010097 SE Did Christianity shape law in Europe? (2021S)

The Gospel and the law tell mankind how we should live as a Christian. With Gratian's Decretum in the 12th century an important clarification of canon law was achieved. The emergence of a right in the church is the expression of organised community life, the life of the visible church, which is intimately connected with the truths of the faith, even extending into the faith itself. Forms of life and destinies of the church, such as internal and external forms of organisation, discipline, public worship, difficulties and struggles and divisions, signs of decay and reform movements, are an essential part of the reflection of our seminar. The strong legal component in these phenomena requires knowledge and understanding of the law and the legal development of the church. But the church's relations with the environment (political institutions, social coexistence) are also important, since one need only take a look at the collections of church norms to be convinced of the wide area of influence of the church's law. For Christianity has shaped law in Europe in many ways.
On the one hand, the commandment to love one's neighbour and the prohibition of violence have found expression, but on the other hand the certainty of faith and religious intolerance have also left clear traces. With regard to the subject areas - which are also occasionally addressed in the course of the seminar - this influence is evident in all its ambivalence in the discussion of the concept of law and in the determination of the relationship between law and freedom or law and grace; in European constitutional history in the field of tension between imperium and sacerdotium; in the concept of office and administrative procedure; in the foundation of international law in Europe; in the law of persons in the development of the concept of person and the formation of the legal person; in the comprehensive organisation of marriage and family; in the influence on the concept of property and contract law; in the fundamental discourses on guilt and atonement in criminal law; in the administration of justice in procedural law...
The aim of the seminar in the history of canon law is to open up to knowledge and understanding the long path which has led the ecclesiastical legal system from its origins (ius antiquum), through the idea of the unitary organism in the classical period of canon law (ius novum), through the Council of Trent (ius novissimum), to the first codification in the CIC in 1917 and more recently to the CIC in 1983 and CCEO in 1990 (ius Codicis), in a constant and uninterrupted dialogue with secular rights. Three subject areas will accompany us in this process, also with regard to the influence of Canon law on European legal culture: the history of sources and collections of laws, the history of canonical science, the history of individual legal institutions (papacy, papal diplomacy, Council, bishop, clergy, religious and laity).