2011/01/01 by Wim Decock · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #American Constitutional Law and Politics #Historical Economic and Legal Thought #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
paper · pdf · doi:10.12946/rg18/012-034
openalex publication_date 2011/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This paper is a prolegomenon to further study of the intensified relationship between law and moral theology in early modern times. In a period characterized by a growing anxiety for the salvation of the soul (»Confessional Catholicism«), a vast literature for confessors, which became increasingly juridical in nature, saw the light between roughly 1550 and 1650. By focussing on some of the most important Jesuit canonists and moral theologians, this article first seeks to explain why jurisprudence became regarded as an indispensable tool to solve moral problems. While Romano-canon law showed its merits as an instrument of precision to come to grips with concrete qualms of conscience, with the passing of time it also became studied for its own sake. The second part of this paper, therefore, illustrates how the legal tradition, particularly with regard to the law of obligations, was reshaped in the treatises of the moral theologians.