Canon Law

Examples of Canon Law in the following topics:

• Intellectual Life

  • Both secular law and canon law, or ecclesiastical law, were studied in the High Middle Ages.
  • Secular law, or Roman law, was advanced greatly by the discovery of the Corpus Juris Civilis in the 11th century, and by 1100 Roman law was being taught at Bologna.
  • Canon law was also studied, and around 1140 a monk named Gratian (12th century), a teacher at Bologna, wrote what became the standard text of canon law—the Decretum.

• The Justinian Code

  • There existed three codices of imperial laws and other individual laws, many of which conflicted or were out of date.
  • The Corpus forms the basis of Latin jurisprudence (including ecclesiastical Canon Law) and, for historians, provides a valuable insight into the concerns and activities of the later Roman Empire.
  • As a collection it gathers together the many sources in which the laws and the other rules were expressed or published: proper laws, senatorial consults, imperial decrees, case law, and jurists' opinions and interpretations.
  • This revived Roman law, in turn, became the foundation of law in all civil law jurisdictions.
  • The provisions of the Corpus Juris Civilis also influenced the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church: it was said that ecclesia vivit lege romana — the church lives by Roman law.

• The Western Schism

  • The suggestion that a church council should resolve the Schism, first made in 1378, was not adopted at first because canon law required that a pope call a council.
  • Eventually theologians like Pierre d'Ailly and Jean Gerson, as well as canon lawyers like Francesco Zabarella, adopted arguments that equity permitted the Church to act for its own welfare in defiance of the letter of the law.

• Trade and Commerce

  • Among the innovations of the period were new forms of partnership and the issuing of insurance, both of which contributed to reducing the risk of commercial ventures; the bill of exchange and other forms of credit that circumvented the canonical laws for gentiles against usury, and eliminated the dangers of carrying bullion; and new forms of accounting, in particular double-entry bookkeeping, which allowed for better oversight and accuracy.

• Justinian and Theodora

  • Prior to his reign, Roman laws had differed from region to region, and many contradicted one another.
  • Justinian set up a commission of lawyers to put together a single code, listing each law by subject so that it could be easily referenced.
  • This not only served as the basis for law in the Byzantine Empire, but it was the main influence on the Catholic Church's development of canon law and went on to become the basis of law in many European countries.
  • Justinian's law code continues to have a major influence on public international law to this day.
  • She had laws passed that prohibited forced prostitution and closed brothels.

• The Anglican Church

  • Many factors contributed to the process: the decline of feudalism and the rise of nationalism, the rise of the common law, the invention of the printing press and increased circulation of the Bible, the transmission of new knowledge and ideas among scholars, the upper and middle classes and readers in general.
  • According to Canon Law the Pope cannot annul a marriage on the basis of a canonical impediment previously dispensed.
  • The medieval heresy laws were restored and 283 Protestants were burnt at the stake for heresy.

• Astronomy

  • It contains the first two of his eponymous three laws of planetary motion (in 1619, the third law was published).
  • Isaac Newton developed further ties between physics and astronomy through his law of universal gravitation.
  • Newton's Principia (1687) formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation, which dominated scientists' view of the physical universe for the next three centuries.
  • This work also demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies could be described by the same principles.His laws of motion were to be the solid foundation of mechanics; his law of universal gravitation combined terrestrial and celestial mechanics into one great system that seemed to be able to describe the whole world in mathematical formulae.
  • Copernicus was a polyglot and polymath who obtained a doctorate in canon law and also practiced as a physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat, and economist.

• The Hundred Years' War

  • Edward enacted numerous laws strengthening the powers of his government, and he summoned the first officially sanctioned Parliaments of England.
  • Joan of Arc is considered a heroine of France for her role during the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years' War, and was canonized as a Roman Catholic saint.
  • Joan of Arc was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920.

• The Caste System

  • One of these four sacred canonical texts, the Rig-Veda, described the origins of the world and points to the gods for the origin of the caste system.
  • Although the Constitution of India, the supreme law document of the Republic of India, formally abolished the caste system in 1950, some people maintain prejudices against members of lower social classes.

• Peter's Domestic Reforms

  • Simultaneously, Peter remained faithful to the canons of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
  • As Catherine represented the interests of the "new men," commoners who had been brought to positions of great power by Peter based on competence, a successful coup was arranged by her supporters in order to prevent the old elites from controlling the laws of succession.
  • Catherine was the first woman to rule Imperial Russia (as Empress), opening the legal path for a century almost entirely dominated by women, including her daughter Elizabeth and granddaughter-in-law Catherine the Great, all of whom continued Peter the Great's policies in modernizing Russia.