Principles of western civilisation

278 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

classes of persons, which were not in the ordinary sense considered as ecclesiastical, were nevertheless technically considered to come within ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The poor, the orphans, and the widows, for instance, were held to be under the protection of the Church, and as such could not be sued before any lay tribunal.' Spiritual causes, again, it was agreed by both sides, appertained to the spiritual tribunal. But as it was held that the Church was always bound to prevent and chastise sin, the common differences of individuals, which generally involved some charge of wilful injury, were by this means without difficulty brought under ecclesiastical jurisdiction.2 Even in actions relating to real property in land a similar interpretation produced a like result. For the ecclesiastical tribunals took cognisance of breaches of contract, at least where an oath had been pledged, and of personal trusts, and they were able to claim jurisdiction on this ground.® It is true that excommunication continued to be, in theory, the only chastisement which the Church could directly inflict. But it must be remembered that sentences of excommunication were enforced by the civil magistrate, by imprisonment and confiscation, and at times even by the death penalty.’

1 View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, by Henry Hallam, chap. vii. 2 bid. 3 [bid.

3 When the object of punishment went further than the individual, “‘the Church,” says Hallam, ‘‘had recourse to a more comprehensive punishment. For the offence of a nobleman, she put a county, for that of a prince, his entire kingdom, under an interdict, or suspension of religious offices. During an interdict, the churches were closed, the bells silent, the dead unburied, no rite but those of baptism and extreme unction performed. The penalty fell upon those who had neither partaken in nor could have prevented the

offence; . . . Interdicts were so rare before the time of Gregory VII. that some have referred them to him as their author; instances may,

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