Spoof law
The spolia ( lat. Jus spolii ) is the legal authority of an ecclesiastical superior, the movable s estate of a Catholic s secular cleric collect. It is based on the basic idea that a cleric cannot dispose of or testify his benefices after his death . In some cases, the legacy was confiscated against the stipulation in the clergy's testament , hence the cynical popular description of Ius spolii as rapite capite or rips raps .
This authority was exercised in the Middle Ages by the landlords , the emperor and the sovereign and was thus maintained for some parts of Germany until the 19th century. Symptoms of abuse occur where bishops collect the monastery's benefits on the grounds that they are camera property of the episcopal church. Landlords have exercised the right to spoil deceased bishops; more frequent, however, was the abuse that territorial rulers had usurped the estate of the lower clergy. In the 13th century it became common practice that if a cleric died - unless he left a will - his estate went to the papal treasury. In France, Germany, Belgium and Portugal, this canon never became legally valid because spoofing law was difficult to implement: in many cases it was difficult to distinguish between ecclesiastical and private property.
The medieval rulers Otto IV , Philip of Swabia , Friedrich II. And Rudolf von Habsburg renounced the right to spoil. Although numerous papal decrees forbade spoofing rights, it survived into the 16th century. When the Council of Trent guaranteed the testamentary freedom of all diocesan clerics, the right of spoilage disappeared.
literature
- H.-J. Becker: Spolienrecht , in: Hand Wortbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte 4 (1990), Sp. 1779–1780.