A Difficult Legacy. Initial Comments on the Inheritance Rights of Filii Clericorum in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period
Stefania T. Salvi
Among the various categories of illegitimate children, a unique place is reserved for offspring clergymen who were engaged in concubinary relationships. At times these relationships would continue years, open violation centuries-old requirement clerical celibacy. But from legal point view, not all children clergy equal. In order to determine whether and what such entitled inherit father’s estate, it was necessary establish degree illegitimacy; do that, first thing be determined spurii or naturales. Throughout Middle Ages, canon law had been fighting scourge concubinage by instituting punitive measures against non-celibate priests, but results often ineffective. The Council Trent post-Tridentine papal came down even more severely on scandal nicolaitism, part combat nascent Protestant movements. A minority sixteenth-century treatises tends recognize right sacris constituti father ex testamento. Nonetheless, majority sixteenth- seventeenth-century doctrine reflected severity imposed Pope Pius V, whereby firmly denied any inheritance rights.
Studies in the history of law and justice