ENGLISH MEDIEVAL ECCLESIASTICAL COURT: LOWER LOCAL LINK OF CHURCH JUDICIARY

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of the organization and functioning of the lower local level of the European ecclesiastical judiciary based on the material of medieval England. It is noted that in modern foreign and domestic historiography it is recognized that church courts at the level of dioceses developed and applied an orderly system of conducting cases, due to which they played a long and important role in the history of law and society. It has been established that the archives of church courts of various levels constitute a very large part of the evidence preserved from the Middle Ages. The author draws attention to the fact that the judicial practice of the lower local level of the church judiciary proves: 1) the influence of canon law permeated the entire medieval social system, not only the clergy or the pious; canon law repeatedly touched the life of almost every person from the cradle to the grave; 2) medieval canon law and civil law had a close symbiotic relationship with each other. The process of professionalization of English local ecclesiastical courts, the development of canonical court procedure and the introduction of procedural innovations, the competence of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and its relationship with secular justice are analyzed. It is concluded that medieval local ecclesiastical courts played a significant role both in the development of English common law and in the spread of canon law.