Resumen de Dormiens comparatur furioso: Les origines canoniques de l' irresponsabilité pénale di dormeur
Doctrinal discussions of the criminal liability of a sleeping person began around the year 1150, concerned largely with sexual dreams and nocturnal emissions. At first tbe canonists' decisions were shaped by the entanglement of the theological notion of sin and the legal concept of crime, and they favoured an exclusively eschatological perspective, concerned only with the remission of sins. In the course of the renaissance of the 12th century and the rediscovery of the Justinianic compilations, canonists compared "dormiens" with the Roman "furiosus" who they first declared sinless, and then criminally irresponsible. In the early 14th century, jurists focused mostly on homicide committed while sleepwalking. Drawing on technical concepts and tbe terminology used to define responsibility found in the Lex Aquilia, civilians and canonists alike decided that the sleepwalker could be held responsible as criminally negligent if he did not take necessary precautions before falling asleep. The principle of the irresponsibility of a sleeping person and the exceptions to this irresponsibility, consolidated as doctrinal consensus at around 1310, were the fruit of an interpenetration of Roman law, canon law, and theology.
