Live data from Hacker News

What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

atlasobscura.com

1–10 of 75 posts

Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#3
>> [Church Asylum] surprisingly survived (in a much changed form) into the 17th century.

Longer than that. There was a case this year in Denver where an illegal alien was given sanctuary in a church to prevent his deportation. After nine months, a deal was worked out and he was allowed to leave without fear of deportation.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_26803443/man-facing-deport...

And of course the other big Asylum story is the recent case where a criminal was given "sanctuary" in San Francisco where he proceeded to randomly murder a tourist taking a stroll. Maybe there was reason that the practice was formally dropped in Europe centuries ago...

[edit for typo]

Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#4
post #3

>> [Church Asylum] surprisingly survived (in a much changed form) into the 17th century. Longer than that. There was a case this year in Denver where an illegal alien was given sanctuary in a church to prevent his deportation. After nine months, a deal was worked out and he was allowed to leave without fear of deportation. http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_26803443/man-facing-deport... And of course the other big Asy…

"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#5
post #3

>> [Church Asylum] surprisingly survived (in a much changed form) into the 17th century. Longer than that. There was a case this year in Denver where an illegal alien was given sanctuary in a church to prevent his deportation. After nine months, a deal was worked out and he was allowed to leave without fear of deportation. http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_26803443/man-facing-deport... And of course the other big Asy…

"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The point is that the article claims that practice petered out in the 17th century. I show otherwise. The article also states that one reason the practice was abolished was due to criminals leaving their sanctuary to commit more crimes.

'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' George Santayana

Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#6
reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24aibx/how_historical_is_the_idea_that_a_church_could/

reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3e3etn/what_were_the_rules_for_claiming_sanctuary_in_a/

... and probably many others from the same subreddit?

Durham's sanctuary knocker is pictured and mentioned briefly in http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20191/20191-h/20191-h.htm#ima... (which disagrees factually with the OP). Which seems to be based on the Rites of Durham - https://ia802205.us.archive.org/2/items/ritesofdurhambei00ca... (cf. pp 41-42).

Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#7
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The point is that the article claims that practice petered out in the 17th century. I show otherwise. The article also states that one reason the practice was abolished was due to criminals leaving their sanctuary to commit more crimes. 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' George Santayana

No. You are a troll. You mentioned that it was probably dropped for a reason after mentioning the murder. I can also mention of a person that was saved by a doctor and then went on to kill somebody. Maybe doctors should stop saving people.

Again, you are a fucing troll.

Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#8
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The point is that the article claims that practice petered out in the 17th century. I show otherwise. The article also states that one reason the practice was abolished was due to criminals leaving their sanctuary to commit more crimes. 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' George Santayana

The city of San Francisco did not give Lopez-Sanchez (the alleged murderer) sanctuary in the same way as described in the article. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was free to detain Lopez-Sanchez at any time while he was in San Francisco, and then deport him.

What San Francisco did was refuse to comply with the ICE request to detain Lopez-Sanchez, because he didn't have a violent record and because ICE did not get an arrest warrant. In situations like this, ICE apparently does not want to go through the process of getting a warrant, preferring instead to treat local law enforcement as an extension of federal immigration enforcement.

But in the U.S.'s federal system, it is not the responsibility of local law enforcement to simply do whatever the feds them to do. The responsibility of SFPD is to the people of San Francisco, not to ICE. Obviously in this case the result was horrific, but up to this point the policy was in place because the City believed it better served the needs of the people of San Francisco, and the people apparently agreed.

There's obviously a good case to be made for local police departments to comply with ICE requests. On the other hand, I find it disturbing that ICE could simply order my local police department to detain me (a US citizen) without getting a warrant, just on their say-so. As someone with a strong respect for the U.S. federal system, I found your comparison to medieval sanctuary to be cheap and inflammatory. Hence my earlier comment.

Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#9
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that the article claims that practice petered out in the 17th century. I show otherwise. The article also states that one reason the practice was abolished was due to criminals leaving their sanctuary to commit more crimes. 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' George Santayana

No. You are a troll. You mentioned that it was probably dropped for a reason after mentioning the murder. I can also mention of a person that was saved by a doctor and then went on to kill somebody. Maybe doctors should stop saving people. Again, you are a fuc ing troll.

I think what you are trying to express, in your own quixotic way, is that the phrase "murdered for taking a stroll" belies the complex causes of the murder.

And he's a "troll" because he justified this conversation-prompt with a genuine value-add

Post reply on HN