A Difficult Legacy : Initial Comments on the Inheritance Rights of Filii Clericorum in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period

Among the various categories of illegitimate children, a unique place is reserved for the offspring of clergymen who were engaged in concubinary relationships. At times these relationships would continue for years, in open violation of the centuries-old requirement of clerical celibacy. But from a legal point of view, not all children of the clergy were equal. In order to determine whether and what such children were entitled to inherit from the father’s estate, it was necessary to establish the degree of illegitimacy; and in order to do that, the first thing to be determined was whether the children were spurii or naturales. Throughout the Middle Ages, canon law had been fighting the scourge of concubinage by instituting punitive measures against the children of non-celibate priests, but the results were often ineffective. The Council of Trent and post-Tridentine papal law came down even more severely on the scandal of nicolaitism, in part to combat nascent Protestant movements. A minority of sixteenth-century treatises tends to recognize the right of children of clergy in sacris constituti to inherit from the father ex testamento. Nonetheless, the majority of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century doctrine reflected the severity imposed by Trent and by Pope Pius V, whereby such children were firmly denied any and all inheritance rights.