
What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England - Thevet
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-it-was-like-to-seek-asylum-in-medieval-england
======
ars
The author clearly knows more about the Christian practice than the Hebrew
(Jewish) one.

> while Hebraic tradition went bigger, declaring six whole cities as places
> where criminals could take refuge

This is not true. The only sanctuary offered in those cities was if someone
_accidentally_ or via negligence killed someone. The relatives were not able
to extract blood vengeance in those cities.

That's it. It was not for criminals. It was a way of discouraging blood
vengeance, while also punishing the perpetrator.

The perpetrator would also be required to be tried in court after claiming
refuge.

> These early asylums were established under the belief that the gods (or god)
> were inviolable, and thus their temples and holy sites shared this
> untouchable aspect.

Absolutely not true. If someone committed murder he could be dragged away from
the holy of holies if necessary.

~~~
kijin
You're right. There was no sanctuary for cold-blooded killers and traitors.

Example: In 1 Kings, Chapter 2, Joab flees to the tent of God and grabs the
horn of the altar. He had participated in Adonijah's failed coup d'etat and
killed two commanders of the Israeli army.

King Solomon doesn't even bother to drag him away from the altar before
killing him.

------
pointym5
The first image in that article is labeled _Notre Dame_ , but that's the title
for lots of cathedrals in France. That particular one is Notre Dame de Reims.
The reproduced old image towards the bottom is jokingly called "Notre Dame
back in the notre day", but that is clearly Westminster Abbey.

~~~
nsajko
To add to your comment: Notre Dame simply means Our Lady. I think it's clear
that that by itself is quite ambiguous.

------
lionhearted
In his biography of Charlemagne, historian Richard Winston advanced the idea
of sanctuary and similar privileges being granted to the clergy to give them a
useful function to native Pagan populations (Frankish -- modern day France and
Germany) that would otherwise be hostile to clergy.

Charlemagne also used monks and priests in something that looks like a proto-
civil service role... the registry of births, deaths, sacraments (marriage,
etc) could be used for taxation, sorting out property, etc.

It's an interesting book. Charlemagne comes across as very realpolitik-ish
despite the outward shows of piety, and also an excellent administrator.

~~~
agumonkey
Interesting, I'm very curious about the politics of structures (kingdoms and
such) before the revolution/democracy era. Pardon the cynicism, but many times
I end up doubting today's democracy is pragmatic enough, instead becomes a
thin cult absolving the need for good sense by trusting the 'public choice
every N years' system. Like believing the invisible hand of the free market
will balance things out gracefully.

------
pbhjpbhj
reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24aibx/how_historical_is_the_idea_that_a_church_could/

reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3e3etn/what_were_the_rules_for_claiming_sanctuary_in_a/

... and probably many others from the same subreddit?

Durham's sanctuary knocker is pictured and mentioned briefly in
[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20191/20191-h/20191-h.htm#ima...](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20191/20191-h/20191-h.htm#image09)
(which disagrees factually with the OP). Which seems to be based on the Rites
of Durham -
[https://ia802205.us.archive.org/2/items/ritesofdurhambei00ca...](https://ia802205.us.archive.org/2/items/ritesofdurhambei00cathrich/ritesofdurhambei00cathrich.pdf)
(cf. pp 41-42).

~~~
gus_massa
[Remember to add the [http://www](http://www) to trigger the URL link
detector.

Edit: for the lazy

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24aibx/how_hi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24aibx/how_historical_is_the_idea_that_a_church_could/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3e3etn/what_w...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3e3etn/what_were_the_rules_for_claiming_sanctuary_in_a/)
]

------
jbuzbee
>> [Church Asylum] surprisingly survived (in a much changed form) into the
17th century.

Longer than that. There was a case this year in Denver where an illegal alien
was given sanctuary in a church to prevent his deportation. After nine months,
a deal was worked out and he was allowed to leave without fear of deportation.

[http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_26803443/man-facing-
deport...](http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_26803443/man-facing-deportation-
claims-sanctuary-denver-church-basement)

And of course the other big Asylum story is the recent case where a criminal
was given "sanctuary" in San Francisco where he proceeded to randomly murder a
tourist taking a stroll. Maybe there was reason that the practice was formally
dropped in Europe centuries ago...

[edit for typo]

~~~
pdabbadabba
I suspect you're just trading on the multiple meanings of "sanctuary" to
inject your political views into this conversation. The modern practice bears
only superficial similarities with the medieval practice.

Yes, people use the word "sanctuary" to describe the practice explained in the
article, and also to describe modern U.S. localities' policies of selectively
enforcing federal immigration laws. (I say "selectively" because sanctuary
cities _will_ typically hand over known criminals for deportation.) But the
modern practice, based in the differing jurisdictions and legal obligations of
various levels of government in the U.S. federal system, does not have a lot
to do with medieval sanctuary laws. Medieval sanctuary practices, as described
in the article, largely took the place of (or served as) criminal punishment,
at every level of government, due to an interesting commingling of church and
secular law to which there is little analog in the U.S. Sanctuary cities also,
of course, only decline to enforce immigration laws, not other criminal laws
as was the case in medieval England.

And while I suppose it is slightly interesting to ponder the difference, I'm
not sure this slight relevance justifies injecting this flame-war inducing
topic (especially in such glib terms as "a criminal was given 'sanctuary' in
San Francisco where he proceeded to randomly murder a tourist taking a
stroll").

