Introduction

In the view of the famous student of comparative law Henry Sumner Maine, the earliest days of European criminal law were marked by a decidedly religious character. It was God who first instructed men that they were not to commit murder. It was God who alerted men to the dangers of perjury. Maine’s view also long held the field among European and American lawyers, theologians and historians. Virtually all Churches – Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox – have canons. They contain rules and legal principles touching offences and offenders. They establish court systems, enact procedural rules and provide definitions of both wrongful conduct and available remedies and penalties. Law and the Christian ministry are learned professions. To be complete, even to be respectable, each field of inquiry requires some familiarity with history. A concern for law and crime appears in the works of virtually all the greatest Christian thinkers.