Exocommunication was the medieval church's most severe sanction, used against people at all levels of society. It was a spiritual, social, and legal penalty: Excommunication in Thirteenth-Century England offers a fresh perspective on medieval excommunication by taking a multi-dimensional approach to discussion of the sanction. Using England as a case study, the book analyzes the intentions behind excommunication, how it was perceived and received at both national and local level, and the effects it had upon individuals and society. This book uses a thematic structure to argue that our understanding of excommunication should be shaped by how it was received within the community as well as the intentions of canon law and clerics. Challenging assumptions about the inefficacy of excommunication, Hill argues that the sanction remained a useful weapon for the clerical elite. Bringing into dialogue a wide range of source material allows 'effectiveness' to be judged within a broader context. The complexity of political communication and action are revealed through public, conflicting, accepted, and rejected excommunications. Excommunication was a means by which political events were communicated down the social strata of medieval society. The book discusses pastoral care, cursing, fears about the afterlife, the implications of social ostracism, manipulations of excommunication in political conflicts, shame and reputation, and mass communication.

Excommunication was the medieval churchâs most severe sanction, used against people at all levels of society. It was a spiritual, social, and legal penalty. Excommunication in Thirteenth-Century England offers a fresh perspective on medieval excommunication by taking a multi-dimensional approach to discussion of the sanction. Using England as a case study, Felicity Hill analyzes the intentions behind excommunication; how it was perceived and received, at both national and local level; the effects it had upon individuals and society. The study is structured thematically to argue that our understanding of excommunication should be shaped by how it was received within the community as well as the intentions of canon law and clerics. Challenging past assumptions about the inefficacy of excommunication, Hill argues that the sanction remained a useful weapon for the clerical elite: bringing into dialogue a wide range of source material allows âeffectivenessâ to be judged within a broader context. The complexity of political communication and action are revealed through public, conflicting, accepted and rejected excommunications. Excommunication could be manipulated to great effect in political conflicts and was an important means by which political events were communicated down the social strata of medieval society. Through its exploration of excommunication, the book reveals much about medieval cursing, pastoral care, fears about the afterlife, social ostracism, shame and reputation, and mass communication.

The interdict was an important and frequent event in medieval society. It was an ecclesiastical sanction which had the effect of closing churches and suspending religious services. Often imposed on an entire community because its leaders had violated the rights and laws of the Church, popes exploited it as a political weapon in their conflicts with secular rulers during the thirteenth century. In this book, Peter Clarke examines this significant but neglected subject, presenting a wealth of new evidence drawn from manuscripts and archival sources. He begins by exploring the basic legal and moral problem raised by the interdict: how could a sanction that punished many for the sins of the few be justified? From the twelfth-century, jurists and theologians argued that those who consented to the crimes of others shared in the responsibility and punishment for them. Hence important questions are raised about medieval ideas of community, especially about the relationship between its head and members. The book goes on to explore how the interdict was meant to work according to the medieval canonists, and how it actually worked in practice. In particular it examines princely and popular reactions to interdicts and how these encouraged the papacy to reform the sanction in order to make it more effective. Evidence including detailed case-studies of the interdict in action, is drawn from across thirteenth-century Europe - a time when the papacy's legislative activity and interference in the affairs of secular rulers were at their height.

"In this book Elizabeth Walgenbach argues that outlawry in medieval Iceland was a punishment shaped by the conventions of excommunication as it developed in the medieval Church. Excommunication and outlawry resemble one another, often closely, in a range of Icelandic texts, including lawcodes and narrative sources such as the contemporary sagas. This is not a chance resemblance but a by-product of the way the law was formed and written. Canon law helped to shape the outlines of secular justice. The book is organized into chapters on excommunication, outlawry, outlawry as secular excommunication, and two case studies-one focused on the conflicts surrounding Bishop Guðmundr Arason and another focused on the outlaw Aron Hjǫrleifsson"--

This book investigates how bishops deployed reward and punishment to control their administrative subordinates in thirteenth-century England. Bishops had few effective avenues available to them for disciplining their clerks, and rarely pursued them, preferring to secure their service and loyalty through rewards. The chief reward was the benefice, often granted for life. Episcopal administrators' security of tenure in these benefices, however, made them free agents, allowing them to transfer from diocese to diocese or even leave administration altogether; they did not constitute a standing episcopal civil service. This tenuous bureaucratic relationship made the personal relationship between bishop and clerk more important. Ultimately, many bishops communicated in terms of friendship with their administrators, who responded with expressions of devotion. Michael Burger's study brings together ecclesiastical, social, legal, and cultural history, producing the first synoptic study of thirteenth-century English diocesan administration in decades. His research provides an ecclesiastical counterpoint to numerous studies of bastard feudalism in secular contexts.

A study of the personal religion of King John, presenting a more complex picture of his actions and attitude.

The book investigates a riveting, richly documented conflict from thirteenth-century England over church property and ecclesiastical patronage. Oliver Sutton, the bishop of Lincoln, and John St. John, a royal household knight, both used coveted papal provisions to bestow the valuable church of Thame to a familial clerical candidate (a nephew and son, respectively). Between 1292 and 1294 three people died over the right to possess this church benefice and countless others were attacked or publicly scorned during the conflict. More broadly, religious services were paralyzed, prized animals were mutilated, and property was destroyed. Ultimately, the king personally brokered a settlement because he needed his knight for combat. Employing a microhistorical approach, this book uses abundant episcopal, royal, and judicial records to reconstruct this complex story that exposes in vivid detail the nature and limits of episcopal and royal power and the significance and practical business of ecclesiastical benefaction. This volume will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students alike, particularly students in historical methods courses, medieval surveys, upper-division undergraduate courses, and graduate seminars. It would also appeal to admirers of microhistories and people interested in issues pertaining to gender, masculinity, and identity in the Middle Ages.