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1. Basic elements Civil procedure is a legally regulated trial procedure for settling  private law disputes peacefully in a court of law. Although the rules of civil procedure were no more uniform in the early modern period than they are today, some broad tendencies may nonetheless be identified.We must distinguish, on the one hand, between the regulations of the Reichskammergericht (see also Kameralprozess) and the southern and western German territories, which were influenced by learned Roman-canon procedural law, and, on the other, the procedural …

1. General The benefice (Latin  praebenda or beneficium) was the ecclesiastical office-related right of an incumbent member of the clergy to draw a regular income from a particular fund that was permanently dedicated to that office [2. 334 (§ I)]; [4. 188 (art. I/6]; [10. 577]. The benefice thus represented the material component of a church office. In accordance with Liber Extra of the Corpus Iuris Canonici (X,3,5,2), it was granted for the sake of, and regularly together with, the clerical office, so as to ensure the clergyman’s living (Clergy). From then on, with reference to Liber Sex…

1. Theological, confessional, and historical aspects 1.1. Preliminary RemarksReflection on the nature of the church (ecclesiology, from Lat. ecclesia, Greek  ekklesía, “assembly”) was an element of Christian theology from the very outset. Already the early church but especially the Middle Ages witnesssed debates over the relationship between spiritual and secular authority as well as the priority of popes and councils. Nevertheless it was not until the early modern era that a separate area of dogmatics was developed with the technical name  ecclesiology. The division of th…

1. Definition In all confessional bodies, excommunication means the separation of Christians from the ecclesiastical community [6. Art. I, Nr. 1]. Excommunicates lose their rights of membership while their obligations to the church remain. It does not mean exclusion from the church, because the membership bestowed on Christians through baptism (Sacrament) cannot be revoked. It is the most severe punishment available to the church [3. § 863]. Therefore excommunication represented the final option; it was not used until other forms of  penance had failed t…

1. Concept and scopeThe concept of “reception” connotes the voluntary “adoption of cultural goods or individual cultural elements from elsewhere,” proceeding either in a deliberate way within a limited period of time, or in an unplanned, long-term social process [19. 116]; [25. 125–133]. The latter applies in the case of the reception of Roman canon law, which as a pan-European process took place over a period from the 12th to the 19th century (Antiquity, reception of).Medieval and early modern Southern, Central, and Western (continental) Europe regarded Roman canon …

1. Concept and historyThe Rota (often Rota Romana) gradually emerged in the 13th century as the court of law of the papal Curia (see Papacy) [9. 36 f.]; [4. 1193]; [8. 222]. Rota was not its official name, but became current in the 14th century. It probably derived from the wheel-shaped marble inlay in the floor of the hall of the papal palace at Avignon in which the judges of the court assembled for consultations [8. 226]. The popes began appointing clerics with legal expertise as delegate judges to preside in individual trials in the 13th century [9. 1–7, 24–27]; [8. 223–225]; [4. 1193…

1. Definition Until well into the 19th century, the German word for “loan,” Leihe, was used as a comprehensive term for all kinds of transfers of goods, including loans for consumption ( mutuum), safekeeping, usufruct, rent, and leases [3. 1421]; [5. vol. 1, 503]. Only in the wake of the reception of ius commune in the 16th century did the specific type of loan contract emerge for the gratuitous use of a specific object (Res) with the obligation to return it. It thus is necessary to distinguish between a German and a Roman understanding of loans for consumption.In German legal source…