Selon le Code de droit canonique de 1983, actuellement en vigueur dans l’Église catholique latine (cc. 285-286 et 289.2), les clercs ne peuvent exercer des charges publiques comportant une participation à l’exercice du pouvoir civil. Pas davantage, ils ne peuvent remplir des charges séculières impliquant l’obligation de rendre des comptes, ni s’adonner à des opérations commerciales. Pour saisir le processus historique de l’élaboration de ces normes, il faut opérer un retour vers le droit ancien de l’Antiquité tardive puis du haut Moyen-Âge, non pour établir une continuité historique, d’ailleurs illusoire, entre cette lointaine époque et la nôtre, mais pour tenter de comprendre comment l’histoire est sous-jacente dans le droit canonique actuel. Dès 313, Constantin mit en place une politique religieuse où l’Église catholique fut l’objet d’une bienveillance particulière. Le trait le plus remarquable de la façon dont l’empereur intégra l’Église aux structures de l’État, fut la concession d’un statut juridique civil particulier fait de dispenses, de privilèges et particulièrement d’immunités personnelles, notamment des charges publiques (munera publica), qu’il consentit aux clercs catholiques. Après la chute de l’Empire romain, en Occident, ces immunités cléricales furent généralement maintenues par les rois romano-barbares. L’Église accueillit avec reconnaissance cette législation de la part du pouvoir temporel car ce statut juridique accordé aux clercs répondait à ses propres exigences pour le clergé. Concernant l’exercice des activités séculières autorisées aux clercs, comment, dès le début du IVe siècle, les législations canoniques et séculières se sont-elles développées, confrontées, affrontées parfois et relativement harmonisées finalement, pour former une doctrine largement répandue, semble-t-il, chez les clercs et les princes à la fin du IXe siècle ? / According to the 1983 canon law, in force at present in the Latin Catholic Church, clerics can’t exercise a public charge consisting of participation to the civil power. What’s more, neither can they carry out a secular function comprising the obligation to account for it, nor can they devote themselves to any commercial operation. In order to grasp the historical process of elaboration of such norms, one has to go back to the ancient law of the late Antiquity, then of the early Middle Ages. Not so much as to establish a historical continuity, rather illusory, between that distant period of time and our time, but to try understanding how history is underlying the current canon law. As early as 313, Constantin put in place a religious policy where the Catholic Church was treated with a particular benevolence, the most remarquable feature of the way the Emperor integrated the Church into the state organization, was to concede a unique legal civil status made of exemption, privilege and particularly of personal immunities, notably public charges (numera publica) granted to Catholics clerics. After the fall of the Roman Empire, in the west, these clerical immunities were generally maintained by the roman-barbaric kings. This legislation was received with gratitude by the Church because the legal status given to clerics corresponded its own requirements for the Clergy. Regarding the exercising of the secular activities granted to the clerics, how, from the beginning of the fourth century, the secular and canonical laws did develop, confronted, sometimes forced and more or less harmonized in the end, to form a widespread doctrine; it seems, among clerics and princes at the end of the ninth century?

The feast of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary was one of the last medieval Marian feasts to be introduced into the Roman Calendar, and is unusual in the wealth of contemporary, and near contemporary, documentation available for study in relation to its introduction. The offices written by Jan of Jenštejn [1347-1400] and Adam Easton [1330-1397] for the feast of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary have never been the subject of detailed examination or comparison, nor have critical editions of these offices been produced. This thesis addresses both these gaps in scholarship and presents an analysis and comparison of the texts, melodies, and dissemination of the offices. Using contemporary evidence and secondary sources the reasons for the institution of the new feast, the motivations of both Jenštejn and Easton, their compositional styles including choice of texts and melodies, and the introduction process itself are examined within the wider context of contemporary Marian devotion and fourteenth- century textual and musical composition. Chapter One provides a contextual background to the celebration of the Visitation, from its inclusion in the Gospel of Luke and apocryphal sources to contemporary sermons, showing the importance of the Visitation in the West long before the new feast's introduction....