Les statuts synodaux : un outil au cœur de la transmission de la loi de l'Église aux pasteurs et à leurs fidèles (13e-17e siècles)
- Autores: Morgane Belin
- Localización: Revista crítica de Derecho Canónico Pluriconfesional, ISSN-e 2341-3956, ISSN 2387-1873, Nº. 1, 2014, págs. 27-58
- Idioma: francés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
Since the Middle Ages, the Western Christian Church has considered that each of its ministers had to know its law, lest they be punished. To pass on the jus canonicum’s provisions to the clerks at work in thousands of parishes, the ecclesial institution developed the diocesan synod.
This assembly has gathered, since the 13th century, the whole clergy involved in pastoral care in one diocese. It experienced a renewed success after the Fourth Council of the Lateran, which ordered bishops to celebrate the synods every year in all the dioceses of the Western Christian world. The diocesan synod had thus been established as a vital institution for the reformation of the parish clergy, until the end of the early modern period. The study of the synodal statutes published at the end of these synods allows us to appreciate the interpretations given by bishops to priests in their dioceses of the Church’s ideals regarding the cura animarum in parishes. In this article, by studying the synodal statutes published in two former dioceses of the ancient Low Lands (the dioceses of Liège and Namur) between the 13th and the 17th centuries, we will observe the continuity and separations between the medieval and early modern synodal law and see the evolutions in the way canons and conciliar decrees are transmitted in synodal books. The visibility through the synodal statutes of the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council and the Council of Trent specifically holds our attention, because of the major role played by these two assemblies in the reformation of the Church regarding pastoral care. The tacit loans typical of medieval codifications, broadly inspired by the synodal statutes of the neighbouring dioceses, are replaced, after the Council of Trent, by very clear and explicit references to the conciliar decrees and papal bulls. The conflictual opposition governing the relationships between the Church and secular lords in the 13th century turns, in the 16th and 17th centuries, into a joint commitment to work together against delinquency and to standardize the religious practice of the priests and their flock. The study of the synodal law over an extended period of time allows us to measure the efforts made by the local Ordinaries over centuries to fulfill the ideals of a semper reformanda Church.
