Is America reverting to 1,000 years ago?

[Pototan]

It has always been my understanding that in Western Culture no person could be arrested in a church. Robin Hood, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Three Musketeers and many other fictional and historical stories always made this case as plain fact.

With the latest announcement that US ICE agents are authorized to arrest undocumented immigrants and refugees in American churches move Trump's America back to pre-medieval days.

Amazing

[Walleye]

1. Of course, the ICE agents will do anything they are told to do. Even if they are Catholics.

[GreenWave]

2. 1,000 years ago undocumented Europeans were not that big of a problem.

[Pototan]

7. But we've always had real and perceived criminals...

...especially citizens that were disloyal to the Crown.

[Paladin]

4. Yeah, let's not insult Native Americans.

70 or 80 years sounds about right.

[Pototan]

8. As my OP states

"Western Culture"

[Irish_Dem]

5. It is like we are re-living evil events from past eras.

[RobertDevereaux]

6. ICE folks, you missed the memo...

ICE folks, you missed the memo:
14Sec3 forbids Frump from holding office.
His orders? So much hot air.
Ignore them.

[gab13by13]

9. I wrote a letter to the editor

several years ago. My local newspaper was a red neck paper, the editor publicly called me out as his commie pinko buddy right in the paper.

My letter was about how we were less civilized today and I used the example of David sneaking into King Saul's tent and not killing him but taking his water jug and spear to prove he could have killed him. King Saul was hunting David. David wasn't that great of a choice for my example seeing as David did some bad shit himself, but I used that example regardless.

[stopdiggin]

10. that was always more storybook than real history (with a small degree of convention - WHEN acknowledged)

But it was never a hard and fast rule - and it almost never applied to anything other than the state approved 'faith' institution. ( a jew, a muslim or a native american offered little sanctuary in their own places of worship)

i.e. - nice story - but mostly just that.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Indeed - I've been listening to the History of England podcast, and fairly often when people lost a battle

and they fled to the nearest church, especially in a civil war situation, the winners just marched in and took them anyway - people didn't seem to see this as too awful, perhaps because they were in "hot pursuit", and a few hours' earlier the losers hadn't exactly been saintly.

When it was formalised in England, there was also a time limit, and if you ran it out, you were expected to flee the country:

Church sanctuaries were regulated by common law. An asylum seeker had to confess his sins, surrender his weapons, and permit supervision by a church or abbey organization with jurisdiction. Seekers then had forty days to decide whether to surrender to secular authorities and stand trial for their alleged crimes, or to confess their guilt, abjure the realm, and go into exile by the shortest route and never return without the king's permission. Those who did return faced execution under the law or excommunication from the Church.

If the suspects chose to confess their guilt and abjure, they did so in a public ceremony, usually at the church gates. They would surrender their possessions to the church, and any landed property to the crown. The coroner, a medieval official, would then choose a port city from which the fugitive should leave England (though the fugitive sometimes had this privilege). The fugitive would set out barefooted and bareheaded, carrying a wooden cross-staff as a symbol of protection under the church. Theoretically they would stay to the main highway, reach the port and take the first ship out of England. In practice, however, the fugitive could get a safe distance away, abandon the cross-staff and take off and start a new life. However, one can safely assume the friends and relatives of the victim knew of this ploy and would do everything in their power to make sure this did not happen; or indeed that the fugitives never reached their intended port of call, becoming victims of vigilante justice under the pretense of a fugitive who wandered too far off the main highway while trying to "escape".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_asylum#Medieval_England

Elizabeth Woodville did get sanctuary at Westminster Abbey twice, for extended periods, and the Lancastrians and then Richard III didn't seize her - perhaps being a woman with young children, rather than combatants, they thought it should be respected in her case.

[Igel]

11. Local governments were weak and the Church was strong.

And often justice was implemented without much of a trial by locals.

You would have trouble taking on the Church. It had authority. (Which may have adopted some of the sanctuary 'business' from Greeks and Romans, but still looked to the Torah for some of its implementation.)

It also blossomed in the "Dark Ages" and largely vanished during the Renaissance. It applied more to murder than other crimes, but I think few would want somebody who killed a "vulnerable" person to claim sanctuary and watch the police stay outside these days. Imagine a passionate defense of the idea for Dylann Roof.

You would be safe in the church--it was Church ground and authorities had no control over it. You would not be safe outside. And safe only for a limited time. The church required repentance (and perhaps conversion). And it might have its own penalty--it wasn't a permanent "stay out of jail free" card. This is "Church as secular power" building on classical examples but to some extent justifying it by taking over the Torah's restrictions and Jesus' preaching on forgiveness--after all, Jesus was our "go'el" or "redeemer". In the Torah if you were guilty of murder a go'el or "avenger of blood" if you're into KJV-speak was in charge of tracking you down and killing you--justice, sure, but also revenge. If it was accidental or claimed to be accidental, you could claim sanctuary, claim would be evaluated, and if it was an accident you'd be given leave to live in a sanctuary city. If you leave, the dead person's go'el could come after you and you'd have no protection. So the Church, if you repented, forgave you--but you'd be exiled. Exile in a time when survival depended often on family and family connections would be hard. (These days there are lots of support groups so self-exile, migration, is seen as better than staying put ... Something to remember about pre-modern utterances about "the stranger".)

I, for one, would have no trouble with police raiding a church to arrest a murderer--which is what the tradition mostly applied to. I would be okay with a pastor or priest stopping a lynch mob entering the church in order for civil authorities to arrest and investigate/try the person.

[roamer65]

13. 1000 years ago, North America was European free.

Given our legacy on this continent, I would say it was probably better times on it.

[MineralMan]

14. Back to 1025? No.

Few of us know much about that time, really.