“Sanctuary, (from the late Lat. sanctuarium, a sacred place), a sacred or consecrated place, particularly one affording refuge, protection or right of asylum; also applied to the privilege itself, the right of safe refuge” (Encyclopedia Britannica).
This sacred custom and tradition, fully incorporated by the Catholic Church, found her greatest proponent from the beginning of King AEethelbert’s reign in England beginning in 600 AD. He set in place the ancient law which sanctioned the felon’s right to flee to the safety of the Church. This brief respite, generally a term of thirty to forty days, honored since antiquity, which cultures recognized that sacred ground and revered as such, is holy and protected all by its consecrated shield.
Though sheltered from any bodily harm and capture while under the Church’s protection, the punitive aspects were recognized as required rather than dictated from the legal realm. This knowledge was a forehand of the consequences that asylum seeking would render, whether one would be brought to trial for the crime or voluntarily banish one’s self from the country. This was the crux of the criminal’s decision to flee to the security of the Church.
Unified by the precedents set from the oldest and continuously functioning legal system in history, the Catholic Church, integrating Canon Law and Common Law, specifically in England and Western Europe, set forth one of Her many doctrines. “A fugitive convicted of felony and taking the benefit of sanctuary was afforded protection from thirty to forty days, after which, subject to certain severe conditions, he had to ‘abjure the realm,’ within a specified time and take an oath not to return without the king’s leave. Violation of the protection of sanctuary was punishable by excommunication,” for the crime against God was a far more heinous sin which cast the offender in the greater peril (Catholic Encyclopedia).
The abuse and mockery of the sinner to disdain the gift brought banishment from the Catholic Church, carrying a magnitude more serious and bred a doom upon the soul. (In the past forty-five years, the fear or rather the weight of retribution carries nothing to those committing the same mortal sins in full knowledge.) This, more than abjuring the realm, entails the more profound grief and loss, for it was not only the Church who rejected you in their pain of loss, for you had rejected God.
The deliberate choice of choosing evil to validate acts of murder handed your soul to Satan. For many, the right of sanctuary pleaded the sin for forgiveness and, knowing the immediate consequences, was given the time to breathe without capture. Where confession and contrition could be spoken for the mercy to stained and broken souls. With God’s Son, resurrected in the priest, the gift of mercy freely is bestowed, knowing the difference between condemning the sin and the gentleness needed to bring back the sinner.
A horrific irony occurred on Henry VIII’s defection to the Reformation, the ecclesiastical right of sanctuary ceased for all Catholics in England. The corrupted became the allegiance to a king as paramount over God. The members of the Catholic Church, now fugitives, were denied not only their faith, they became the captive witnesses to the destruction of their holy ground — yet they found their priests by a single candle in the window, a sanctuary to God never diminished nor blown out.
