RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Jurisdiction, Ecclesiastical
to the pope. In regard to the judgment of clerical offenders, the Frankish law was that crimes punishable by death or exile (treason, homicide, robbery) were referred, in the case of bishops, to a provincial or national synod, and when this had pronounced sentence of deposition the offender came under royal jurisdiction for death, banishment, or confiscation. As to the lower clergy, the Church as early as the sixth century demanded a change in the old Roman law, requiring the secular courts to abstain from all action until the bishop had proceeded against the accused in the way of ecclesiastical discipline. The edict of Clothair II. (614) conceded this in regard to priests and deacons, and forbade the execution of capital punishment upon them until they had first been deposed by ecclesiastical authority.
From the ninth to the sixteenth century, the system of jurisdiction received its further development, and has remained practically unchanged in the Roman Catholic Church since the latter date. Partly through the Carolingian capit- 4. The ularies, and then through a long series
Carolin- Qj papaj enactments, a number of Later further secular penalties were imposed
Periods. uPon offenders, of the most varied kind, including the deposition of kings and princes, the absolution of their subjects from allegiance, the piercing of the tongue for blasphemy, death for sodomy and abortion, withdrawal of all communication with Christians for Jews, etc., etc. The Roman Catholic Church has not yet abandoned the medieval view that it is entitled to inflict secular penalties, though in consequence of the changed relations between Church and State these have fallen into disuse against laymen, except infamy regarded as a ground of irregularity; and the Church is empowered by modern legislation to inflict them upon the clergy only in the forms of money fines and confinement in a house of correction. In the line of purely spiritual penalties, there were added the local Interdict (q.v.), the refusal of Christian burial as a separate penalty, suspension from particular churchly rights, incapacity to hold ecclesiastical offices, and the indignatio of the pope (loss of papal favor and breaking off of communication). Apart from the limitation of the prohibition of intercourse with excommunicated persons (see Excommunication), a distinction was made in the eighteenth century between suspension from the privileges of church membership (for which in this period the terms interdictum personale, interdictum ingressus ecclesiae came into use) and the minor excommunication.
By the end of the twelfth century, in connection with the development of the doctrine of the indelibility of holy orders and the struggle of the Church to maintain the privilegium fori for its clergy, the earlier penalty of deposition was distinguished into two classes — what was now called deposition, and degradation. The former deprived the offender of his office and benefice, of the right to exercise his orders, and of the capacity to be again employed in the service of the Church; the latter, in addition, took away from him all the privileges of the clerical state, and delivered him over to the jurisdiction of
secular tribunals. This was employed only in definitely fixed grave crimes, especially heresy. Deprivation, which does not render the
5. Depo- offender incapable of holding another
Degrada- ^enence> was seldom used before the tion and twe^tQ century, but has been frequent
Suspen- since. A modern variation of it is the sion. removal of a cleric from one benefice to another less desirable one. Suspension has also been developed in detail, and may be ab officio, ab ordine, a beneficio, or totalis, from all three. The Council of Trent gave the right to bishops to inflict suspension ab officio or ab ordine for a sin not publicly known without any preliminary hearing; the only recourse lies to the pope.
A distinction, first occurring in the Visigothic kingdom at the end of the sixth century, has since been made between poenae ferendae sententiae and poenae latae sententiae. The latter class take effect immediately upon the commission of the act with which they are connected, without requiring any judicial process. Excommunication and suspension when they are penalties ferendae sententiae, require a threefold or at least a single peremptory admonition before they can be imposed, thus giving the offender an opportunity to avert the penalty by the performance of due penance. From the twelfth century on, both the popes and general and local councils established an inordinate number of penalties latae sententiae; but Pius IX., in the constitution Apostolicae sedis of 1869, abolished all those which rested on the common law, the later general councils, and the papal constitutions, with the exception of such as were established by the Council of Trent, had to do with papal elections and the internal management of orders, congregations, collegiate bodies, and church institutions, or were expressly named in this decree.
In regard to the development of the matter covered by ecclesiastical penalties, in the Carolingian period the offenses legislated against were in large measure those of a grave moral nature, 6. Blatters suc][l as seXual immorality, perjury,
Calling and robbery. After the eleventh cen-
P °lt *urv> the papal legislation is determined predominantly by the hierarchical interests of the Church, and directed against heresy, the invasion of ecclesiastical liberties, the subjection of clerics to secular tribunals, the appropriation by laymen of ecclesiastical property, lay investiture, and the like. It is true, however, that a large number of penalties provided against the neglect of spiritual duties (the keeping of Sunday, the Easter duty, fasting), and against robbery, false coinage, desertion of children, tournaments, false accusation, abuse of power, and so on; and that the Church, by the erection of the " Truce of God " (q.v.) into a general institution, did much to put down a large class of crimes against person and property. But in spite of all these undeniable services to civilization, it still remains true that where the criminal legislation of the medieval pope is determined by any clear and consistent policy, it is in cases affecting the position of the Church as a hierarchical power.
If the earlier penal legislation of the Church is of
Jurisdiction, Ecclesiastical