the public good, and, so far as possible, to preserve the public good from such ills. The purpose of excommunication is accomplished by depriving the excommunicated person of the reception of the sacraments and from other spiritual privileges, and in general by cutting him off from communication with other members of the Church. When the purpose of the excommunication has been achieved and the excommunicated is sincerely repentant, absolution by competent authority cannot be denied.

As noted above, one incurs excommunication for some external, grievous, contumacious sin. This obtains even though the commission of that sin may not be notorious. However, those whose excommunication was public and notorious were publicly to be shunned by all; those privately excommunicated were to be secretly avoided. Those nominally and publicly excommunicated, whose excommunication was by its nature considered major, had to be avoided in divinis and humanis under pain of incurring a minor excommunication. In the Middle Ages, the obligations of avoiding the excommunicates were very strictly enforced, for the wife and children, the servants and subjects of the excommunicated came under the obligation. Gregory VII in 1079 mitigated this law by admitting necessity and even a "certain utility" as excusing causes. Martin V, in 1418 ruled that only those had to be shunned who were nominally and publicly excommunicated. This distinction and this regulation remained in vogue until the promulgation of the Code of Canon Law in 1918.10

Ibid., Canon 2257 ff.

C. 29, X, de sententia excommunicationis, V. 39: Corpus Juris Canonici (Leipzig, 1839) II, 864.

Hyland, Excommunication, 37.

Ibid., 39. The nature of the law suggests the reason that William the Conqueror and his successors claimed the right of approval of sanction before any of their subjects should be excommunicated. The same stipulation is contained in the Constitutions of Clarendon (January, 1164). See Ellis, Anti-Papal Legislation, 33.

10Hyland, Excommunication, 43.

From what has been said, some significant points may be noted with reference to the law of excommunication in Shakespeare's day. Nominal and public excommunication cut off the one excommunicated from the reception of the sacraments, from the spiritual society of the faithful and from the social and civil society of the faithful even in purely profane matters, exception being made only for a wife or husband, children, servants and subjects when necessity or a "certain utility" demanded it. Any of the faithful, who knowingly violated this ban with respect to one nominally and publicly excommunicated, incurred by this very fact minor excommunication.

Since excommunication is a censure, it is always essential that the one excommunicated be contumacious. 11 One is considered contumacious, who at least implicitly contemns the authority of the Church, in that he does not abstain from the sin, although he is aware that the sin has been prohibited under censure by the legitimate superior. 12

One who had been excommunicated for contumacy in refusing to renounce heresy, of which he had been suspected, was condemned as a heretic after one year. 13 The heretic was then to be handed over to the secular authority for punishment. By virtue of their oath of office, by which the secular authorities publicly bound themselves to exterminate all heretics from the land subject to their jurisdiction, the secular authorities wer constrained under pain of like censure to take the necessary action against these heretics designated by the Church. If a temporal lord neglected to take such action after having been duly admonished, he incurred excommunication. If the temporal lord spurned to satisfy the demands, the Pope might within a year absolve his vassals of their allegiance and declare his territory open to invasion by Catholics, who acquired title to the land upon exterminating the heretics. In this procedure the rights of an overlord of a delinquent were to be respected, which implied that the entire procedure was to be placed in his hands.14 This law was made in 1215, and it obviously applied to feudal days, when every nation acknowledged the supreme authority of the Pope. Now, this law formed the basis of procedure in the excommunication of Elizabeth in 1570.15

The Bull Regnans in excelsis contained at once Elizabeth's excommunication and her so-called deposition.16 She was excommunicated as a heretic and as a fosterer of heresy. That the bull should also contain her deposition was a very unusual circumstance. However, in consideration of the fact that the Pope, the supreme Legislator in the Church, issued the bull, it is ridiculous to speak of this change in procedure as uncanonical. The fact is that Elizabeth's excommunication was considered by the English Hierarchy as early as 1559.17 In the succeeding years it had frequently been a matter for papal consideration and it was openly discussed at the Council of Trent. The bull was throughout these years delayed, not because there was doubt of Elizabeth's heresy, but because Philip of Spain and the Emperor Ferdinand insisted on its being inopportune. Elizabeth herself expected it and feared it; she doubtless knew that it was frequently considered and from her policy, she seems to have been fully aware of the reasons for its delay. Thus her excommunication, as a warning, would have been nothing more than a meaningless official formality. What is more, in the winter of 1569-1570 action was required not threats. Consequently, there was good reason for the change in procedure. 18 However, this change became one of Thus,

the points on which the bull was vehemently attacked. Protestants interpreted it as a definite indication of ill-will and lack of consideration for Elizabeth. Since the luckless Catholics, and not Elizabeth, bore the brunt of the excommunication, feeble consciences were on the lookout for proofs to declare the bull invalid. The apparent legal flaw was, of course, not overlooked. Actually the division of English Catholics into reconcilables and irreconcilables centered on the question of the validity of the bull.19 with Elizabeth's excommunication and deposition establishing an important precedent, Shakespeare was justified from a canonical point of view in uniting in one sentence the excommunication and deposition of King John. Those in the audience, who were acquainted with the canonical procedure in the matter would not have considered John's excommunication and deposition as legally unusual on account of the important Elizabethan precedent. Let it be observed that these conclusions are not contingent upon the personal sentiments of the audience in respect to Elizabeth's excommunication, but they refer merely to the objective fact that Shakespeare is here following an established form.

Elizabeth's excommunication presents another interesing point that has bearing on this study. The Bull prescribes that not only all nobles, subjects and people, but also all others who are in any manner under oath to her government, are absolved of their oaths, and all these were forbidden under pain of a similar sentence of excommunication to obey her admonitions and laws. 20 This phase of the excommunication then applied likewise to foreign princes. They were not only absolved of their oaths to Elizabeth and her government, but they were also liable to a similar sentence of excommunication if they disregarded the bull. Here again, Shakespeare's play is perfectly in harmony with recognized canonical procedure. The parallel is perfect even to the important detail of threatening Philip of France with excommunication if he did not break his peace with John.

It is clear then that wherever Shakespeare applies the law of excommunication in King John it is strictly according to recognized canonical form. 21

2. Tyrannicide and the Killing of Heretics

In the age of the Renaissance, when sword and dagger were proper articles of a gentleman's apparel, murder, whether by duel or otherwise, was frequently committed even on slight provocation. Assassination as a political means was often employed, and it was commonly considered justifiable. In 1415, the Council of Constance attempted to check the evil by condemning the following proposition:

Any vassal or subject can lawfully and meritoriously kill, and ought to kill, any tyrant. He may even, for this purpose, avail himself of ambushes, and wily expressions of affection or of adulation, notwithstanding any oath or pact imposed upon him by the tyrant, and without waiting for the sentence or order of any judge.22

This condemnation may have checked some of the wild speculation on the question, but it did not put a stop to poli

21 For a full discussion of the law of excommunication and of its application to the Elizabethan period, See William Cardinal Allen, A true, sincere and modest defence of English Catholiques (Ingolstadt, 1584). esp. pp. 95-118.

22Henrico Denzinger, & Clemens Bannwart, Enchiridion (Freiburg, 1908) 235.