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Excommunication in the Middle Ages
281 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1986
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November 2, 2011
Canon law has a reputation for being terribly dry, and while I'm sure that's a reputation that can sometimes be well-deserved, this is a pretty fascinating book.
Elisabeth Vodola, after a quick journey through the Biblical and Roman origins of excommunication, takes a look at home the practice changed and functioned during the 12th through 14th centuries. It was at this point where minor excommunication (being banned from the sacraments) definitively split from major excommunication (broader social shunning), with the former being placed in the theological/penitential sphere and the latter becoming a legal issue. Vodola covers the development of how excommunication affected social relationships, how it deprived the excommunicate from legal rights both in and out of court, and how the practice was addressed in secular courts of the same time.
The most fascinating chapter is Vodola's study of excommunication in the community. After delving through the canon law commentaries on the subject she brings up all sorts of interesting questions that it posed to people of the high middle ages: Can you address an excommunicate on the street? What should you do if an excommunicate tries to enter a church during the celebration of mass? Should you leave your husband if he's excommunicated? Even if you aren't supposed to speak with your children as an excommunicate, can you deliver a message to them through your wife to tell them that you love them?
Quite a bit of the book is dedicated to papal/jurist struggles to determine exactly how many legal rights different levels of excommunicates could receive in and out of court. And while that's actually more interesting than it sounds, it would have been nice to see a bit more time spent on the social implications of excommunication, or perhaps the way excommunication was used as a political weapon (after a brief discussion of Gregory VII and Henry IV in the eleventh century, it never really comes up).
Still, very interesting book that does a nice job illuminating the fact that an institution that frequently sounds and seems so monolithic was often quite indefinite.
Elisabeth Vodola, after a quick journey through the Biblical and Roman origins of excommunication, takes a look at home the practice changed and functioned during the 12th through 14th centuries. It was at this point where minor excommunication (being banned from the sacraments) definitively split from major excommunication (broader social shunning), with the former being placed in the theological/penitential sphere and the latter becoming a legal issue. Vodola covers the development of how excommunication affected social relationships, how it deprived the excommunicate from legal rights both in and out of court, and how the practice was addressed in secular courts of the same time.
The most fascinating chapter is Vodola's study of excommunication in the community. After delving through the canon law commentaries on the subject she brings up all sorts of interesting questions that it posed to people of the high middle ages: Can you address an excommunicate on the street? What should you do if an excommunicate tries to enter a church during the celebration of mass? Should you leave your husband if he's excommunicated? Even if you aren't supposed to speak with your children as an excommunicate, can you deliver a message to them through your wife to tell them that you love them?
Quite a bit of the book is dedicated to papal/jurist struggles to determine exactly how many legal rights different levels of excommunicates could receive in and out of court. And while that's actually more interesting than it sounds, it would have been nice to see a bit more time spent on the social implications of excommunication, or perhaps the way excommunication was used as a political weapon (after a brief discussion of Gregory VII and Henry IV in the eleventh century, it never really comes up).
Still, very interesting book that does a nice job illuminating the fact that an institution that frequently sounds and seems so monolithic was often quite indefinite.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review