Demerite house

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In the Catholic Church, a demerite house (from French: démérite 'guilt'), correctional house or priest prison was a disciplinary penal institution for offenders, convicted clergy , or a prison for those who had been sentenced to imprisonment and to penance for violating church laws . Such a clergyman was also called a Demerit . The houses were under episcopal management and were used to serve prison sentences imposed on clergy, provided that clerics were legally allowed special treatment under criminal law.

For example, the Prussian May Laws regulated:

  1. The statutes, the house rules and the Demerite directory had to be submitted to the Ministry of Culture .
  2. The heads of Demerite houses had to be named to the state.
  3. The deprivation of liberty against clerics could only be used as a disciplinary tool with their consent.
  4. This could not exceed three months.
  5. A deprivation of liberty could only be imposed after hearing the accused, by means of a written reasoned judgment and only as a referral to a German demerite house.

Deprivation of liberty as a disciplinary measure was forbidden against laypeople.

Poenitents were sometimes also housed in monasteries or, since the 19th century, increasingly in seminars.

Similar regulations applied to Baden, Saxony, Austria and Württemberg. After the First World War, the Demerite houses fell away.

See also

literature

  • Erwin Gatz: Article Demeritenhaus ; in: Lexicon for Theology and Church, 3rd Edition, Volume 3, Column 79.
  • Irmtraud Götz von Olenhusen : Clergy and deviant behavior: on the social history of Catholic priests in the 19th century: Die Erzdiözese Freiburg , 1994, ISBN 3-525-35769-9

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Irmtraud Götz von Olenhusen, pp. 81, 117, 118, 221, 224, 239, 240, 269, 427
  2. ↑ Duden Foreign Dictionary, Mannheim 1966, p. 147
  3. ^ Prussian laws of May 12 and 13, 1873