This book surveys royal marriage cases to explore how popes dealt with the marriage problems of kings, especially dissolutions and dispensations.

Surveys royal marriage cases to explore how popes dealt with the marriage problems of kings, especially dissolutions and dispensations.

This volume is concerned with diplomacy between England and the papal curia during the first phase of the Anglo-French conflict known as the Hundred Years' War (1305-1360). On the one hand, Barbara Bombi compares how the practice of diplomacy, conducted through both official and unofficial diplomatic communications, developed in England and at the papal curia alongside the formation of bureaucratic systems. On the other hand, she questions how the Anglo-French conflict and political change during the reigns of Edward II and Edward III impacted on the growth of diplomatic services both in England and the papal curia. Through the careful examination of archival and manuscript sources preserved in English, French, and Italian archives, this book argues that the practice of diplomacy in fourteenth-century Europe nurtured the formation of a "shared language of diplomacy". The latter emerged from the need to "translate" different traditions thanks to the adaptation of house-styles, formularies, and ceremonial practices as well as through the contribution of intermediaries and diplomatic agents acquainted with different diplomatic and legal traditions. This argument is mostly demonstrated in the second part of the book, where the author examines four relevant case studies: the papacy's move to France after the election of Pope Clement V (1305) and the succession of Edward II to the English throne (1307); Anglo-papal relations between the war of St Sardos (1324) and the deposition of Edward II in 1327; the outbreak of the Hundred Years' Wars in 1337; and lastly the conclusion of the first phase of the war, which was marked in 1360 by the agreement between England and France known as the Treaty of Brétigny-Calais.

It is impossible to understand how the medieval church functioned and, in turn, influenced the lay world within its care without understanding "canon law". This book examines its development from its beginnings to the end of the Middle Ages, updating its findings in light of recent scholarly trends. This second edition has been fully revised and updated by Melodie H. Eichbauer to include additional material on the early Middle Ages; the significance of the discovery of earlier versions of Gratian’s Decretum; and the new research into law emanating from secular authorities, councils, episcopal acta, and juridical commentary to rethink our understanding of the sources of law and canon law's place in medieval society. Separate chapters examine canon law in intellectual spaces; the canonical courts and their procedures; and, using the case studies of deviation from orthodoxy and marriage, canon law in the lives of people. The main body of the book concludes with the influence of canon law in Western society, but has been reworked by integrating sections cut from the first edition chapters on canon law in private and public life to highlight the importance of this field of research. Throughout the work and found in the bibliography are references to current literature and resources in order to make researching in the field more accessible. The first appendix provides examples of how canonical texts are cited while the second offers biographical notes on canonists featured in the work. The end result is a second edition that is significantly rewritten and updated but retains the spirit of Brundage’s original text. Covering all aspects of medieval canon law and its influence on medieval politics, society, and culture, this book provides students of medieval history with an accessible overview of this foundational aspect of medieval history.

First full-length study of attitudes to abortion in the early medieval west. When a Spanish monk struggled to find the right words to convey his unjust expulsion from a monastery in a desperate petition to a sixth-century king, he likened himself to an aborted fetus. Centuries later, a ninth-century queenfound herself accused of abortion in an altogether more fleshly sense. Abortion haunts the written record across the early middle ages. Yet, the centuries after the fall of Rome remain very much the "dark ages" in the broader history of abortion. This book, the first to treat the subject in this period, tells the story of how individuals and communities, ecclesiastical and secular authorities, construed abortion as a social and moral problem across anumber of post-Roman societies, including Visigothic Spain, Merovingian Gaul, early Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England and the Carolingian empire. It argues early medieval authors and readers actively deliberated on abortion and a cluster of related questions, and that church tradition on abortion was an evolving practice. It sheds light on the neglected variety of responses to abortion generated by different social and intellectual practices, including church discipline, dispute settlement and strategies of political legitimation, and brings the history of abortion into conversation with key questions about gender, sexuality, Christianization, penance and law. Ranging across abortion miracles in hagiography, polemical letters in which churchmen likened rivals to fetuses flung from the womb of the church and uncomfortable imaginings of resurrected fetuses in theological speculation, this volume also illuminates the complex cultural significance of abortion in early medieval societies. Zubin Mistry is Lecturer in Early Medieval European History, University of Edinburgh.

