Gripla - 2019, Síða 160

GRIPLA160
Si quis suadente quickly grew in importance within canon law. What
was originally a sanction only concerning violence against clerics quickly
came to include a number of other offenses. In lists from thirteenth cen-
tury canonical commentaries there are 16–32 actions that incurred auto-
matic excommunication, for example forging a papal letter or setting fire
to a church.16 These lists tended to expand rather than contract, with one
French list reaching over one hundred potential offenses by the end of the
thirteenth century.17 Excommunication of this type also became a standard
threat connected to papal orders and other documents.18
Alongside expanding lists of offenses that led to automatic excommu-
nication was an expansion in the number of exceptions to Si quis suadente
that did not need to be absolved by the pope. These involved mitigating
circumstances such as ignorance of a person’s clerical status or finding a
cleric in a compromising position with one’s wife, daughter, or sister.19
Some interpreters further asserted that the need for papal absolution only
applied to the most serious crimes, not minor blows that did not lead to
death or serious harm.20 From very soon after its acceptance into law,
popes often delegated the authority to absolve de jure excommunications,
although the canon remained under the so-called reserve delicts that were
Diplomatarium Poenitentiariae Norvegicum (Stavanger: Misjonshøgskolens forlag, 2004).
The papal penitentiary dealt not only with Si quis suadente cases but also marriage within
the prohibited degrees of kinship and those in orders who wanted to advance despite
illegitimacy. For an excellent introduction to this material see Kirsi Salonen and Ludwig
Schmugge, A Sip from the “Well of Grace”: Medieval Texts from the Apostolic Penitentiary
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2009).
16 Hostiensis, Summa aurea, 5.1880–84 (lists 32 actions); Raymond of Penyafort, Summa de
paenitenta, 3.33.10 (lists 16–17 actions, depending on the manuscript); Gottofredo da Trani,
Summa super titulus decretalium, 241 (lists 18 actions). For further lists of excommunication
latae sententiae see, Vodola, Excommunication, 34–35 note 27.
17 Vodola, Excommunication, 34–35 note 27.
18 Logan, “Excommunication,” 536: latae sententiae excommunication “became the coercive
edge to even routine decrees.”
19 Raymond of Penyafort, Summa de paenitentia, 3.33.11 (lists 7 exceptions); Gottofredo da
Trani (Goffredus Tranensis), Summa super titulus decretalium, 241 (lists 12 exceptions).
20 Hostiensis believed that some cases of excommunication were so “trivial” that they could
be absolved by bishops alone. Figueira, “Papal Reserved Powers,” 198. A letter from Pope
Clement III to the Norwegian archbishop granted the archbishop power to absolve de
jure excommunications if they did not result in death or grievous bodily harm. See, Eirik
Vandvik (ed.), Latinske Dokument til Norsk Historie (Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget, 1959),
92.