~~~
javert
To point out that there is a modern practice that is similar is relevant to
the conversation and not particularly inflammatory.

The proper way to converse on HN is to address the _content_ of the comment,
not complain _that it exists,_ like speech police. Unless the comment is
clearly WAY over the line, like if it were full of racial slurs. This case is
not at all like that.

These kinds of speech police comments---and there is more than just this one
---are what is turning this thread into a flame war.

Only a very small part of the political specturm would interpret the comment
in question as contra their political views and thus "inflammatory," and I'll
leave it to implication which part that is. Hint: It's the part that is the
usual culprit for wanting to restrict speech.

~~~
pdabbadabba
The speech-police impulse must truly be powerful, because apparently even you
have been unable to resist it! Or is speech metapolicing somehow more
valuable? A wise person once told me that "The proper way to converse on HN is
to address the content of the comment, not complain that it exists, like
speech police." But I digress.

To your point: I think you'll find that I did primarily address the content of
the comment, concluding that it drew a false comparison. My suggestion that
the comment was probably more inflammatory than valuable was the conclusion of
my discussion of the content. I can't quite see that you've given me the same
courtesy, though.

~~~
javert
Opposing "speech policing" is standing up for open speech. It is not a variant
of "speech policing." To claim that it is is just nasty verbal trickery.

It's exactly like one person saying "Criminals use guns to rob people" and
another person saying "But police use guns, too, so they're just as bad as
criminals." The proper distinction is that criminals use guns to _rob_ , and
police use guns to _protect_.

There is a technical name for this trick, "equivocation." It's equating things
that are different in essence by referencing superficial similarities.

And you've added a helping of sarcasm on top of that, which is never germane
to making a rational argument.

> I can't quite see that you've given me the same courtesy, though.

If I'm standing up for someone who is being "attacked" (for lack of a better
term), I can't exactly be courteous to the attacker _in the sense you are
asking,_ which is "not disagreeing." Which is not the normal sense of the word
"courteous." In the normal sense of "courteous," I have been courteous. The
post I made doesn't even reference you personally. This is another
equivocation on your part---equating actual courtesy and "not getting called
out."

Now, I'm going to end this conversation before someone who actually "works at"
HN has to come along and ask us to stop. I hope somebody has learned something
about equivocation from this comment, which is my intention. Otherwise it
would be pointless and I would not post it.

~~~
pdabbadabba
What you read as sarcasm I had intended to be lighthearted, so I'm sorry about
that.

But there was also a point buried in there: I think it is clearly not contrary
to the ideals of free/open speech to also hold the view that not every comment
is productive or welcome in the context of every conversation given the
prevailing community norms. This is why it is typically considered rude to
bring up religion, politics, or sex at a dinner party, to take just one
example.

What is going on here is merely that you think that comments suggesting that
other comments are a bit out of bounds are themselves out of bounds. Clearly,
therefore, we both believe that a conversation ought to have some subject
matter limits, so I don't think its fair to suggest that I am somehow anti
speech, while you are just here to defend others' rights. We just disagree
about what the proper limits of an HN discussion are, nothing more.

After all, my original comment was itself speech, speech that, apparently, you
would oppose.

~~~
jsprogrammer
There are no proper limits. If someone doesn't like a speech, they can just
down-mod it. Eventually an algorithm will cull the speech if some obscure
amount of down-mods occur.

Those who wish to censor, can on HN discussions.

------
tempodox
The article mentions “capitol crimes”. Do they need smarter spell checkers or
have I missed something?

------
benihana
Before the content even loaded there was a light box that blacked out the
content behind it asking for my email.

~~~
pflanze
Do like me and turn off JavaScript by default.

The more people we are, the greater the chances that the web remains usable
without JavaScript.

~~~
EC1
I can't remember the last time the teams I've worked on ever mentioned making
the site usable for people without JS and people with disabilities. "It's not
in the scope!" Ugh.

~~~
yulaow
I work for a public university, so when we make new sites or webapps we are
obliged to make them usable for people with disabilities and we have at least
one person who focus only on testing this... but without javascript? That is
not even considered. The web IS javascript driven

~~~
Amezarak
> The web IS javascript driven

I think the idea that you need Javascript to drive a page designed to show an
article consisting of text and images is probably worth questioning. Maybe you
do, I don't know. But I think you should at least think about instead of
falling back on the idea that the web is Javascript-driven.

You (probably) won't be benefiting the people without Javascript because
_hopefully_ your page works for them anyway. (Astoundingly, some simple
article-type pages do not.) You will be benefiting yourself and almost all
users because, without JS, your site will load faster and (often as not on
really JS-heavy websites) scroll faster.

If you're creating a webapp, sure, you'd be crazy not to use Javascript.

But it's insane that Internet comment threads or text-based articles can drive
yy i7 to 100% usage.

