Religion: general interest

Summary

The potential of natural law arguments is often doubted. Yet, there are reasons for retaining it. 1) Recent legal theory reveals that natural law is reflected in the secular debates on the foundation of law (see human rights debate). 2) In the normative discourses between Jews, Christians and Muslims, natural law contributes to the development of an inclusivist view of salvation. In any case, modernising the concept of natural law within the church requires the historicity and culturality of each law to be uncovered. As universalistic normativities are also shaped by their historical and cultural context, natural law has to be reinterpreted as a natural normativity in history and culture. This particularly challenges global canon law, whose “universal” validity is often explained by its supercultural character. It has to be recognised as impregnated by the Roman curia’s legal culture. If the church understands the cultural plurality of the local churches to be ecclesiologically significant, it has to be protected from a hegemonic romanity. More subsidiary law-making could help to achieve this. The local legislators’ legislative power has to be broadened to include all matters which do not require homogeneous regulation as a consequence of the church’s demand for unity.

Summary

This chapter introduces the quantitative and qualitative studies of clergy, citizens, and legislators to be analyzed in subsequent chapters. In addition to several national-level surveys, the book incorporates a rich in-depth case study of religious politics in the city of Juiz de Fora, a medium-sized city in Brazil’s Southeast region. This city is broadly representative of the country in key religious and political trends. The Juiz de Fora studies include a neighborhood-based survey of the 2008 local election; a congregation-based study of the 2014 presidential campaign; and 2017 reinterviews of clergy interviewed in 2014. The book also incorporates survey experimental studies of both clergy and citizens.

Summary

This chapter examines the religious and political views and speech of clergy. First, Catholic, evangelical, and Pentecostal clergy differ in the policy issues they prioritize in preaching. Evangelical and Pentecostal religious leaders are much more likely than Catholics to emphasize conservative religious teachings such as God’s wrath, the need to avoid sin, the need for chastity, and the “sin of homosexuality.” By contrast, Catholic leaders talk more frequently than evangelicals and Pentecostals about left-leaning issues, including ministry to the poor, racism, and the environment. In experimental studies, when Catholic religious leaders are primed to think about the threat of losing members, they further deemphasize conservative teachings. However, clerics’ choice of what to talk about is also driven by their core religious beliefs and religious traditions. Second, Catholics also differ from Pentecostals and evangelicals in attitudes toward the political process—that is, toward how political decisions should be made. While democracy is universally held in high regard in the abstract, Catholic leaders are more supportive than evangelicals and Pentecostals of diversity in opinions, both within their congregations and in society at large. Third, Pentecostals and evangelicals perceive much greater levels of state bias toward their groups than do Catholics.

First full-length study of an important writer and close associate of Becket.

Summary

First the scribe cleanses the parchment of fat and coarse dirt with a knife. Then he removes the hairs and fibres with a pumice stone. If he did not do this, the written letters would be worthless and impermanent. Then he rules the parchment, so that the writing will be regular. All this you must do with your hearts.

The Descriptio

The presentation of the Descriptio in this chapter, as well as the edition in Appendix 3, is based on the text in manuscript Reg. lat. 712. This manuscript belongs to the French manuscripts in group III, which all present an early, consistent version of the Descriptio. Choosing this group as the basis for the presentation of the text is both a pragmatic and an intentional choice. It is pragmatic because several versions of the text exist. It is not certain which is the oldest version, and both the oldest versions – in groups II and III – have survived only in northern France and Belgium, with no extant copy in Rome. I have chosen to present the version according to group III, and not group II, because the Descriptio according to the manuscripts in group II appears more like an abridged version. In the Lateran archive, however, it is difficult to define any certain text at all, since all the versions emerge as variations of different elements. In addition to the fact that the oldest version in ACL A 70 is partly illegible, all the versions of the archive are composed differently. In other words, there is no fixed text of the Descriptio in the archive. The version edited as John the Deacon's version by Valentini and Zuchetti is a reconstruction which does not exist.

