Page:Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils.djvu/213

Rh '''one shall dare lay hands on those who have taken refuge in a church or cemetery. Anyone doing this, let him be excommunicated.'''

''Comment. ''This decree consists of two parts. The first is the celebrated privilege of personal inviolability accorded ecclesiastics and religious, and commonly known as the privilegium canonis. From early times violence against a cleric was punished by fines, severe canonical penances, and sometimes excommunication. The Roman Synod of 862 or 863 declared in canon 14 ipso facto excommunication against anyone deliberately injuring a bishop. In the anarchy of the centuries that immediately followed, and especially during the anticlerical disturbances created by Arnold of Brescia in the twelfth century, ecclesiastics and religious, forbidden to carry weapons, were constantly exposed to physical harm and frequently suffered bodily injury from the violence of men and mobs. And so the Church was compelled to formulate more stringent measures for their protection. In canon 13 of the Synod of Reims (1131) Innocent II issued the celebrated decree Si qais madente diabolo, by which he enacted that anyone maliciously laying hands on a cleric or monk incurred ipso facto anathema, absolution from which, except in danger of death, was reserved to the Holy See and must be sought by the offender in person. The present canon renews that of Reims and gives it a universal application. It is the first instance of a papal reservation and therefore holds an important place in the history of that discipline. In subsequent periods the application of this decree has been extended or restricted according to the needs of the times, but it has continued in force to our own day with this difference, that the absolution of the guilty party is reserved to the ordinary. The terms cleric and monk in the canon must be understood in a wide sense and embraced all clerics in major and minor orders, tonsured persons, monks, nuns, lay brothers, novices and tertiaries living the common life and wearing the habit. Women, however, lay brothers, etc., living the common life, who should maliciously strike or injure another member of the community or even clerics, could obtain absolution from their ordinary. The penalty of the canon was incurred not only by the real perpetrators of the deed, but also by abetters and accomplices.

The second part of the canon deals with the right of asylum. It threatens with excommunication anyone who should inflict injury on those who ___