Virtual Refectory: Safe as...churches?

Seeking asylum throughout history...

L.P. Hartley’s oft trotted-out line suggests, ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’. But is it? Is it really all too different?

As the war rages between Ukraine and Russia, and hundreds of thousands of fleeing citizens desperately seek protection, or sanctuary, from the ravages of war, the concept is perhaps just, if not more, significant today than it ever has been. But what is the history of the practice of sanctuary, essentially the moral duty to abide by the commandment ‘Love thy neighbour’? In actuality, throughout the past, it was a legal obligation.