The Internal Forum and the Literature of Penance and Confession
When Dante ascended to the Sphere of the Sun, he was directed by St. Thomas Aquinas to consider a circle of shining lights. One of the lights, St. Thomas tells him, is Gratian, “who served the one and the other court so well that it gives pleasure in Paradise” (che l'uno e l'altro foro / a...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge University Press
2004
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| In: |
Traditio
Year: 2004, Volume: 59, Pages: 175-227 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | When Dante ascended to the Sphere of the Sun, he was directed by St. Thomas Aquinas to consider a circle of shining lights. One of the lights, St. Thomas tells him, is Gratian, “who served the one and the other court so well that it gives pleasure in Paradise” (che l'uno e l'altro foro / aiutò sì che piace in paradiso [Paradiso 10:104–5]). The allusion to two “courts” (fora) would have puzzled Gratian, but to both Thomas and Dante it would have had a clear reference to the two broad arenas in which the Church's canon law was operative: the external forum of ecclesiastical courts (sometimes known as the “contentious forum”) and the internal forum of conscience and of penance. This new way of describing the Church's legal competence had been invented in the decades immediately following the publication of Gratian's magisterial textbook (ca. 1140), and it would have important consequences for the history of medieval canon law in the years to come. |
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| ISSN: | 2166-5508 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Traditio
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0362152900002567 |