Word Finder - edicts

definition

A proclamation of law or other authoritative command.

The Eastern bishops subscribed, these edicts, and even Pope Vigilius yielded, in spite of the protests of the Western bishops, and at the 5th General Council (Constantinople, 553) agreed to the condemnation of the "three chapters" 1 and the anathematizing of any who should defend them by an appeal to the Definitions of Chalcedon.

The parlements issued a series of edicts against the heretics, culminating in the very harsh general edict of Fontainebleau, sanctioned by the parlement of Paris in 1543.

One of the edicts is addressed to the order, and urges upon its members and the laity alike the learning and rehearsal of passages from the Buddhist scriptures.

The nobles protested, and Egmont was deputed to go to Madrid and try to obtain from the king a mitigation of the edicts and redress of grievances.

It was, however, the preaching of Latimer more than the edicts of Henry that established the principles of the Reformation in the minds and hearts of the people; and from his preaching the movement received its chief colour and complexion.

The first important regulations which were issued under the law of 1867 applied to Dalmatia, and for that country between 1872 and 1876 a series of laws and edicts were issued determining to what extent the Slavonic idioms were to be recognized.

The agency by which these principles were introduced was the edicts of the praetor, an annual proclamation setting forth the manner in which the magistrate intended to administer the law during his year of office.

Salvius Julianus was entrusted by Hadrian with the task of reducing into shape the immense mass of law which had grown up in the edicts of successive praetors - thus taking the first step towards a code.

The money could not be collected, and the edicts against private wars and the maintenance of armed retainers were hard to enforce.

In a number of edicts, both before and after the synod, he published throughout India the grand principles of the faith.

Following the example of William of Orange, Hoorn, Berghen and other governors, the magistrates generally declined to enforce the edicts, and offered to resign rather than be the instruments for burning and maltreating their fellow-countrymen.

The toleration edicts of Galerius and of Constantine and Licinius were published during his pontificate, which was also marked by the holding of the Lateran synod in Rome (313) at which Caecilianus, bishop of Carthage, was acquitted of the charges brought against him and Donatus condemned.

Claude Rigot, the procureur-general, put it to Servetus that his legal education must have warned him of the provisions of the code of Justinian to this effect; but in 1535 all the old laws on the subject of religion had been set aside at Geneva; the only civil penalty recognized by the edicts of 1 543 being banishment.

Wholly novel and distinctive it is not, for the rulers of Catholic countries, like Spain and France, and of England (before the publication of the Act of Supremacy) could and did limit the pope's claims to unlimited jurisdiction, patronage and taxation, and they introduced the placet forbidding the publication within their realms_ of papal edicts, decisions and orders, without the express sanction of the government - in short, in many ways tended to approach the conditions in Protestant lands.

But when the Agape on one side and paganism on the other receded into a dim past, owing to the enhanced sacrosanctity of the Eucharist and because of the severe edicts of the emperor Theodosius and his successors, the psychological background fell away, and the Eucharist was left isolated and hanging in the air.

This he accomplished by five means - by a council to settle the faith, by edicts promulgating its principles, by a state department to watch over its purity, by missionaries to spread its doctrines, and by an authoritative collection of its sacred books.

On his return to Constantinople in 369-70 Valens began to persecute his orthodox and Catholic subjects, but he lacked the energy to carry out his edicts rigorously.

They began to be alarmed by the severity with which the edicts against heresy were being carried out, and by the rising indignation among the populace.

The edicts of Milan had only admitted the Christian Church among the number of lawful religions; but the tendency (except in the time of Julian) was towards making it the only lawful religion.

These, and also many of the edicts passed by kings of the Ayuthia period which have been preserved, are now of value more as curiosities of literature and history than anything else, since, for all practical purposes, they have long been superseded by laws more in accordance with modern ideas.

The union even then met with resistance from a number of bishops, who, rather than accede.to it, submitted to deposition and expulsion from their sees; and it was not until these had all died out that, as the result of stringent imperial edicts, Nestorianism may be said to have become extinct throughout the Roman empire.

After making vain complaints in the senate, he shut himself up in his own house during the remaining eight months of his consulship, taking no part in public business beyond fulminating edicts against Caesar's proceedings, which only provoked an attack upon his house by a mob of Caesar's partisans.

The progress of the corrupt Christianity of the empire of Byzantium was checked for a while under Julian the Apostate, who, among other indications of his opposition to Christianity, rescinded the edicts against the Jews on his coming to the throne in 361, and gave orders for the restoration of the Jewish temple.

