Delator

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Delator (plural: delatores, feminine: delatrix) is

denouncer
, one who indicates to a court another as having committed a punishable deed.

Secular Roman law

In

De officiis
, ii. 14) expresses his opinion that such accusations should be undertaken only in the interests of the state or for other urgent reasons.

Under the

Tacitus, a charge of treason was regularly added to all criminal charges. The chief motive for these accusations was no doubt the desire of amassing wealth,[1] since by the law of majestas one-fourth of the goods of the accused, even if he committed suicide
in order to avoid confiscation (which was always carried out in the case of those condemned to capital punishment), was assured to the accuser (who was hence called quadruplator).

Pliny the Elder and Martial mention instances of enormous fortunes amassed by professional delators. But it was not without its dangers. If the delator lost his case or refused to carry it through, he was liable to the same penalties as the accused; he was exposed to the risk of vengeance at the hands of the proscribed in the event of their return, or of their relatives; while emperors like Tiberius would have no scruples about banishing or putting out of the way those whom he had no further use for and who might have proved dangerous to himself.

Constantine
; but delating lasted till the end of the 4th century.

Jewish law

Canon law

The term delatores was used by the Hispanian Synod of Elvira (c. 306) to stigmatize those Christians who appeared as accusers of their brethren. This synod decided[2] that if any Christian was proscribed or put to death through the denunciation (delatio) of another Christian, such a delator was to suffer perpetual excommunication, an extreme ecclesiastical punishment.

No distinction is made between true and false accusation, but the synod probably meant only the accusation of Christianity before the pagan judges, or at most a false accusation.[original research?] Any false accusation against a bishop, priest or deacon was visited with a similar punishment by the same synod. The punishment for false witness in general was proportioned by can. lxxiv to the gravity of the accusation.

The

Council of Arles (314)
issued a similar decree when it decided that Christians who accused falsely their brethren were to be forever excluded from communion with the faithful.

During the persecutions of the early Christians it sometimes happened that

Council of Arles, during the persecution of Diocletian Christians were denounced by their own brethren to the pagan judges. If it appeared from the public acts that an ecclesiastic had done this, he was punished by the synod with perpetual deposition; however, his ordinations
were still considered valid.

In general, false accusation is visited with severe punishments in later synods, e.g.

and others. These decrees appear in the later medieval collections of canons.

New punitive decrees against calumny were issued by Pope Gregory IX in his Decretals.[6]

Uses as an English word

See Owen J. Blum, OFM

The Catholic University of America
, 1990), 49 ("being an informer and delator of my brother's crimes").

In the alternate reality TV series An Englishman's Castle, depicting a Nazi-occupied Britain, the word "delator" is revived in reference to informers helping the Nazi occupiers.

Notes

  1. ^ "Delatores, genus hominum publico exitio repertum...per praemia eliciebantur" (Tacitus, Annals, iv.30)
  2. ^ can. lxxiii, Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, 2d ed., I, 188.
  3. ^ Apostolic Fathers ed. Lightfoot, 2d ed., I. i, 50 sqq.
  4. ^ 443 or 453, can. xxiv.
  5. ^ 506, can. viii.
  6. ^ de calumniatoribus, V, 3 in Corp. Jur. Can.

References