In the late 390s, commenting on a scene in Vergil’sAeneidin which Greek soldiers had turned Juno’s temple into a repository for captives and war booty, pagan author Servius Grammaticus explained that the Asylum of Juno was a temple “from which no one can be dragged out to punishment.”¹ With this allusion to the protections ordinarily afforded runaway slaves and criminals within the temple, Servius highlighted the violation perpetrated by the looting soldiers. In two remarks appended to his commentary, Servius further elaborated that fugitive criminals could only hope to find respite in those temples to which sanctuary rights...

Despite its theological aspect, the sanctuary protection offered by Christian churches was not entirely inconsistent with the aristocratic Roman traditions of intercession and clemency. Nonetheless, historians have assigned sanctuary a more contested place within the history of Roman penal law, citing three successive imperial edicts issued in the last decade of the fourth century to restrict sanctuary, and assuming that Roman penal traditions were antithetical to practices like sanctuary, which shielded wrongdoers from punishment. According to Timbal, “the rigorous justice of Rome, inspired by a principle of public interest, could not admit asylums, which … impeded the arrest of an...

“This infamous cleric, both accused and judged, escaped from the custody of themissusto the church, which he should not have entered until after penance, and which he entered against the law.”¹ These words were written in the name of Charlemagne around 801–802 in a letter admonishing Alcuin, the abbot of the Basilica of St. Martin in Tours, whom both Charlemagne and Bishop Theodulf of Orléans held responsible for granting the fugitive cleric sanctuary “against the law.” Although most likely drafted by an imperial scribe, perhaps one knowledgeable in law, the letter has been said to offer a...

Inspired by a prevailing impulse to find what was primordially and authentically “Germanic” (as opposed to Roman) in early medieval law, nineteenth-century legal history searched for “native” sanctuary practices that could be traced to pre-Christian European customs.¹ As subsequent, devastating critiques of the concept of “Germanic law” have largely dissolved these kinds of inquiries,² it has also become clear that sanctuary protections almost always make their way into Frankish and Anglo-Saxon laws through ecclesiastical, not native, influence. In Visigothic legislation, sanctuary rules appear in the earliest recensions as a result of direct textual borrowing from the Theodosian Code. Clovis, who...

Thus far, Frankish sources have anchored the story of sanctuary’s transmission and adoption in the early Middle Ages and demonstrated how sanctuary was insinuated into the construction of Christian identity and Frankish Christian kingship. This dependence on Frankish sources stems both from Carolingian hegemony and the fact that many of the sources for early medieval law were filtered through Frankishscriptoria. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, however, our source base moves westward where Anglo-Saxon legislation provides us with rich material for understanding the interplay between sanctuary, royal law, and feuding practices.

Anglo-Saxon sources, like Carolingian, provide evidence that kings...

Although Maitland dramatically characterized the Norman Conquest as “a catastrophe which determines the whole future history of English Law,” he regarded the immediate impact of the Normans on English law as limited.¹ Maitland attributed the major reforms of English law to Henry II and his successors and did not find meaningful legal or institutional development in the first century following the Conquest.

One reason for this judgment is the nature of the legal sources that survive from the Anglo-Norman period. “There is no Norman code,” as Maitland observed.² The collection entitledLeges Henrici Primi(LHP) carried no official authorization and...

Sometime shortly before 1241 in Berkshire, Richard le Vacher and John Dobyn came to the home of Matilda la Daye and killed her. Afterwards, they fled to the Church of St. Laurence in Reading. There, they claimed sanctuary, acknowledged their felony before the king’s two coroners, and, in exchange for safe passage and immunity from prosecution, swore that they would abjure the realm of England and never return. John and Richard appear to have left the church separately, for as John traveled out of Reading, Matilda’s two daughters pursued him raising the hue and cry so that John was soon...

The manner in which canonists defended sanctuary for crimes in the late medieval period signaled a remarkable change. Increasingly, they emphasized that sanctuary was a jurisdictional immunity of the Church, a territorial privilege against intrusions by temporal justice and an extension of the Church’s dignity, power, and liberty. Unlike early medieval sources, late medieval canon law texts rarely discussed penance and reconciliation as cornerstones of sanctuary law. Rather, these texts grounded sanctuary law squarely on the Church’s claims to impose, at least at certain times and places, its own law, unfettered by secular claims. Had matters stopped there, we might...