ABSTRACT
Sanctuary practice which once mimicked the Divine embrace of the wrongdoer through penitential renewal had become no more than an index of medieval savagery. During the central Middle Ages, the European medieval grounded his or her experience of law in a cultural structure that drew its shape from liturgical, penitential, and creedal elements. Sanctuary practice, they say, was a ray of light in the otherwise dark and muddy field of early medieval criminal procedure. To be fidelis, in turn, was to be 'law-worthy.' Undergirding medieval law was not a theory of rights, but an attitude of trust and defence. The element of charity as a component of perfect justice has a long lineage and is already mentioned by St Augustine in his letter to Macedonius where he seeks to explain the justification for sanctuary. The lack of regularity to what may be asked of the sanctuary-seeker is not indicative of weak legal procedure.