At the Edge of Reformation springs from Peter Linehan's continuing interest in the history of Spain and Portugal, on this occasion in the first half of the fourteenth century between the recovery of each kingdom from widespread anarchy and civil war and the onset of the Black Death. Focussing on ecclesiastical aspects of the period in that region (Galicia in particular) and secular attitudes to the privatisation of the church, it raises inter alios the question why developments there did not lead to a permanent sundering of the relationship with Rome (or Avignon) two centuries ahead of that outcome elsewhere in the West. In addressing such issues, as well as of neglected archival material in Spanish and Portuguese archives, Linehan makes use of the also unpublished so-called 'secret' registers of the popes of the period. The issues this volume raises ought to be of interest not only to students of Spanish and Portuguese society but also to those interested in the developing relationship further afield of the components of the eternal quadrilateral (pope, king, episcopate, and secular nobility) in late medieval Europe as well as of the activity in that period of the secular-minded sapientes. In this context, attention is given to the hitherto neglected attempt of Afonso IV of Portugal to appropriate the privileges of the primatial church of his kingdom and to the glorification of his Castilian son-in-law as God's vice-gerent in his.

The enactment of the Divorce Reform Act 1969 was a landmark moment in family law. Coming into force in 1971, it had a significant impact on legal practice and was followed by a dramatic increase in divorce rates, reflecting changes in social attitudes. This new interdisciplinary collection explores the background to the 1969 Act and its influence on law and society. Bringing together scholars from law, sociology, history, demography, and film and literature, it reflects on the changes to divorce law and practice over the past 50 years, and the changing impact of divorce on different people in society, particularly women. As such, it offers a 'biography' of this important piece of legislation, moving from its conception and birth, through its reception and development, to its imminent demise. Looking to the future, and to the new law introduced by the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020, this collection suggests ways for evaluating what makes a 'good' divorce law. This brilliant collection gives insight not only into this crucial piece of legislation, but also into a key period of societal change.

This well-researched book explains why the Catholic Church continues to teach marital indissolubility and addresses the numerous contemporary challenges to that teaching. It surveys the patristic witness to marital indissolubility, along with Orthodox and Protestant views, as well as historical-critical biblical exegesis on the contested biblical passages. It also surveys the Catholic tradition from the Trent through Benedict XVI, and it examines a Catholic argument that the Catholic Church's teaching can and should change. Then it explores Amoris Laetitia, the papal exhortation from Pope Francis on marriage, and the various major responses to it, with the issue of marital indissolubility at the forefront. Finally, it retrieves Aquinas's theology of marital indissolubility as a contribution to deepening current theological discussions. The author argues that Amoris Laetitia upholds the traditional Catholic teaching that a valid and consummated Christian marriage is absolutely indissoluble, in accord with the teachings of Jesus and the Apostle Paul, as solemnly and authoritatively taught by the Council of Trent and affirmed by later popes and the Second Vatican Council. He says that Amoris Laetitia should be interpreted and implemented in light of the doctrine of marital indissolubility: implementations that undermine this doctrine should be avoided. Levering says that numerous contemporary Catholic theologians and biblical scholars are mistakenly turning the indissolubility of marriage into contingent dissolubility based upon whether the spouses continue to act in loving ways toward each other. The sacrament's gift of objective indissolubility is thereby undermined. Fortunately, the main interpreters of Amoris Laetitia, whose views have been approved by Pope Francis, insist that the Apostolic Exhortation does not change the doctrine of marital indissolubility in any way.

This book is the next volume in Levering's Engaging Doctrine series. The prior volume of the series examined the doctrine of creation. The present volume examines the purpose of creation: the marriage of God and humans. God created the cosmos for the purpose of the marriage of God and his people--and through his people, the marriage of God and the entire creation. Given that the central meaning or "prime analogate" of marriage is the marriage of God and humankind, the study of human marriage needs to be shaped by this eschatological goal and foregrounded as a dogmatic theme. After a first chapter defending and explaining the biblical witness to the marriage of God and his people, the book explores various themes: marriage as an image of God, original sin as the fall of the primordial marriage, the cross of Jesus Christ and marital self-sacrificial love, the procreative and unitive ends of marriage, marriage as a sacrament, and marriage's importance for social justice and for the upbuilding of the kingdom of God. Along the way, the book provides an introduction to the key biblical, patristic, medieval, modern, and contemporary thinkers and controversies regarding the doctrine of marriage.

This book offers a chronological and geographical study of royal divorce cases from the Middle Ages through to the Reformation period.