The position of the Church on this question was clearly stated by Pope Celestine III in 1192. If a clerk had been lawfully convicted of theft, homicide, perjury, or any capital crime, he should be degraded by the ecclesiastical judge; for the next offence he should be punished by excommunication, and for the next by anathema; then, since the Church could do no more, for any subsequent offence he might be handed over to the secular power to be punished by exile or in any other lawful manner. This, of course, was a direct licence to the ill-disposed clergy to commit more crimes than were allowable for a layman; but the laity had to proceed cautiously in opposing it. In 1219 Philip II of France demanded that a clerk who had been degraded should not be protected by the Church from seizure outside ecclesiastical precincts by the royal officers with a view to his trial in a secular court. But here again, both at his coronation as Emperor in 1220 and again in the code of laws drawn up for his kingdom of Sicily in 1231, Frederick II confirmed the privileges of the Church in the matter of jurisdiction. On the latter occasion, however, he did reserve cases of high treason for the royal court. Almost the only immediate effect of these protests on the part of the State was that Popes and Councils enjoined on the ecclesiastical courts greater severity of treatment of offenders, even to the extent of perpetual imprisonment in the case of those whom the lay tribunals would have condemned to death.
[Sidenote: Increase of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.]
But this exclusive jurisdiction in all matters that concerned her own members was only a part of the authority claimed and exercised by the Church in the sphere of justice. Synods of the clergy did not hesitate to take part in the enforcement of civil law and order, and threatened with severe ecclesiastical penalties all who did not observe the Truce of God, or who were guilty of piracy, incendiarism, or false coining. At one time they attempted thus to suppress usury and trial by ordeal, which at other times they allowed. They even legislated against tournaments and against the use of certain deadly weapons in battle by one Christian nation against another. But apart from the special circumstances which called out and so justified the legislation, the Church claimed at all times jurisdiction over certain classes of lay persons and in certain categories of cases. Thus all persons needing protection, such as widows, minors, and orphans, came under the cognisance of the ecclesiastical courts, and to these the Popes added Crusaders. Furthermore, all cases which could be regarded as in any way involving a possible breach of faith were also claimed as belonging to the jurisdiction of the Church, and these included everything concerning oaths, marriages, and wills. Naturally the Church had cognisance of all cases of sacrilege and heresy. These excuses for interference in the transactions of daily life were susceptible of almost indefinite extension, especially since the Church asserted a right to hear cases of all sorts in her courts on appeal on a plea that civil justice had failed. Even so stout a champion of the Church as St. Bernard complains bitterly that all this participation in worldly matters tends to stand between the clergy and their proper duties. The secular powers constantly protested. Even when Alfonso X in his legal code allowed that all suits arising from sins should go to ecclesiastical courts, the Cortes of Castile constantly protested. The chief attempts to check the growth of ecclesiastical jurisdiction were made in France. Even under Louis IX the barons combined to resist the encroachments of the Church, and resolved that "no clerk or layman should in future indict any one before an ecclesiastical judge except for heresy, marriage, or usury, on pain of loss of possessions and mutilation of a limb, in order that," they add with a justifiable touch of malice, "our jurisdiction may be revived, and they [the clergy] who have hitherto been enriched by our pauperisation may be reduced to the condition of the primitive Church, and living the contemplative life they may, as is seemly, show to us who spend an active life miracles which for a long time have disappeared from the world."