One explanation for the difference between the versions transmitted in northern France and Belgium, and those in the Lateran archive, may be that, when the promotion of the cathedral was transmitted to a context other than the archive, it resulted in a fixed text that was copied repeatedly in the related monasteries. When we compare this version with the oldest version currently preserved at the Lateran archive, it is easy to see that the presentation of the cathedral was not static, but that arguments were relocated or inserted in the text as needed.

Summary

Vogel's Grouping of Manuscripts

Cyrille Vogel provided a schematic overview of the transmission of the Descriptio in his 1956 article ‘La Descriptio Ecclesiae Lateranensis du Diacre Jean’. The main objective of Vogel's article is to locate the ‘original’ redaction of the Descriptio. Despite his limiting (and anachronistic) approach, this article constitutes the basis for most modern research on the text. Vogel's characterizations and descriptions of the manuscripts are thus kept to a minimum: the century of production, and indication of the folios that contain the Descriptio. In his article Vogel is not interested in the manuscripts as such, but only in the parts containing the Descriptio. His approach reaches its goal in the construction of the stemma of the text and in the preparations for a critical edition. He intended to edit the text of the Descriptio with full descriptions of the manuscripts used, as well as a more detailed stemma, but did not complete this endeavour before his death. From my perspective on the Descriptio, his main contribution is the precise overview of the different sections of the text, which provides a succinct tracing of the supposed redactions. The article provides an amount of detailed information and his conclusion is schematically summarized (see also Table 2):

Summary

Our perception of the inquisition is shaped by the sources that have survived. We have good records of some interrogations and, although interpreting these records presents difficulties, we have a view of the internal workings of the inquisition which was denied to most people when it was operating. Much has been derived from these interrogations. But they were only a part of the inquisition's work. The inquisition sought not only to uncover heretics and to bring them to penitence and/or punishment, but also to send a message about the Church's fight against heresy in order to deter heresy and reassure the faithful. The most important means of communicating that message were the sermones generales, what would later be called autos-da-fé in Spain. At these events inquisitors' decisions were made known and convicted heretics were formally told of their fate. As we hope to show, these events were in part show trials, with an opportunity to preach, which was part of mendicant friars' core functions. They were intended to create an impression. That is not to say that the judgments delivered at these trials were necessarily unjust by the standards of the times, although that was always a risk with a system that lacked the safeguards modern courts enjoy. We have good evidence of the sorts of legal judgments made at these events, from Gui's Sententiæ in particular. But these are only one aspect of the sermones. We have a far less clear idea about the impact these events had, the words the inquisitors actually used or the physical appearance of a sermo. What we do know has to be pieced together from scattered pieces of evidence.

All inquisitorial actions, such as the seizure of suspects, the release of suspects and even the inquisitors' movements, must have been watched carefully by many in Languedoc in Gui's time. Gui writes in the Practica of the negative public impact of the release of suspects when a case could not be made against them. This would be seen as being done ‘in a confused way’ (quasi confuse) and the faithful would see it as ‘materiam scandali’ (a matter of outrage). Inquisitors had to think carefully about every public move; and the compendious Sententiæ and the Practica both give evidence that Gui's approach as an inquisitor was framed in part by the public of Languedoc.

As Brazilian democracy faces a crisis of legitimacy, political divisions grow among Catholic, evangelical, and non-religious citizens. What has caused religious polarization in Brazilian politics? Does religious politics shore up or undermine democracy? Religion and Brazilian Democracy: Mobilizing the People of God uses engaging anecdotes and draws on a wealth of data from surveys and survey experiments with clergy, citizens, and legislators, to explain the causes and consequences of Brazil's 'culture wars'. Though political parties create culture war conflict in established democracies, in Brazil's weak party system religious leaders instead drive divisions. Clergy leverage legislative and electoral politics strategically to promote their own theological goals and to help their religious groups compete. In the process, they often lead politicians and congregants. Ultimately, religious politics pushes Brazilian politics rightward and further fragments parties. Yet Religion and Brazilian Democracy also demonstrates that clergy-led politics stabilizes Brazilian democracy and enhances representation.

Summary

Harsh punishment, deserved by the criminal, afflicts the innocent. Immoral scoundrels now occupy positions of power and unjustly trample the rights of good men.

