Ecclesiastical prison
Jus novum (c. 1140-1563) Jus novissimum (c. 1563-1918) Jus codicis (1918-present) Other Sacraments Sacramentals Sacred places Sacred times Supra-diocesan/eparchal structures Particular churches Juridic persons Philosophy, theology, and fundamental theory of Catholic canon law Clerics Office Juridic and physical persons Associations of the faithful Pars dynamica (trial procedure) Canonization Election of the Roman Pontiff Academic degrees Journals and Professional Societies Faculties of canon law Canonists Institute of consecrated life Society of apostolic life Ecclesiastical prisons were penal institutions maintained by the Catholic Church.
Some of the earliest uses of imprisonment as a penalty in itself, rather than as a practical means of detaining accused criminals, took place in the context of Christian monastic communities.
[27][28] These were usually purpose-built cells, but in some cases might be free-standing prisons; one of the earliest examples of the latter was built at the Mount Sinai Monastery before the seventh century AD.
[34][35] Inmates in monastic prisons were sometimes kept in chains,[36][17][8] and their sentences often included deprivation of food,[17][37] corporal punishment,[37][38][16] various forms of ritual humiliation,[39] or ecclesiastical penalties such as excommunication.
[17] Some medieval monasteries practiced permanent immurement in prisons called Vade in pace ("go in peace"), so named because inmates were expected to remain in them until death.
Peter the Venerable, writing in the early twelfth century, attributed the first Vade in pace to a prior named Matthew of Saint-Martin-des-Champs.
[40] The practice spread, being attested in locations including St Albans Abbey,[41] Toulouse,[42] Lespinasse,[43] Lodi,[44] and San Salvatore.
[44] John II of France intervened, at the request of the Archbishop of Toulouse, to require the monasteries to allow imprisoned monks weekly visitors.
[47] The use of incarceration as an ecclesiastical penalty dates back well before the beginning of the second millennium, with examples attested in the 438 Codex Theodosianus, the canons of the 581 Synod of Mâcon, the 8th-century Gelasian Sacramentary, and the writings of the 8th-century bishop Ecgbert of York.
[49][50][51][52] As part of the codification of canon law in the thirteenth century, Pope Boniface VIII issued his 1298 Liber Sextus, which endorsed the use of imprisonment as a legal penalty.
[71] Although the young inmates often endured conditions such as corporal punishment and being chained to their desks, San Michele was considered by contemporaries to be a model of an enlightened penal system.
[72] With the twelfth-century founding of the Inquisition, and its eponymous process of inquisitio (inquest), came an increasing need for ecclesiastical prisons to hold suspects during a potentially lengthy investigation.
[73] Instead of being incarcerated merely for a brief period of time between arrest and trial, the captives of the Inquisition were routinely held until they confessed to the satisfaction of their interrogators and implicated others; in some cases this process took years, sometimes spent in solitary confinement.
[93] Prisoners under a higher degree of suspicion were instead kept in murus strictus, which meant solitary confinement;[88][94] when combined with shackles and a diet of bread and water, this was called strictissimus carceris ("strictest imprisonment").
[115] In the Isle of Man, ecclesiastical prisons were in active use up through the early 19th century, with records of one William Faragher being imprisoned in 1812 for refusing to pay a tithe.
[116] Article 16 of the Concordat of 1953 between Pope Pius XII and Francisco Franco established a separate ecclesiastical prison system in Spain, where clergy convicted under secular law would serve their sentences in monasteries or other dedicated institutions.
