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decree emphasizes that in most circumstances, priests are not to remove
laymen from churches or ban them from entry. They must give three
warnings to an offender in the presence of witnesses to give them adequate
opportunity to mend their ways, features that were standard for ensuring
that excommunication was not wielded immoderately. This limitation does
not, however, apply to cases in which someone brings an automatic excom-
munication on themselves.66
Provision 25 of the B version of this decree, for example, states that
someone who has brought a papal excommunication on themselves by
their own action should “swear, before he is absolved, to go to the pope
or archbishop if he is able, unless the bishop wishes to reach a different
agreement.”67 Here, the pope is acknowledged as the ultimate authority
over “papal,” i.e. automatic excommunications, the archbishop is also men-
tioned, but the bishop is presented to readers as the party with the ability
to decide how any particular case should be resolved. This is consistent
with Kristinréttr Árna, which leaves the administration of such excom-
munications to the interpretation of the bishop.68
These general commands can be compared with one of the few early
cases that documents the use of an automatic excommunication in Iceland.
This case concluded in 1357 and is preserved in an original document now
in the Icelandic National Archives.69 Two visitatores to Iceland, neither of
whom are bishops, judged in a case about fishing rights associated with
the wealthy church at Grenjaðarstaðir in northern Iceland. They found
that the defendant, Illugi, had violated the church’s rights and was “eptir
statuto vilhelmi cardinalis sabenensis legata pauans til noreghs fællenn i
pauæns bann af sealfuu verkinu.”70 [according to the statute of Cardinal
William of Sabina papal legate to Norway, by his very act brought under
a papal excommunication]. It seems that these visitatores, probably sent
by the Norwegian archbishop, were acting as judges in Iceland. Basing
66 Diplomatarium Islandicum, 2.24–25.
67 Diplomatarium Islandicum, 2.32: “skal sveria adr hann er leystr at fara a pafa fvnd eda erki-
biskvps ef hann ma nema biskvp vili annat sæma.”
68 “Kristinréttr Árna frá 1275,” 160.
69 The document is: Þjóðskjalasafn íslands, K 28 (Grenjaðarstaðir), edited in, Islandske ori-
ginaldiplomer indtil 1450, ed. by Stefán Karlsson (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1963), 33 nr.
29.
70 Ibid.
THE CANON SI QUIS SUADENTE