“The Pope! How many divisions has he got?” Peter Clarke's study brings to mind Stalin's query about Pius XI. For the interdict was one of the most potent weapons of the thirteenth-century church, and in particular the thirteenth-century papacy, against secular authority.
This book is about theory and practice. On the theory side, Clarke carefully traces the development of the key problem posed by the interdict to medieval intellectuals: how to justify the punishment of the innocent, who suffered from the withholding of clerical services, in order to punish the guilty. Theologians explored the issue first. Canonists drew on their work to arrive at various conclusions, chief among them that the innocent in their oppression would pressure the guilty, usually their secular rulers, to mend their ways. Clarke's story is complex, replete with subtle distinctions. It is also wide-ranging, for the interdict pertained to an unexpected variety of issues and developments: from changing theoretical (and in Clarke's estimation, actual) relationships between secular rulers and their peoples to excommunication (to which it was closely tied) to jurisdictional issues and more.
Despite this very carefully explored intellectual history, institutional and political forces are an equally important part of the story. Indeed, they are arguably more important, at least when it comes to explaining medieval thinking about interdicts. The practice of the interdict, in particular by the papacy, took the lead, and theory followed. Much of what the canonists had to say was a matter of justifying what was happening on the ground. (This point feels a little muffled by the detailed intellectual history laid out here.) Moreover, papal pronouncements tended to be based on actual practice, as they usually took the form of decretals, themselves an instance of case law. Clarke also has some nice examples of even the theorists changing their minds when confronted by actual interdicts. Stephen Langton had argued that only prelates should be held responsible for failure to resist sin. When faced with the interdict launched to force King John to accept him as archbishop, however, he abandoned that restriction. After becoming pope, Innocent IV changed the tune he himself had sung as a jurist regarding dispensation authority and interdicts.
Why did ecclesiastical authorities impose interdicts? Usually to bolster ecclesiastical authority. Clarke's statistical survey of all the reasons given for interdicts appearing in the papal registers across the thirteenth century shows this handily. Consider, for example, the three most common reasons for interdicts: “supporting/defending a deed/person condemned by the Church” (106 interdicts), “misappropriation of ecclesiastical property/revenues” (ninety-five interdicts), and “political opposition to papal temporal interests” (fifty-four interdicts). And how about “violating truces/peace,” which is surely not an uncommon event in thirteenth-century Europe (eighteen interdicts). This general conclusion will probably not surprise most medievalists, but the evidence in this form is compelling.
Clarke's account is rather Rome centered. That makes sense regarding legal developments; papal decisions were critical. When it comes to practice, this reliance on papal sources inevitably entails strengths and weaknesses. A strength is breadth. Perhaps not every interdict found its way into the papal registers, but most probably did. Clarke thus has a great reservoir of instances from across Europe. A weakness is depth. Papal letters provide only one perspective on this interdict or other. Clarke works to remedy the problem, producing three case studies of interdicts (San Gimignano, Dax, and Béziers) using local sources, including those of lay origin. Scholarly analyses of a few famous interdicts, in particular the papal interdict of England under John, also help. To say that there is more work left to be done in this direction is no criticism.
What did the laity think? Clarke's case studies show that, while lay resistance to clerical claims like tax exemption could be great, lay adherence to the liturgy could be deep. Hence, secular authorities like those at San Gimignano responded to the interdict by hiring priests to violate it. Although, as Clarke notes, the sources are open to challenge, there is also evidence that sometimes the reverse transpired, and interdicts fostered lay irreligiosity. Moreover, Clarke's discussion implies that lay populations applied their own sense of justice to interdicts. In some cases, this worked to the church's advantage, and laypeople pressured their rulers in the way interdicts were intended to work. But laypeople sometimes concluded that an interdict was unjust and supported their erring superiors.
Did interdicts work? Certainly the many petitions for exemption from interdicts suggest that interdicts had some bite. Clarke's case studies also reveal secular authorities working hard to end the interdicts against their territories and making concessions to do so. (What larger patterns would emerge from more such studies would be interesting to see.) Clarke also shows that the interdict's rationale was also its Achilles’ heel, which leads me to suspect greater weakness in the interdict than Clarke seems to. Harming the innocent in order to pressure the guilty was what the interdict was all about. But doing so also caused complaint, threatened disunity in the church as clergy faced pressure to disobey the interdict, and even caused disaffection from the papacy among its supporters, both clerical and lay. The solution was, over the course of the thirteenth century, to modify the severity of the interdict. But such moderation, seen by Clarke as making interdicts more effective by weakening opposition, also threatened to weaken what should have made them so potent: the dragooning of bystanders into pressuring the wicked. In the end, perhaps the pope's divisions were not so formidable.
The book is well produced and clearly written. I noted only a few slips. I suspect that the overall discussion was also hard to organize as the issues covered interrelate in so many different ways. I doubt I could have organized it better, but points made earlier sometimes are made again as though they have not been. This book's merits easily outweigh such flaws. Sensitive and, within its limits, thorough, this survey will likely be the standard work on the law of interdicts and a valuable starting place for further work on interdicts in practice.
