Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria E.I.1.c.4, Justinian's Digest 1.1 |
The
history of how the Romano-canonical process, the ordo iudiciarius,
became the model for the courts of continental legal systems remains to be
written. We can say that its roots predate the Fourth Lateran Council
(1215 A.D.) which forbade clerical participation
in the ordeal. From at least 1150 on, when the evidence becomes plentiful,
church courts all over Europe had almost completely abandoned the ordeal as
a mode of proof for deciding ecclesiastical cases.
This fact is attested by the vast number of twelfth-century papal decretals that describe implicitly and sometimes explicitly the procedures of the ordo iudiciarius. |