La disciplina canonica del fenomeno confraternale dal Medioevo agli inizi dell’Età contemporanea: brevi note storico-giuridiche
DI LORENZO SINISI
ABSTRACT – This essay concerns the events affected by the intervention of the Church on the legislative regulation of the phenomenon of lay associations with religious purposes in a long period ranging from the Middle Ages to the early Contemporary Era. After the first interventions in the Carolingian age, we strangely have no confirmation, in the face of a great development and diffusion of the Confraternities which took place between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries in Western Europe, of a normative production by the popes up to the situation. For a first important legislative intervention on the subject by the Roman Church it will be necessary to wait for the Council of Trent with its decrees de reformatione; this legislation will be the basis of the subsequent developments of the discipline of confraternities destined to be reorganized in the Code of Canon Law of 1917.
KEYWORDS – Confraternity – Canon Law – Lay Associations – Bishop – Councils and Synods