the laity. Later on, when deposition was replaced by suspension, clerics also became subject to excommunication. Till the thirteenth century, when the excommunicatio minor became a definite and independent instrument of ecclesiastical discipline, this was the excommunication incurred by those who held prohibited intercourse with one excommunicated.[1] The excommunicatio minor was identical with penitential exclusion in early times, that is, it was identical with the state of the penitent during his period of public penance. It consisted chiefly in the exclusion of those who had incurred it from the reception of the sacraments, but indirectly it entailed also other consequences. Beginning in the thirteenth century, the penalty incurred by prohibited intercourse with the excommunicated was minor excommunication, and till the beginning of the fifteenth century no exception was made of any class of excommunicated persons. The distinction between excommunicati vitandi and tolerati dates from the constitution Ad evitanda scandala, published in 1418 at the Council of Constance by Martin V. It forms Article VII of the concordat concluded at Constance with the German nation, but eventually became universal law. Till then intercourse with all excommunicated persons, whether they had incurred major or minor excommunication, had to be avoided when once they were known as such. This constitution restricted unlawful communication to the notorii clericorum percussores and to those formally named as persons to be avoided. With the further reduction in modern times of this twofold class of vitandi, minor excommunication became a matter of little consequence and, after the publication by Pius IX of the constitution Apostolicae Sedis (1869), ceased to exist.[2]
CANON 4
Summary. Bishops and clerics should so conduct themselves that they do not offend those whose model and example they should be.
Text. We command that bishops and clerics in mind and in body strive to be pleasing to God and to men, and not by superfluity, dis-
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- ↑ Innocent III distinguished between intercourse or communication knowingly held with one excommunicated in crimine criminoso, that is, giving advice or aid of any kind in the crime for which the excommunication was incurred, and ordinary communication, that is, ordinary conversation with, or praying or eating with the one excommunicated. The former was punished with major, the latter with minor excommunication (c.29, X, De sentent. excomm., V, 39).
- ↑ Kober, Der Kirchenbann, Tübingen, 1863; Hollweck, Die kirchlichen Strafgesetze, Mainz, 1899.
come to an end, alienatum se a fratrum communione cognoscat; nec eum recipi liceat, nisi in sequenti synodo fuerit absolutus (c.12, D.XVIII); similarly the Synods of Agde (506) in canon 35 (c.13, D.XVIII), of Tarragona (516) in canon 6 (c.14, D.XVIII, etc. The same penalty is imposed by the Sixth Synod of Carthage (401) in canon 14 on a bishop who should promote a monk not of his diocese to the clerical state, or appoint such a one superior of a monastery within his diocese (Hefele-Leclercq, II, 129).
