Conflicting Norms: Liturgical Procedure and the Separation of Divine Law from Human Law (England,Eleventh Century)

Abstract

In this essay the author argues that it was through liturgical tradition that medieval clerics were able to claim a distinctive sphere of canonical rights. By the late eleventh century 'liturgy opened a way towards a medieval speci ficity, the attention paid to procedure, to the formal conditions required for a valid legal process'. In his study of the case of William of Saint-Calais, Bishop of Durham who was accused of treason against King William II Rufus in 1088, the author points out that the discovery of procedure by means of liturgical expressions was 'not only the consequence of a lack of a written body of procedural formulas; it derived from a monastic culture; shared by William and his opponents.