Talk:The Summoner's Tale

Not exclusively ecclesiastical
I have added a request for citation to the claim that summoners were officials of the ecclesiastical courts. My knowledge is that summoners were petty officers of the sheriff, in the common law courts, perhaps as well as the ecclesiastical courts. Deonyi (talk) 09:28, 13 May 2019 (UTC) Specifically, the OED states that a 'summoner' was 'a petty officer who cites and warns persons to appear in court.' with no mention of ecclesiastical courts. I note that Wiktionary appears to make the same ecclesiastical claim.Deonyi (talk) 09:31, 13 May 2019 (UTC) Blackstone provides 'given to the defendant by two of the sheriff’s messengers called summoners, either in person or left at his house or land:2 in like manner as in the civil law the first process is by personal citation' (emphasis mine), in Book 3 Chapter 9. Again, I am unsure if this office is distinct from the ecclesiastical summoner, though I think it is. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100542995 may be a good source for the claim perhaps?Deonyi (talk) 09:34, 13 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Haselmayer (1937) discusses the evidence for the role and duties of the medieval summoner: although the evidence is not as detailed as we would like, it does support the case the the summoner was "an officer attached to the consistory courts presided over by a bishop, and the archdiaconal courts conducted by an archdeacon". I added this to the article. Gdr 12:36, 15 July 2022 (UTC)