
Canon law allowed people, by showing and invoking its
discernment, to end a marital union. To make a wide
prohibition of kinship known and respected, the calling
of bans or the naming of those intending MARRIAGE
became obligatory for all Christendom at the Fourth
Lateran Council. Nonetheless, their absence did not
entail the nullity of a marriage.