Religioni e libertà confessionale nel Medioevo secondo il diritto

This article investigates the relationship between “freedom” and religious non-conformism in medieval times through the sources of the legal doctrine and the law. The sources were chosen both because they generated the norm, which in turn generated practices, and because they generated a true philosophical and theological scales of values. The doctrinal texts and the legislation were investigated in relation to the phenomena of “deviance” within Christianity but also in relation to other religions to delimit the environment of religious diversity before the so-called Crusades. Ancient canonistic intimately connects other religions and Christian heresies without ever overlapping them. So-called heresies can be persecuted because the Christian heretics are still subject to the jurisdiction of the church owing to their baptism, while non-Christians have a different jurisdictional status because they haven’t the baptism. Later canon law (late 12th and early 13th century), on the other hand, overlapped heresies and other religions and thus legitimised the Crusades and the offensives of Christian princes against Iberian Islam. This overlap marked a very important turning point and coincided with a sharpening of the dissent repression. The result of this turning point was the construction of a very precise model of social organisation of legality that went far beyond the confines of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, eventually making possible the “embodiment” of the papal monarchy project.