Il diritto d’asilo nelle chiese in età moderna. Alcune riflessioni sull’immunitas e il privilegium

Asylum in sacred places has ancient origins. I will analyze, in addition to the main features of this right, the consequences of asylum on the penalty, and on criminals, to underline the effects of mitigation of the penalty and removal of the criminal from the poena sanguinis. In this sense, asylum is certainly a form of protection, of protection of the individual. It is not a right of the person, but protects it from negative consequences. The right of asylum, in the treatises of the Modern Age, is a right of the place that extends to people: having existed for a long time, the institute acquired at this time a greater value and became an object of great interest for canonists, but especially for the so-called criminalists, in light of the conflicts of jurisdiction between secular and ecclesiastical powers. After the fragmentation of the religious unity of the republica christiana, only apparently it is clearly reduced, to continue to survive to varying degrees even in the reformed churches and with double rites.