The Medieval Court of Arches (review)

The metropolitan appellate court of the archbishop of Canterbury, the Court of Arches (or the Arches, for short) that met in St. Mary le Bow church in central London, was the most important medieval English ecclesiastical tribunal. Logan's study of the court ranges from its creation sometime in the mid-thirteenth century until the early sixteenth century, when Henrician statutes prohibited legal recourse in ecclesiastical matters from England to the pope.

The volume contains an excellent lengthy introductory essay, wherein Logan not only offers a summary history of the Arches, but also provides an analysis of the court's structure, personnel, administrative routine, and trial procedures. He has collected and carefully edited an impressive range of Latin documents, which he has grouped in three sections after his introduction: archiepiscopal statutes concerning the Arches, the customs of the court, and procedural treatises designed for practitioners in this tribunal. Two further sections follow the edited texts. One lists the names, ordered chronologically and by office, of several hundred court personnel (officiales Cantuariensis, deans of the Arches, examiners general, registrars, scribes of the acts, apparitors, proctors, and advocates). The other briefly describes the court's calendar of sessions.

While the existence of the Court of Arches dates at least from 1251, Logan suggests that disputes concerning appeals could have spurred Archbishop Boniface of Savoy after his 1245 consecration to establish a provincial appellate tribunal fixed at St. Mary le Bow. By the end of the century the Court of Arches had presiding officers (the archbishop's officialis and the latter's commissary-general, the dean of the Arches) as well as a professional—and probably already closed—group of sworn practitioners, namely, the advocates and proctors who functioned roughly in the same manner as modern barristers and solicitors. Several archbishops had already issued statutes; the customs of the court had been redacted in written form, and several procedural treatises had been composed.

During this early period the Arches heard three kinds of cases: appeals from diocesan courts, direct complaints, and so-called tuitorial appeals, whereby a litigant appealed the main issue in dispute directly to the pope, while requesting protection (or tuition) from the archbishop in the interim. The second and third kinds of cases periodically caused friction between the archbishop and his suffragans. In the early 1280's the latter charged that direct complaints to the Arches bypassed their own diocesan courts, and that the appellate court's summary procedure of granting tuition permitted frivolous appeals. Arbitration settled this conflict in 1282; apart from intermittent disputes, Canterbury archbishops and suffragans managed to co-operate in the smooth functioning of the court.

Direct appeals to the Arches could be made from a diocesan court's sentence, and by a grievance or expected grievance regarding the lower court's proceedings. Direct appeals could also result from a complaint regarding an actual or expected administrative act. Tuitorial appeals were possible at any time, and procedure for such was summary and could be completed within several days. During these proceedings the parties could even agree to have the main issue determined definitively in the Arches, in effect bypassing the bishop's court. In direct appeals the procedure was more complex and protracted.

The first section of Logan's edited texts contains archiepiscopal statutes concerning the court, most of which can be found in the official court copy, the Black Book of the Arches. Logan presents not only Winchelsey's (1295) and Stratford's (1342) general sets, but also ten other individual statutes from 1273 to1423 dealing with single subjects. The general sets and individual statutes legislated all manner of procedural detail, regulation of personnel, and court authority. Five other statutes edited by Logan are not found in the Black Book, but elsewhere; they range from 1280 to1528, and also concern individual subjects. In the second section of texts Logan presents the Consuetudines curie de arcubus, the written customs of the court that complement...