Since English lawyers started writing text books about the law of evidence, they have denied that religious confession privilege exists at common law. However, that statement of the law surprises those who recognise confessional secrecy dating back into the first millennium AD. It is also counter-intuitive in Federal Australia since the one human freedom which the Constitution has guaranteed since 1901 is the “free exercise of any religion”. This thesis analyses the legal conclusion that there is no religious confession privilege at common law against available historical materials. Those materials include the origin of confessional secrecy in Christian practice and the entrenchment of that practice in canon law; the recognition and even the reception of canonical practices in the custom that became the common law; and all the English common law cases that have affirmed or denied religious confession privilege whether in passing or in an arguably precedential way. The reason why clear evidence of the existence of the privilege even seventy years after the English Reformation has been ignored by the text writers is traced to an uncorrected interpretive error made by the text writer Peake in 1801. His error has been uncritically followed and affirmed by later commentators and judges. However, until Gavan Duffy J decided Cook v Carroll in Ireland in 1945 and the Supreme Court of Canada decided R v Gruenke in 1991, there was no reported decision on religious confession privilege anywhere in the British Commonwealth. All else that had been written was at best obiter dicta. The factors that influenced those two courts to recognise not a narrow religious confession privilege but a more encompassing confidential religious communications privilege are then measured against Australian jurisprudence to suggest whether the High Court of Australia would come to a similar conclusion.

Title Analytical Survey of Czech Manuals for Penitents Issued after 1990 Abstract The thesis is based on a description and analysis of the manuals for penitents that were issued in the Czech Republic after 1990. These manuals (confessional mirrors) are designed as aids in the preparation for the Sacrament of Penance. Since 1990 the religious literature may be freely published in our country and the focus of the thesis is put on the manuals published since then. To assess the materials competently, the thesis at first deals with the theology of the Sacrament of Penance as such. The central part of the thesis presents different aids for penitents, comes with their basic description and with the evaluation of their handiness (for which group of penitents or for which occasion is the manual fit). This analysis will be followed by the description and evaluation of the manuals for confessors that provide a practical aid for the improvement of the priestly service. The different ways of practical fitness of these tools will be assessed. The main aim of the thesis consists in providing an insight into different manuals for penitents and to facilitate the orientation among them to help with the choice of a fitting tool in concrete cases. Another goal of the thesis is to facilitate the orientation among the manuals...

Fine Arts / Master / Master of Philosophy

The Diploma thesis "Devotion and iconography of st. Mary Magdalen" - Two biblical characters have been associated with Mary Magdalene since the time of Gregory the Great; the unnamed sinner and Mary of Bethany. According to the Bible Mary Magdalene was one of the women who accompanied Jesus during His ministry. She was the woman from whom Jesus had cast out seven demons. She washed Jesus' feet with her tears and ointment. When Jesus was crucified she was there standing under the cross. She was present at His funeral. On Easter Sunday she went to the grave of the Lord to anoint His body. She discovered the empty tomb and saw the resurrected Jesus, who appeared to her as a gardener and sent her to announce His Resurrection to His disciples. She is considered "the apostle of the Apostles". According to an old French legend she was put in a boat without sails or oars and sailed to Marseilles, where she preached the gospel. Then she retreated to a cavern. There she lived as a recluse for thirty years. Every day she was lifted by angels up to heaven. She was buried in Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume. Her main cult centers were the places where her relics had been preserved; Vezelay in Burgundy in the Romanesque period , and Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baumesince since the 13th to 18th century. She is usually...

I den här uppsatsen analyserar jag protagonisten Jean-Baptiste Clamences moraliska utveckling i Albert Camus’ roman Fallet. Jag använder A.J. Greimas aktantmodell och dennes utveckling av Vladimir Propps funktionsanalys för att nå mitt syfte. Jag föreslår även en kombination av de båda teorierna till ett schema, aktantfunktionsschemat, som jag använder för att tolka Clamences moraliska utveckling. Genom aktant-funktionsanalysen visar det sig hur Clamence gradvis djupnar och växer fast i sitt fall och sin skuld. Han söker den moraliska oskuld som flytt men inser till slut att den har gått oåterkalleligt förlorad. Istället underkastar han sig sin skuld och blir domare-botgörare – en falsk profet som förhärligas i självförgudningen.Men utvecklingen av samtalet går fel. Istället för att bryta ner den andre och tvinga fram dennes bekännelse möter Clamence sin överman i samtalspartnern, och jag argumenterar för att Clamence misslyckas med sitt syfte, underkastar sig samtalspartnern och gränsar till vansinnet. Det mest förvånande resultatet av analysen är hur samtalspartnern måste framstå som den verklige hjälten i historien vilket kräver en ny definition av aktanterna och klargörandet av en bakomliggande historia. Jag föreslår att samtalspartnern kan ses som en ny Kristus men tillstår behovet av vidare forskning. / In this essay I analyse the moral progression of Jean-Baptiste Clamence, the protagonist in Albert Camus’ novel The Fall. I employ A.J. Greimas’ actantial model and his development of Vladimir Propp’s function analysis for my purposes. I also propose a combination of the theories into a new actantial-functional scheme through which I analyses Clamence’s moral progression. Through the actantial-functional analysis it becomes clear how Clamence gradually deepens and grows rooted in his fall and guilt. Though seeking the moral innocence which he has lost he finally realises that it is gone forever and instead he submits to his fate and becomes judge-penitent – a false prophet indulging in self-deification. But the development of the conversation goes wrong. Instead of breaking the interlocutor down and forcing his confession Clamence meets his superior in the interlocutor, and I argue that Clamence fails in his aim, surrenders to the other and borders on madness. The most intriguing result of the analysis is how the interlocutor must stand out as the true hero of the novel which calls for a new definition of the actants in the novel and for the need of a primary story. I suggest that the interlocutor may be seen as an incarnation of Christ but acknowledges the need of further research.

The early modern period of a time of religious renewal and upheaval that resulted in a wealth of new religious orders, particularly those for women. During this period of change, Catholic women responded to the threat of Protestantism by adapting the convent to their own needs. One of the most successful orders for women was the Congregation of the Visitation, founded by Jeanne de Chantal and François de Sales. The history of the Visitation tends to focus on de Sales rather than its cofounder de Chantal. This thesis attempts to reconcile this omission, detailing de Chantal's ability to demonstrate and enact her authority through the mode of letters. In doing so, this paper enters into a conversation on religious revival in the early modern period by illustrating the porous nature of the early modern convent and the role women had in shaping early modern religiosity. / History