Excommunication In The 19th Century

As the Roman Catholic Church begins to untangle itself from the secular government and become its own kind of state around the turn of 10th century, the need for a mechanism of enforcing its laws and punishing perpetrators becomes apparent. In Charlemagne’s empire this role was filled by the missi who sought out criminals and imposed fines; in modern America, it is the police and prison, respectively; and in the late Middle Ages, religious violations begin to be punished with excommunication. Excommunication resembles an early form of prison, in that it attempted to remove criminals from society, punish them for their crimes, and possibly reform them so that they may be reintroduced into society. Excommunication was a tool by which the Church
Starting with the Peace of God councils at the start of the 11th century, excommunication is still in use 200 years later. Excommunication is fundamentally a tool and the fact that it was continually used implies that it was useful. This is also illustrated by the fact that excommunication is increasingly misused because it implies that excommunicating people produced some useful outcome that could not be achieved easier through other means. During the Fourth Lateran Council, Pope Innocent specifically forbids “anyone out of cupidity to dare to bind someone with the bond of excommunication” (Geary 399). This suggests that some bishops were using excommunication for the purpose of levying a monetary penalty for absolution. Again, excommunication would not have been in danger of misuse if it had no effect which further illustrates that it was successful. Additionally, this section of the canon implies that members of the clergy other than the Pope had the authority to excommunicate. Since excommunication was originally a power only granted to the Pope, the fact that this ability was claimed by lower levels of the clergy implies that it was a power worth