Status Updates From Medieval Canon Law (The Med...

William Durand argued that to obtain a conviction 'per notorium,' the accused would have to "perform his dastardly deed at a time when the judge was acting in his official capacity and in the presence of a large enough crowd to make the offence public knowledge. Under these circumstances an offense was indeed 'notorious' in the full rigor of the term."

"The rationale for this procedure [procedure per notorium] lay in what may be called the 'common sense' approach to criminal justice, which held that where the fact of a crime and the identity of the offender were both obvious and well-known throughout the community, the niceties of the convention [procedure] were irrelevant and need not be applied." YIKES

The archdeacon's courts touched matters of personal conduct and morality in particularly intimate ways and lay people often resented this intrusion... People further suspected (perhaps with good cause) that local bigwigs and men of means could persuade archdeacons to overlook their own misdemeanors by a judicious use of gifts, bribes, and other inducements.

The canonical tradition thus operated on a presumption of innocence until guilt was proven and criminal procedure was designed to safeguard that presumption. The concern with defendants rights, it should be said, appears to have been motivated in great part by a desire to protect priests from the vindictiveness of disaffected parishioners.

In total, then, canonical regulations subtracted something in excess of 120 days, the equivalent of four months every year, from the time available for productive labor.

Hahaha, James Brundage just described monasteries as "ecclesiastical country clubs." A+

Just slightly awesomely brilliant. Very clear and readable.