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sjálfu verkinu “excommunication by the deed itself” and is also sometimes
referred to as páfans bann “papal excommunication.”11
The innovations introduced by Si quis suadente changed the way excom-
munication functioned in church law, adding to the older type of excom-
munication, which could only be handed down by a bishop and required
at least one warning that a person cease their offending behavior before
it could be pronounced.12 It was a contested canon and the subject of sig-
nificant comment and glossing by later interpreters.13 Many also wrote di-
rectly to the pope asking for clarification of the canon’s reach.14 By the late
Middle Ages it had spawned a genre of fairly standardized petitions sent to
a branch of the papacy specifically formed to process such requests.15
11 Lára Magnúsardóttir, Bannfæring, 78 –104.
12 The history of excommunication in the medieval church is long and complex and cannot
be fully addressed here. Key works include: F. Donald Logan, Excommunication and
the Secular Arm in Medieval England: A Study in Legal Procedure from the Thirteenth to
the Sixteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968); F. Donald Logan
“Excommunication,” Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1984), 4.536–38. Vodola, Excommunication in the Middle Ages;
Paul Hinschius, System des katholischen Kirchenrechts (Berlin, 1869–1897, reprinted Graz,
1959), 4.698–705, 799–806; Alexander Murray, Excommunication and Conscience in the
Middle Ages: The John Coffin Memorial Lecture, 13 February 1991 (London: The University
of London, 1991); Richard H. Helmholz, “Excommunication as a Legal Sanction: The
Attitudes of the Medieval Canonists,” Zeitschrift Der Savigny-Stiftung fur Rechtsgeschichte,
Kan. Abt. 68 (1982): 202–18; Richard H. Helmholz, “Excommunication in Twelfth Century
England,” Journal of Law and Religion 11 (1995): 235–53; Richard H. Helmholz, The Spirit of
Classical Canon Law (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 366–93; Rosalind
Hill, “The Theory and Practice of Excommunication in Medieval England,” History 42
(1957): 1–11; Rosalind Hill, “Public Penance: Some Problems of a Thirteenth-Century
Bishop,” History 36 (1951): 213–226; Vodola, Excommunication; Lára Magnúsardóttir,
Bannfæring; Torstein Jørgensen, “Excommunication – an act of expulsion from heaven and
earth,” The Creation of Medieval Northern Europe: Christianisation, Social Transformations,
and Historiography, Essays in Honour of Sverre Bagge, edited by Leidulf Melve and Sigbjørn
Sønnesyn (Oslo: Dreyers forlag, 2012), 58–69.
13 Innocent IV, In V libros Decretalium commentaria (Venice 1570), 546–547. Raymond of
Penyafort, Summa de paenitentia, edited by Xaverio Ochoa and Aloisio Diez (Rome:
Commentarium pro religiosis, 1976), 3.33.10–11; Gottofredo da Trani (Goffredus Tran-
ensis), Summa super titulus decretalium (Lyon 1519; reprint 1968), 241; Hostiensis, Summa
aurea (Venice 1574), 5.1880–84.
14 It is often the case that the pope’s response to a query survives while the letter bearing the
question does not.
15 Some of these petitions are preserved in the Vatican archives, although almost none
sur vive from before the mid-fifteenth century, see Torstein Jørgensen (ed.), Synder og
pavemakt: Botsbrev fra Den Norske Kirkeprovins og Suderøyene til Pavestolen 1438–1531,
THE CANON SI QUIS SUADENTE