The latter were kept down by numerous edicts, tending to restrict to certain privileged families the rank of master workman in the gilds.

As these rules were often accepted by his successors, the praetor thus acquired an almost legislatorial power, and his edicts, thus continued, corrected and amplified from year to year, became, under the title of the "perpetual" edicts, one of the most important factors in moulding Roman law.

The struggle, however, with the Protestant princes of Germany not only led to continual demands of Charles for men and money from his Netherland dominions, but to his determination to prevent the spread of Protestant opinions; and a series of edicts was passed, the most severe of which (that of 1550) was carried out with extreme rigour.

Italy did the same in its laws in 1873, 1879, 1881, 1887 and 1889; and Germany fostered enterprise of this kind by the imperial edicts, of 1875, 1878 and 1892.

The emperor Frederick II.'s edicts and the so-called etablissements of St Louis provide that the civil officers should search out suspected heretics and deliver them to the ecclesiastical judges.

The edict of Nantes recapitulated and codified the provisions of a series of earlier edicts of toleration, which had come with each truce during the previous generation.

The educational department has done good work in compiling volumes of prose and verse which have found much favour with the public. All the laws, edicts and regulations at present in force are to be had in print at popular prices.

All the edicts against the dissidents were, at the same time, repealed.

The Annales Maximi of the Pontifex Maximus, the annual edicts of the praetor, the lists of Roman and municipal senators, (decuriones) and jurors (album indicum) were exhibited in this manner.

Meanwhile the Christian calendar had been adopted and the old anti-Christian edicts removed.

It was at the instance of Galerius that the first of the celebrated edicts of persecution against the Christians was published, on the 24th of February 303, and this policy of repression was maintained by him until the appearance of the general edict of toleration (31 I), issued in his own name and in those of Licinius and Constantine.

One of the three contains 168 (together with 13 Edicts), but some of these are by the emperors Justin II.

Such edicts are still found graven deep upon pillars, in caves and on rocks, from the Yusafzai valley beyond Peshawar on the north-western frontier, through the heart of Hindustan, to Kathiawar and Mysore on the south and Orissa in the east.

What the religion was is explained in the edicts.

The conversion of Constantine to Christianity - or rather the profession of Christianity by Constantine - seemed likely to result in another Jewish persecution, foreshadowed by severe repressive edicts.

Such writings have affinities with both the letter and the epistle, and they may further be compared with the "edicts and rescripts by which Roman law grew, documents arising out of special circumstances but treating them on general principles."

It supplied them with an incentive to scientific research in archaeology and grammar; it penetrated jurisprudence until the belief in the ultimate identity of the jus gentium with the law of nature modified the praetor's edicts for centuries.

In order to enforce the registration of edicts the king would send lettres de cachet, known as lettres de jussion, which were not, however, always obeyed.

This measure (amended) became law on the 1st of May, and provided for the repeal of the NonIntercourse Act of 1809, authorized the president, "in case either Great Britain or France shall before the 3rd day of March next so revoke or modify her edicts as that they shall cease to violate the neutral commerce of the United States," to revive non-intercourse against the other, and prohibited British and French vessels of war from entering American waters.

Edicts further extending the royal power in ecclesiastical affairs were even issued in 1418, after the schism was at an end.

The emperor cannot be acquitted of the intolerance which marks edicts such as that depriving apostatizing Christians of the right of bequest.

Other edicts of an earlier or later date forbade the unorthodox to hold assemblies in the towns, enjoined the surrender of all churches to the catholic bishops, and overthrew the heathen temples "throughout the whole world."

The first figure, that of the date of Asoka, is arrived at by the mention in one of his edicts of certain Greek kings, as then living.

It is said by this school of legal historians that, from the Conquest down to Henry VIII., the Church of England was regarded by churchmen not as in any sense as separate entity, but as two provinces of the extra-territorial, super-national Catholic Church, and that the pope at this period was contemplated as the princeps of this Catholic Church, whose edicts bound everywhere, as those of Augustus had bound in the Roman empire.

The Niganthas are referred to in one of Asoka's edicts (Corpus Inscriptionum, Plate xx.).

The Lollard literature was very widely circulated - books by Wycliffe and Hereford and tracts and broadsides - in spite of many edicts proscribing it.

After Theuderichs death (737) he left the throne vacant until 742, but he himself was king in all but name; he presided over the royal tribunals, appointed the royal officers, issued edicts, disposed of the funds of the treasury and the churches, conferred immunities upon adherents, who were no longer the kings nobles but his own, and even appointed the bishops, though there was nothing of the ecclesiastic about himself.