canon law
The formal rules and laws of the Christian church pri-
marily developed during the European MIDDLE AGES
and greatly influencing Western LAW, jurisprudence,
ETHICS, and political thought. Canon law is developed
in the CATHOLICChurch heavily from A.D. 1100 to 1500
and deals primarily with personal morals, church dis-
cipline, administration of holy sacraments, and the
respective powers of clergy and secular rulers.
Eastern Orthodox and Protestant Christian
churches, partly because they relied less on ancient
Roman legal codes, developed canon law less fully
than the Roman Catholic Church.
Canon law began with the codification of religious
doctrine and rules at representative church councils,
such as the councils at Nicaea (A.D. 325) and Chal-
cedon (A.D. 451), which also developed major church
creeds. Other sources of canon law were decreed from
bishops (especially the bishop of Rome, the pope),
influential theologians and other church leaders (e.g.,
St. Dionysius of Alexandria, St. Gregory, and St. Basil
of Caesarea). As the Catholic Church became more
centralized in authority and organization, these vari-
ous sources were collected, arranged, clarified, and
widely disseminated throughout the Western Christian
church in Gratian’s Decretum(A.D. 1140). Increased
power of the papacy in Rome led to a further collec-
tion of canon law in 1234 (The Book of Decretals),
which continues down to the present day through
papal decrees.
At first, canon law affected only clergy and other
religious institutions, but with the increased worldly
power of the Catholic Church, it came to dominate
much of civil law and government also. Corporate
law began as canon law, as corporations originally
meant towns, churches, monastic communities, “col-
leges” (craft GUILDS, schools, societies), and diocesan
organizations rather than businesses. The idea of a
corporate body was that the group or community had
RIGHTS, duties, PROPERTY, and possessions that did not
belong to any individual. Canon law, then, defined
the terms of the association, offices and responsibili-
ties of members, distribution of authority, and so on.
Most church bodies were ruled by the community,
electing leaders and making policy decisions collec-
tively. The modern political idea of common CONSENT
actually began in these church communities governed
by canon law.
So the greatest influence of canon law on MODERN
secular political thought was the example it gave of a
universal, systematic code of principles and proce-
dures—a rational, orderly, legalistic state.
During the Middle Ages, Catholic canon law also
prescribed relations between CHURCH AND STATE, clergy,
and secular rulers. Generally, it held church authority
superior to civil government, pope over king, and the
rights of clergy to separate courts and legal privileges.
As the Roman Catholic Church exercised more
detailed rule of civil government and social life (feast
days, fasting, religious rituals and habits, commerce,
etc.), it caused resistance in the form of ANTICLERICAL-
ISMand the Protestant REFORMATION, which strove to
limit the church primarily to spiritual matters.
Still, much of modern political theory derived from
church canon law. BODINacknowledged his debt to the
canonists’ ideas on SOVEREIGNTYand John LOCKE’s NATU-
RAL RIGHTS philosophy is beholden to St. Thomas
AQUINAS’s systematic theology.
Debates over the relative power of pope and bish-
ops, councils and local churches occur within canon
law development and the modern conception of parlia-
mentary constitutionalism derives from the conciliar
movement in the church, which sought to balance the
authority of the pope with that of bishops, councils,
and corporations.Further Readings
Berman, J. H. Law and Revolution: the Formation of the Western
Legal Tradition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1983.
Muldoon, James. Popes, Lawyers, and Infidels: The Church and
the Non-Christian World, 1250–1550.Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1979.
Tierney, B. Foundations of Conciliar Theory: The Contribu-
tion of the Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the Great
Schism.Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press,
1955.
———. Religion, Law and the Growth of Constitutional Thought
1150–1650.Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press,
1982.
Ullmann, W. Medieval Papalism: The Political Theories of the
Medieval Canonists.London: Methuen, 1949.
———. Law and Politics in the Middle Ages: Introduction to the
Sources of Medieval Political Ideas.Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1975.capital punishment
The issue of capital PUNISHMENTand advocates for its
abolition predate the modern era. Widely used in
ancient times, examples of capital punishment can be
found in 1750 B.C. in the Code of Hammurabi. From
the fall of Rome to the beginnings of the modern era,48 canon law