Scomunicare il Comune

Abstract

Spiritual Sanctions, Ecclesiastical Liberty, and Religious Disobedience between the Third and Fourth Lateran Councils (1179–1215). This article examines the Roman Church’s deployment of spiritual sanctions against communal authorities in Italy between the Third and Fourth Lateran Councils (1179–1215). Moving past the traditional view of papal-communal relations as an ideological conflict between ecclesiastical monarchy and civic autonomy, it treats excommunication, interdict and related penalties as instruments of institutional negotiation and coercion. Particular attention is paid to the Lombard context, from Alexander III’s support for the Lombard League to Lateran III, canon 19, and to the conflicts between the Church and the commune of Pavia under bishops Lanfranc and Bernard. The analysis shows that excommunication directed against consuls or podestà was often limited by the short duration of communal offices and by the overlap between civic and ecclesiastical elites. For this reason, papal action combined spiritual censures with lasting sanctions, including interdict, exclusion from benefices, confiscation, and threats affecting diocesan structures. The article then considers the legal framework developed under Innocent III, in which attacks on ecclesiastical liberty, fiscal aggression against church property and religious dissent could be recast as forms of contemptus clavium . From this perspective, the punishment of communes reveals the papacy’s effort to translate institutional resistance into religious disobedience and to define the limits of legitimate civic autonomy.