The Interdict in the Thirteenth Century

The power to interdict became, during the central middle ages, one of the most important political weapons of the papacy. Controversial, feared, often violently disputed, more widespread in its effects than almost any other ecclesiastical sanction and imposed ever more frequently, it became both a principal tool for the extension of the claims of the Church to intervene in the affairs of secular rulers, and the chief test of its authority when it did so. The critical period for this process was the thirteenth century. It was at that time, as this impressive new study demonstrates, that the interdict first achieved full theological elaboration and legal clarification, and also when its status as the chief political sanction of the papacy was established. Indeed, it is a central premiss of the book that these two developments were integrally linked—the legal and theological maturation of the interdict was a process driven not by intellectual agendas but by the extension of the political claims of the papacy. This is thus not a simple account of an interesting component of canon law from its earliest origins, but rather a study of the dynamic and mutually formative interactions of law, political ideology, social tensions and raw power struggles at a critical period for the conflict between lay and ecclesiastical authority in Europe

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