Voltz- 1 Jordan Voltz Short Reflection Paper #2 Group C Prof.

Garceau 10/14/13 The Statutes of Leon and Girona Christianity and Personal Justice In the statutes of Leon and Girona, drafted within the same year, there is a marked interest in the protections and limitations of the church as well as the re-establishment of a system of personal justice. In the openings of the Statutes of Girona, extensive detail is given to the protection of churchowned grounds from violence. Specifically, the Statutes are designate the penalties inherent from looting the church during a war. This is established a number times throughout the first 4 statutes and the punishment for doing so is left up to bishop. Unsurprisingly, committing this crime is considered sacrilege and Alfonso also extends this protection of physical wealth to the trappings of newly raised religious orders of monk-knights. These monk-knights were raised to fight against Muslims, however the inclusion of them in these statutes suggest that they werent fighting strictly Muslims and that opposing armies looting their corpses may have been an issue. In this light, its fairly obvious that with the amount of strife in these lands during this time that the sacking of churches was an issue. Furthermore, it was likely that this sacking was mainly performed by other Christians, since Alfonso assigned a Christiancentric religious connotation (sacrilege) to the crime of church-sacking. Since a Muslim would not recognize the authority of the church in these matters, declaring this act sacrilegious would only affect Christians who accepted the authority of the church. The only statute in the Statutes of Leon that pertain to the church says, I [] forbid any man who has property under my authority from giving it to a religious order. In this statute, we see Alfonso attempting to directly limit the power of the church in Leon. These statutes demonstrate that Alfonso was largely concerned with attempting to keep the power of the church as stable as possible in these times, preserving them when necessary and placing limits on

Voltz- 2 their power when necessary. These statutes depict the developing role of the Christian religion in the 12th Crown of Aragon- as a stabilizing force in the society. Another topic that is touched upon in both of these statutes is that of personal justice and the power of judgment borne by the King. The Statutes of Leon opens with Alfonso declaring, rather emphatically, that he will not sentence someone to a punishment for a crime before he has summoned them to his court. This trend of a judging King assuring his populace that justice will be carried out continues in the third stature in which he assures his populace that he, or any judge that he has appointed, will hear any grudge or complaint levied against anyone else. In this light, these justices can be seen as extensions of the Kings judgment (although it may not have followed so in court) and as a reassurance that the King is personally adjudicating the affairs of his populace. Furthermore, since the King is seen to be approved by God, it therefore follows that the intent of these statutes is to give the image that God is at the center of the legal system and that he will indirectly judge you for your secular crimes as well as your religious sins. This reinforces the theory that Christianity in 12th century Crown of Aragon was used as a stabilizing force in a time period that was wracked with war and chaos. The question that can be inferred from this is, With religion serving as a tool for the stabilization of the lower classes and perhaps the nobility, how did the clergy perceive the authority of the God countking Alfonso who also acted in his secular interests and put a limit on the churchs power in Girona?