Preliminary communication
https://doi.org/10.21857/moxpjhwjqm
Decisions of Zadar diocesan synods on reserved cases (de casibus reservatis) in the context of council thought
Zvjezdan Strika
orcid.org/0000-0002-1014-8231
; Augsburg, Germany
Abstract
As part of the penitential practice, reserved cases of conscience developed late in church practice, only when penance with extremely harsh punishments had disappeared from the church practice. Their introduction was to more effectively anticipate the danger of a moral decline as harsh sentences were lacking. Their application, therefore, did not mean condemning the crimes committed even more severely or passing draconian judgments. Still, the aim was to prevent more successfully such or similar offences in the future. They were first reserved to the pope, and when the great difficulties of their more effective implementation were realized, they passed over to the local bishop. The decisions of the three diocesan synods of Zadar from 1598, 1663 and 1680 harmoniously fitted into the general synodal practice in the early 16th and 17th century. Their number varied from one synod to another, while the synod convened after his visitation by Archbishop Minucius de Minucci announced 28 reserved cases of conscience in 1598. At the same time, the other two synods reduced them. The Zadar archbishops, Teodor Balbi and Ivan E. Parzaghi followed the instructions of the Congregation for Bishops and Monks, which sought to mitigate reserved cases of conscience. They partially reduced the number of reserved instances, so that they connected several of them, listing them under the same name. In that way, they only reduced their ordinal number, but in fact, the actual number of reserved cases remained the same.
The Synodal Conclusion of 1598 was published by Daniel Falati, and based on a new transcript kept today at the German Historical Institute in Rome, Alberto Marani once again published it. The acts of the other two diocesan synods have remained in manuscript to this day. The paper publishes for the first time a synodal conclusion from the synod of 1663 and the one from 1680. The Synod in 1680 took over the text from the previous synod, and it differs slightly in content and only in a few places. After the diocesan synod (1663), the provisions on reserved cases were translated into Croatian so that they could also be made available to those priests who did not know Latin well enough. Their transcript is today kept in the archives of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb and was published by Grozdana Franov-Živković.
Keywords
reserved cases; Zadar diocesan synods; decisions of the synod; Zadar; Zadar church; early modern age
Hrčak ID:
248405
URI
Publication date:
22.12.2020.
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