After the decline and fall of paganism, the privilege of serving as asylums for malefactors was obtained by the Christian temples. The credit of conferring this honour upon churches in general is attri buted to Pope Boniface V., in the begin ning of the seventh century; but more than two hundred years before, certain sacred buildings of the new religion are said to have been declared asylums by the Emperor Honorins. Indeed, the practice of churches being used as asyla is said to date from the conversion of Constantine the Great (A.D. 323). The asylums thus established eventually grew throughout all Christendom to be a still more intolerable abuse than those of the ancient world had been. In most countries, not only churches and convents, with their precincts,but even the houses of the bishops, came to be at length endowed with the pri vilege of sanctuary. In all these places the most atrocious malefactors might be found bidding defiance to the civil power. At the same time, there can be no doubt, that while in this way criminals were frequently rescued from justice, protec tion was also sometimes afforded to the innocent, who would not otherwise have been enabled to escape the oppression or private enmity which pursued them under the perverted forms of law. The insti tution was one of the many then existing which had the effect of throwing the regulating power of society into the hands of the clergy, who certainly were, upon the whole, the class in whose hands such a discretion was least likely to be abused. When communities, however, assumed a more settled state, and the law became strong with the progress of civi lization, the privileges which had at one time armed the church as a useful cham pion against tyranny, became not only un necessary, but mischievous. The church maintained a long and bard struggle in defence of its old supremacy ; and in the face of the stand thus made, and in oppo sition to ancient habits, and the popular superstition by which they were guarded, it was only very cautiously that attempts could be made to mitigate the evil. For a long time the legal extent of the privi lege of sanctuary appears to have been matter of violent dispute between the church and the civil power. In this country, it was not till the year 1487, in the reign of Henry VII., that by a bull of Pope Innocent VIII. it was declared, that if thieves, robbers, and murderers, having taken refuge in sanctuaries, should sally out and commit fresh offences, and then return to their place of shelter, they might be taken out by the king's officers. It was only by an Act of Parliament passed in 1534, after the Reformation, that persons accused of treason were debarred of the privilege of sanctuary. After the complete establishment of the Reformation, however, in the reign of Elizabeth, neither the churches nor sanc tuaries of any other description were allowed to become places of refuge for either murderers or other criminals. But various buildings and precincts in and near London continued for a long I time after this to afford shelter to debtors. At length, in 1697, all such sanctuaries, or pretended sanctuaries, were finally suppressed by the Act 8 & 9 Will. III. c. 26.
In Scotland, the precincts of the palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh still remain a sanctuary for debtors. The boundaries of this privileged place are somewhat extensive, comprehending the whole of what is called " the King's Park," in which is the remarkable hill called "Ar thur's Seat" The debtors find lodgings in a short street, the privileged part of which is divided from the remainder by a kennel running across it. Holyrood retains its privilege of sanctuary as being a royal palace ; but it is singular as being now the only palace in this country any part of the precincts of which is the pro perty, or at least in the occupation, of private individuals, and therefore open to the public generally.
In England, a legal asylum, or privi leged place, is called a sanctuary ; and this use of the word sanctuary appears to be peculiar to the English language. Both in this country and in America, the name of asylum is commonly given to benevolent institutions intended to afford shelter neither to criminals nor to debtors, but to some particular description of the merely unfortunate or destitute.
The Jewish Cities of Refuge, esta blished by Moses and Joshua, are the most remarkable instance on record of a system of asylum founded and protected by the state itself for the shelter of per sons who had violated the law. These cities, as we are informed in the twentieth chapter of the Book of Joshua, were six in number, three on each side of the Jordan. They only however protected the person who had killed another unwit tingly. With regard to such a person the command was, " If the avenger of blood pursue after him, then they shall sot deliver the slayer up into his hand ; because he smote his neighbour unwit tingly, and hated him not beforetime. And he shall dwell in that city, until he stand before the congregation for judg ment, and until the death of the high priest that shall be in those days ; then shall the slayer return, and come onto his own city, and unto his own house ; unto the city from whence he fled." (Joshua, xx. 5, 6.) This institution may be regarded as an ingenious device for pro tecting, on the one hand, the guiltless author of the homicide from the popular resentment which his unfortunate act would have been likely to have drawn upon him ; and cherishing, on the other, in the public mind, that natural horror at the shedding of human blood, which, in such a state of society, it would have been so dangerous to suffer to be weakened. We see the same principle in the penalty of the deodand imposed by the English law in the case of the accidental destruc tion of life by any inanimate object.
One of the most curious instances of the privilege of the sanctuary is that long enjoyed in Scotland by the descend ants of the celebrated Macduff, Thane of Fife, the dethrones of the usurper Mac beth. It is said to have been granted at the request of the thane by Malcolm III. (Canmore), on his recovery of the crown of his ancestors, soon after the middle of the eleventh century. By this grant it was declared that any person, being related to the chief of the clan Macduff within the ninth degree, who should have committed homicide without premedita tion, should have his punishment remitted for a fine, on flying to Macduff's Cross, which stood near Lindores in Fifeshire. Although this, however, is the account of the old Scottish historians, it is probable that the privilege only conferred upon the offender a right of being exempted from all other courts of jurisdiction except that of the Earl of Fife. Sir Walter Scott, in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, has printed a Latin document of the date of A.D. 1291, in which the pri vilege to this latter extent is pleaded in favour of an Alexander de Moravia. The original deed is still in existence. Of Macduff s Cross only the pedestal now remains, the cross itself having been destroyed at the Reformation. It bore a metrical inscription, in a strange half Latin jargon, the varying copies of which, still preserved, have given much occur*.
lion to the antiquaries. (Sibbald's His tory of Fife, particularly the second edition, 8vo. Cupar-Fife, 1802; Cunning hame's Essay upon Macduff's Cross ; and Camden's Britannia, by Gough.) [Seim WARY.)