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, 1.poem 5.

We return finally to Boethius, whose De consolatione Philosophiae was the only work besides the Bible to which Petrus Zwicker referred in all his antiheretical and theological works. I found this detail extremely intriguing when it became clear to me. It seemed that history had a sinister sense of irony. A man who interrogated and convicted probably thousands of heretics, some of them to death, had as his favourite reading a book written by a convict awaiting his execution. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, a Roman senator in sixth-century Italy, then ruled by the Ostrogothic king Theoderic, fell into disfavour and was sentenced to death for treason. He met his end in a prison in Pavia in 524, by blows from a club. While waiting for his sentence he penned a consolatory philosophical and theological essay on human nature, evil and strokes of fate – and how to accept it all and find consolation in greater and eternal truths. His book would retain its popularity in centuries to come, especially in times of crisis.

Thinking of Zwicker and Boethius led me to reconsider the meaning of the repression of heresy to the persecutors: inquisitors, polemicists, bishops, parish clergy, secular rulers and, at times, ordinary laypeople. I have suggested that the refutation of heresy enabled reflection on the Church, the clergy and the Scriptures. All these became controversial matters in the late fourteenth century, suddenly and alarmingly open to debate as the Church entered a long period of internal division in the Great Schism (1378–1417). When reflected in the distorted mirror of Waldensianism, a heresy that had been condemned already in the twelfth century and that had a sinister reputation among both conventional and reformist churchmen, the polemicists were able defame and blacken some of the more radical opinions that were voiced in the debates on the Schism. After all, the most dangerous opponents were not the secretive, dispersed and by the late fourteenth century stagnant Waldensians, but zealots from the ranks of the clergy.

Summary

And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.

From the first version of the Descriptio and throughout the following six hundred years, the Ark of the Covenant played a significant role at the Lateran Church, whether as argument, as liturgical object or as relic. The transferral of the sacred Ark and the rods from the innermost area of the papal high altar to devotional exposure in the fourteenth century (after the fire at the Lateran in 1308), and finally into oblivion in the eighteenth century, is a story about changed meanings and changed contexts of interpretation. When Pope Benedict XIV realized, in 1745, that the basilica still had these obscure artefacts on display, they had already lost their significance as liturgical objects. The Ark and the rods served no purpose in this ‘rationalist’ time. The Ark was moreover regarded as a fake and thus not even given a place in the pope's collection of treasures.

A modern visitor to the Lateran Church enters a very different space from the one described by the twelfth-century canons. Pilgrims from all over the world still gather in the basilica and most of them probably do not know what the church hides – rather akin to the situation described in the prologue of the Descriptio. As noted above, the history of the Ark of the Covenant at the Lateran was brought to a definitive end in the eighteenth century. Nonetheless, traces of the ideology supporting the claim to possess the Ark can still be seen in the baroque furnishings and decorations that replaced the medieval interior. The frescoes in the transept depict the Constantinian foundation of the cathedral, as well as the legendary apparition of Christ during the first consecration. The sacrament altar is flanked by statues of Moses and Aaron. On the left of the door to the sacristy, a thirteenth-century tablet is bricked up in the wall.3 The inscription says that the Ark of the Covenant and the other temple objects are underneath the high altar and that Titus and Vespasian caused them to be transferred from Jerusalem to Rome by the Jews.

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Tables

3 - Canon Law between Nature and Culture

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3 - Methods and Case Studies

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Afterword

Appendix A - List of Focus Groups and Church Observations

Acknowledgments

4 - What Clergy Think and Say: Religious Teachings and Political Views

Summary

Index

Figures

Index

Herbert of Bosham

2 - The Description of the Lateran Church

Summary

Dedication

Appendix 2 - Different Versions of the Descriptio Lateranensis Ecclesiae

Summary

List of Illustrations

5 - Sermones Generales – The Theatre of Inquisition

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Religion and Brazilian Democracy

Epilogue: The Consolation of Inquisition

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Epilogue

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Appendix 4 - Inquisitors' Manuals of St Florian and Linz

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