medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Greetings all,
There has a lot been written about the "peace of god" in the last two decades, and I even have
access to the Head and Landes volume on the subject, which I will soon peruse. If there is a similar work bringing the subject up to date, I'd appreciate references. (Maybe their work doesn't need to be brought up to date?)
My main query, however, is how explicitly concepts of the peace of God overlap with a more general understanding of church sanctuary in the Middle Ages. I am dealing with some late 12th century letters from the archbishop of Nidaros/Trondheim, in which he states that automatic excommunication, which can only be absolved by the pope, follows slaying of clerics or religious, plundering of church property, or breaking of sanctuary. It later appears that guilty parties are to report to him, and they will decide together whether he can absolve them or should send them to the pope.
I'm trying to figure out how typical this may be for the period (roughly 1170-90), and wondering about the archbishop's claim that he is only repeating what the pope has often stated. I don't have time to review the Gregorian reform from scratch, and I'm wondering if list members can direct me to specific pieces of bibliography
that deal with church sanctuary (and penalties for breaking it), also perhaps the understanding of excommunication at this time (this the archbishop actually spells out, probably rightly assuming that the addrees may be less than well-informed about what is involved). If there is anything like a study of the history of the concept of church sanctuary, I'd love to know about it. Incidentally, the archbishop comments that this is such a basic idea that even the heathens observed sanctuary at their temples. I'm not sure which heathens he's thinking of . . . Greeks and Romans, perhaps?
Meg
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