> Does anyone know exactly when and by whom clerics were forbidden to carry
> weapons? And in practice how did the ban play out?
>
> I ask because I'm reading Barry Unsworth's book Morality Play, and in it
> the fourteenth-century narrator says that only edged and pointed weapons
> were forbidden to priests, leaving them perfectly free to bash people's
> brains in with a stout cudgel. I was amazed because this is exactly the
> same rule that applied to a fantasy "cleric" in old-school Dungeons &
> Dragons, which I found unrealistic even as a kid. Did Barry Unsworth do
> his historical research by leafing through an old Dungeonmaster's Guide,
> or was Gary Gygax, creator of D&D, more historically accurate than I
ever
> gave him credit for?
>
> So far all I have found in online Catholic encyclopedias is the vague
> statement that, at least by the mid-twelfth century, clerics were
> forbidden to carry weapons and so needed to have special protections
added
> under the law to balance the restriction. But it never says when or by
> whom the original restriction was put in place, or whether their really
> was a formal or informal exception made for Friar Tuck types with
> quarterstaffs.
>
> Here's a thing about the Second Lateran Council, which mentions the
> original ban in Canon 15:
> http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran2.html
>
|
