Penal Methods of the Middle Ages: Criminals, Witches, Lunatics

by George Burnham Ives

[401]. Bund, Epis. Registers of the Diocese of Worcester, ii. p. 189.

[402]. Bingham, Antiquities of the Christian Church, vii. p. 18.

[403]. Ibid. p. 12.

[404]. Addis and Arnold, Cath. Dict. p. 276.

[405]. S. Lugio, Cath. Ency. iv. p. 678. New York, 1908.

[406]. Coulton, Chaucer and His England, p. 288.

Lea, Studies in Church History, p. 189.

“Degradation was a penalty rarely inflicted, since the Church was reluctant to admit that the sacred office once conferred could be taken away for any offence short of heresy.”—Davis, Normans and Angevins, p. 207.

[407]. Degraded clerks were forbidden to live in the world as laymen by a Council of Rouen.—C. Rothomagense, c. 12, A.D. 1074.

Those who threw off their habit were not to be admitted into the army or into any convent of clerks, but were to be esteemed excommunicate.—Lanfranc’s Canons, c. 12, A.D. 1071; J. J. ii. 9.