6533b7d8fe1ef96bd126a0d1

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Defectus natalium. Un cas paradigmatique du pouvoir pontifical de dispense (XIe-XVe siècle)

subject

description

According to the canon law of the first half of the XIIth century, sons of priests and canons are not allowed to be promoted to sacred orders nor to succeed to their fathers. Yet the merita and the morum honestas of the sons can compensate for the vitia of the fathers. That explains that papal dispensations super defectu natalium are very common a long time before Boniface VIII (1295-1303) resolves the jurisdictional issue of who may grant a dispensation (pope, bishops or abbots) and for which cases (major or minor orders). Letters and letter formularies of the Apostolic Penitentiary – a papal office which arises at the beginning of the XIIIth century, answers to the supplications addressed to the pope, but also receives confessions from pilgrims and penitents – are very useful to understand the legal « technology » of the dispensation and its place in the Church administration. By suspending the legal rule which strictly forbidded bastards of priests to acceed to sacred orders and also by removing the canonical impediment (impedimentum), the dispensation did certainly not erase the defectus natalium of the bastard. But it was one of the major tools of the papal jurisdiction and it made the Roman Curia a real nerve center of the Church, devoted to set the terms of admission to sacred orders and of conferment of ecclesiastical benefices.