Baptism and Civic-Membership in Medieval and Early Modern Law

Baptism is a theological and religious sacrament by which individuals become Christians. This article shows that in medieval and renaissance law, baptism was also a civil legal event which could grant civilitas . From the Siete Partidas onwards, baptism was taken to be a legitimate origin of natural obligations within a community. As jurists like Lucas de Penna bridged the legal gap between spiritual matters ( spiritualia ) and temporal matters ( temporalia ), jurists and theorists alike could argue that baptism ought to change one’s legal origin ( patria or origo ) or liberate them from certain civic obligations while contracting them into others. Only by tracing how baptism came to have civil and legal significance can we then understand how participants in political communities leveraged the obligations created through baptismal oaths against tyrants, kings, bishops and their fellow civic-members.