(in 693) has been cited as if it visited certain very great sinners with scourging as an ecclesiastical punishment. In fact, it only approves the punishment as ordered by the Visigothic laws. An alleged decree of a council of Autun in 670 is part of a code of discipline for monasteries (see authorities cited by Hefele, Councils, sect. 290, towards the end). Banishment does not seem to have been inflicted by the spiritual court in invitum. Seclusion in a monastery seems first to have been used by the civil power in aid of the spiritual. The fifth canon of the council of Macon, in 584, forbids clergy to dress like laymen and imposes a penalty of thirty days’ imprisonment on bread and water; but this may be merely penitential. There is little evidence of the imposition of fines as ecclesiastical penalties; but there are references to the practice in the epistles of St Gregory the Great, notably in his instructions to St Augustine. Gregory III. copies from St Gregory I. Probably these also were by way of penance. Isolated examples in the early middle ages of metropolitans dealing with their suffragan bishops by imprisonment in chains were extra-canonical abuses, connected with the perversion of Church law which treated the metropolitan (who originally was merely convener of the provincial synod and its representative during the intervals of sessions) as the feudal “lord” of his comprovincials.
With the later 9th century we enter upon a new epoch, and by the time of Gregory VII., in the 11th century, the tribunals have fallen into the hands of a regular class of canonists who are in fact professional church-lawyers in orders. The changes due to the adoption of the False Decretals by Nicholas I. and the application of their principles by Hildebrand (afterwards Gregory VII.) are discussed in the article Canon Law. The later medieval system, thus inaugurated, may be considered (1) in its hierarchy, (2) in the subject matter of its jurisdiction, (3) in its penalties.
1. (a) It is a system of courts. Much that had been done by bishops, sine strepitu forensi et figura judicii, is now done in the course of regular judicial procedure. Again, the court takes the place of the synod. The diocesan synod ceases to have judicial work. The court of the metropolitan Later medieval system.takes the place of the provincial synod, except possibly for the trial of bishops, and even this becomes doubtful.
(b) At first the bishop was the only judge in the diocesan court and he always remains a judge. But just as the king appoints judges to hear placita coram rege ipso, and the feudal lord appoints his seneschal or steward, so the bishop appoints his official.
(c) The archdeacon acquires a concurrent ordinary jurisdiction with the bishop (see Archdeacon). For some time it was considered that he was a mere office-holder dependent on the will of the bishop with a jurisdiction merely “vicarial”; but by the 13th century it was settled that he held a “benefice” and that his jurisdiction over causes was ordinary and independent of the bishop (Van Espen, pars i. tit. xii. c. 1; Fournier, Les Officialités au moyen âge, p. 134). It was partly in order to counterpoise the power of archdeacons that bishops created officials (Fournier, p. 8). Archdeacons in course of time created officials who presided in court in their stead. The extent of jurisdiction of archdeacons depended much upon local customs. In England the custom was generally in their favour. Ordinarily, the appeal from an archdeacon or his official lay to the court of the bishop; but by custom the appeal might be to the court of the metropolitan: The Constitutions of Clarendon, in 1164, made the appeal from the court of the archdeacon lie to the court of the bishop.
(d) The official of the bishop might be his official principal, who was his alter ego, or a special officer for a particular locality (officialis foraneus). The latter was treated as a mere delegate, from whom an appeal could be made to the bishop. The former had one consistory with the bishop, so that appeals from him had to be made to the court of the metropolitan. How far the official principal had jurisdiction in criminal matters by virtue of his office, how far it was usual to add this jurisdiction by special commission, and what were the respective limits of his office and that of the vicar-general, are questions of some nicety. The emphasis in Italy was on the vicar-general (Sext. de officio Vicarii). In the Low Countries, France and England the jurisdiction of the official principal was wider (Van Espen, pars i. tit. xii. cc. 4, 5; Fournier, p. 21). But he could not try criminal matters unless specially committed to him (Lyndwood, Provinciale, lib. ii. tit. 1). Later in England it became usual to appoint one man to the two offices and to call him chancellor, a word perhaps borrowed from cathedral chapters, and not in use for a diocesan officer till the time of Henry VIII. or later (see Chancellor). In Ireland the title, till the church was disestablished, was vicar-general.
The importance of distinguishing the normal functions of an official principal and a vicar-general lies in this: that it was gradually established that as a king should not hear causes but commit them to his judges, so a bishop should not hear causes but appoint an official to hear them (see Ridley, View of the Civil and Eccl. Law; Ayliffe, Parergon juris ecclesiastici, p. 161; Godolphin, Abridgement of the Laws Ecclesiastical, p. 8). The “parlements” of France were constantly insisting on the independence and irremovability of the official (Fournier, p. 219). But jurisdiction which was not necessarily incident to the office of the official principal, that is to say voluntary jurisdiction, such as the granting of licences and institution to benefices, and criminal jurisdiction over clerks (and probably over laymen), the bishop could reserve to himself. Reservations of this nature are made in many English patents of chancellors and were held good in R. v. Tristram, 1902, 1 K.B. 816.
(e) The ecclesiastical and temporal courts are kept distinct. The charter of William the Conqueror abrogated the laws of Edgar. No bishop or archdeacon “shall any longer hold pleas in the Hundred concerning episcopal law nor draw a cause which concerns the rule of such to the judgment of men of the world” (Stubbs, Select Charters, part iii.). In France, where the bishop was a temporal baron, his feudal and his spiritual courts were kept by distinct officers (Fournier, p. 2).
(f) From the bishop, or his official, appeal lay to the metropolitan, who again could hear causes by his official. The Constitutions of Clarendon recognize this appeal (c. viii.).
(g) An appeal lay from the court of the metropolitan to that of the primate. There were many disputes as to the existence of these primates (see Maitland, Canon Law in the Church of England, p. 121). In England the dispute between Canterbury and York was settled by making them both primates, giving Canterbury the further honour of being primate of all England. In France the primatial sees and the course of appeals to them were well established (Fournier, p. 219).
(h) Several attempts were made by metropolitans and their officials to take causes arising in the dioceses of their comprovincials in the first instance and not by way of appeal. The officials of primates in their turn made similar attempts. After long struggles this was hindered, in France by the bull Romana (Fournier, p. 218), in England by the Bill of Citations, 23 Henry VIII. c. 9, and Canon 94 of the Canons of 1603. The preamble of the “Bill of Citations” is eloquent as to the mischief which it is framed to prevent. There are, however, a few cases in which the metropolitan is still allowed to cite in the first instance. One of them was in cases of “perplexity.” “Perplexity” arose where the suffragans “could not owing to the geographical limitations of their competence do full justice” (Maitland, pp. 118-119). Such was the case of probate where notable goods of the deceased lay in more than one diocese. Hence the origin of the “prerogative court” of Canterbury (cf. Van Espen, pars i. tit. xix.; and for Spain, Covarruvias, Pract. Quaest. c. 9).
(i) Gradually there grew up a mass of peculiar and exempt jurisdictions (Ayliffe, pp. 417, 418; Phillimore, Eccl. Law, pp. 214, 927; de Maillane, Dict. du droit canonique, s.v. “Exemptions”). Exempt jurisdictions began with the monasteries and were matter of vehement discussion in the later middle ages. There were no true exemptions before the 11th century (Van Espen, pars iii. tit. xii.). Peculiar or special jurisdiction, equal to that of the bishop, was given to deans and chapters over the cathedral precincts and in places where they had corporate property (see Parham v. Templer, 3 Phil. Ecc. R. 22). Sometimes it was given to deans alone or to prebendaries in the parishes whence they derived their prebends. Where the archdeacon
