Monastery death
The monastery death is a legal construction of the Middle Ages . A living person was declared dead for secular jurisdiction upon entry into an order of nuns or monks and lost legal capacity . Their possessions passed to the heirs. A new acquisition of property was not possible because members of the order lived the Vita communis based on their understanding of Acts 4:32 (“Nobody called anything of what he had his property, but they had everything in common”) .
From the glosses of the Sachsenspiegel , the monastery death was still adopted in 1794 in the General Land Law (ALR) in Prussia (II 11 §§ 1199 ff.). The legislative intention largely ceased to exist in 1803 with the abolition of many monasteries by the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss . The death of a monastery is no longer included in the modern European civil law codifications of the 19th century.
