Thomas M Green, The Spiritual Jurisdiction in Reformation Scotland: A Legal History
| Published date | 01 May 2020 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2020.0643 |
| Pages | 316-317 |
| Date | 01 May 2020 |
This book is professedly, and deliberately, a study of “jurisdiction”. Thomas Green studies a particular period of jurisdictional development: the early years of the Scottish Reformation, from about 1559 to about 1567. Some of the developments were evolutionary, others were revolutionary. Indeed, one of the book's minor themes is the relationship between law and revolution. Revolution is never a legal act, but people caught up in revolutions still have to try to make legal sense of what is going on.
The “spiritual jurisdiction” of the book's title relates to what Dr Green usually calls “consistorial” matters – mainly matrimonial causes. At one time or another during the period covered by the book, such causes were litigated in various different courts. Before the Reformation, there were the courts of the Catholic Church – particularly the diocesan officials’ courts, but also courts held by papal judges delegate. During the Reformation crisis of 1559–60, Protestant activists suppressed most of these courts piecemeal – but, argues Dr Green, this did not necessarily abrogate their jurisdiction. Nor did the Papal Jurisdiction Act of 1560 necessarily abrogate it, and not only because of that act's questionable legality in the absence of royal ratification. So, in Queen Mary's personal reign, much depended on the interpretation of her proclamation of 25 August 1561 commanding that the existing religious situation – that is, the Protestant situation – should be maintained. The outlines of this for broader religious history are well known, but Dr Green expertly unpacks the proclamation's detailed jurisdictional effects, as well as the implications of the related Treaty of Edinburgh of 1560. The Catholic Church's matrimonial jurisdiction to some extent fell into abeyance rather than being abrogated, at least in the short term, and some of it occasionally resurfaced.
Meanwhile, the Protestants had to construct their own system of matrimonial jurisdiction. Some of the reformers, either more radical or less legally-minded or both, seem to have thought that they could do this directly from the Bible; once they had cited, for instance, Exodus 22:16, the legal problem would be solved (83). At any rate, in the first few years, various courts of the Protestant church heard matrimonial cases from time to time, or issued commissions to do so: kirk sessions, superintendents’ courts, the general assembly. Some of these new authorities were experimental or ambiguous. What...
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