Europe in the Middle Ages

by Ierne L. Plunket

The existence of the Ecclesiastical Courts, in which Canon law was administered, we have already mentioned in discussing the quarrel of Henry II of England and Thomas Becket.[22] Founded originally to deal with purely ecclesiastical cases and officials, they tended in time to draw within their competence any one over whom the Church could claim protection and any causes that affected the rites of the Catholic Church. It was a wide net with a very small mesh, as the Angevin Henry II and other lay rulers of Europe found. The protection that spread its wings over priests and clerks stretched also to crusaders, widows, and orphans: the jurisdiction of the Church Courts claimed not merely moral questions such as heresy, sacrilege, and perjury, but all matters connected with probate of wills, marriage and divorce, and even libel.

Rome became a hive of ecclesiastical lawyers, with the Pope, like the Roman emperors of old, the supreme law-giver and final court of appeal for all Church Courts of Europe. His rule was absolute, at least in theory, for by his power of ‘dispensation’ he could set aside, if he considered advisable, the very Canon law his officials administered. He could also summon to his curia, or papal court, any case on which he wished to pronounce judgement, at whatever stage in its litigation in an inferior ecclesiastical court.

Under the Pope in an ordered hierarchy, corresponding to the feudal arrangement of lay society, came the metropolitans, who received from his hand or from those of his legates the narrow woollen scarf, or pallium, that was the symbol of their authority. Next in order came the diocesan bishops with their ‘officials’, the archdeacons and rural deans, each with their own court and measure of jurisdiction.

The Pope’s will went forth to Christendom in the form of letters called ‘bulls’, from the bulla or heavy seal that was attached to them. Against those who paid no heed to their contents he could hurl either the weapon of excommunication—that is, of personal outlawry from the Church—or else, if the offender were a king or a city, the still more blasting ‘interdict’ that fell on ruler and ruled alike. The land that groaned under an interdict was bereft of all spiritual comfort: no priest might say public Mass, baptize a new-born child, perform the marriage service, console the dying with ‘supreme unction’, or bury the dead. The very church bells would ring no more.

It was under this pressure of spiritual starvation, when the Saints seemed to have withdrawn their sheltering arms and the demons to have gathered joyfully to a harvest of lost souls, that John of England was brought by the curses of his people to turn to Rome in repentance and submission. Yet, as in the case of most weapons, familiarity bred contempt, and too frequent use of powers of ‘interdict’ and ‘excommunication’ was to blunt their efficacy—a Frederick II, the oft-excommunicated, proved able to conquer Jerusalem and dominate Italy even under the papal ban.

The Church, in her claims to world empire, demanded in truth an obedience it was beyond her ability to enforce. She also laid herself open to temptations to which from the nature of her temporal ambitions she must inevitably succumb. No such elaborate and expensive administration as emanated from her curia could continue without an inexhaustible flow of money into her treasury. Lawyers, priests, legates, cardinals, the Pope himself, had each to be maintained in a state befitting their office in the eyes of a world, as ready in the thirteenth century as in the twentieth to judge by appearances and offer its homage accordingly.

In addition to the ordinary expenses of a ruler, whose court was a centre of religious and intellectual life for Europe, there was the constant burden of war, first with neighbouring Italian rulers and then with the Empire. Innocent IV triumphed over the Hohenstaufen; but largely by dipping his hands into English money-bags, to such an extent indeed during the reign of John’s son, Henry III, that England gained the scoffing name of the ‘milch cow of the Papacy’.

At first, when the ecclesiastical courts had offered to criminals a justice at once more humane and comprehensive than the rough-and-ready tyranny of a king or feudal lord, the upholders of the rights of Canon law were regarded as popular heroes. Later, however, with the growth of national feeling and the development and better administration of the civil codes, men and women began to falter in their allegiance. Canon law was found to be both expensive and tardy, especially in the case of ‘appeals’, that is, of cases, called from some inferior court to Rome. The key also to the judgements given at Rome was often too obviously gold and of heavy weight.

Papal Exactions

Nor was justice alone to be bought or sold. A large part of the money that filled the Roman treasury was derived from benefices and livings in different countries of Europe that had by one means or another accumulated in papal hands. The constant pressure of the wars with emperors and Italian Ghibellines made it necessary for the Popes to administer this patronage as profitably as possible; and so the spiritual needs of dioceses and parishes became sacrificed to the military calls on the Roman treasury.