Res pretiosa as the church's cultural property: The origin and development of ecclesiastical legislation

Abstract

Among the rights proclaimed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and by article 60 of the Second Vatican Council's pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world is the right to culture. Implicit in this right is the duty imposed on the public authority to preserve the tangible evidences of culture, cultural property. This study aims at exploring the origins and development of the notion of res pretiosa and asks if res pretiosa has become the cultural property of the Church in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. The term cultural property comes from the civil law. It seems first to have appeared in the 1954 Hague Convention and it has become well developed in international law and, more recently, in Anglo-American common law. Chapter 1 traces the development of this law and summarizes the legislation for the preservation of cultural property internationally and in Britain and the United States. Chapter 2 follows the notion res pretiosa from its locus classicus in the 1468 papal bull Ambitiosae back to its cradle in the Roman law of tutor and ward, where it meant "valuable chattels," and then forward through its adoption in canon law. It also looks at its elaboration there, and its codification in the 1917 Code of Canon Law where it has been narrowed to include only chattels valuable for their artistic, historical or intrinsic worth character and the effects of Vatican II on it. Chapter 3 looks at the notion of res pretiosa as found in the 1983 Code, the 1990 Eastern Code and in the suppletive documents, especially those of the Pontifical Commission for the Preservation of the Church's Cultural Heritage. The chapter concludes with a look at that agency and the other agencies of the Roman Curia having care of the Church's cultural heritage. In the conclusion section the author answers the question whether in the 1983 Code res pretiosa has become the cultural property of the Church. He concludes that, while res pretiosa includes cultural property, the term res pretiosa remains broader than the term "cultural property." He also concludes that it would be desirable for the Supreme Legislator to amend the 1983 Latin Code and 1990 Eastern Code so that the terms res pretiosa might be used identically on both and that term and "cultural property" might become coterminous. He also suggests that the Historic Churches Committees developed by the Bishops of England and Wales and their procedures might usefully be adopted in North America to deal with cases of changes proposed to historic churches.