Excommunication records are documents which were drawn up as part of the excommunication of an individual from either the Roman Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Church. There were some parallel kinds of exclusion in the Protestant faiths which emerged in Europe from the sixteenth century onwards, yet they did not produce the same level of records. Processes akin to excommunication were practiced in other faiths such as Islam, though they were not as formal, did not produce major records and have limited utility for genealogical studies. The excommunication records which are of most value for tracing one’s ancestors pertain to the Roman Catholic Church. They only apply to a very limited range of people, but where they are available they often relate to periods dating as far back as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries for which time other records are usually very limited. In many instances excommunication records concern well-known political and religious figures like the thirteenth-century Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, at the Council of Lyon in 1245, but others concern much more obscure people.[1]
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History of excommunication
Excommunication as a concept is rooted in the early history of the Christian church. In the New Testament there are numerous instances where St Paul and others essentially ostracized members of the church. This intermingled with other legal concepts of the late Roman world, such as the imperial power to exile individuals to beyond Rome’s borders, most famously invoked by Caesar Augustus against the Roman poet Ovid. It was not a large intellectual leap then for the early heads of the official church in the fourth and fifth centuries to devise the idea of excommunication. The legal device was especially necessary as the early church was beset by popular heretical movements such as Arianism, a fourth-century creed name after its alleged founder, Arius of Cyrenaica, proponents of which held different views on the Trinity by arguing that Jesus was created by God rather than being part of an indivisible Trinity with the Holy Spirit.[2]
From there excommunication evolved in medieval times as a legal instrument wielded by the Roman Catholic Church to exclude individuals from the church who were deemed guilty of major crimes such as heresy and sacrilege, as well as more mundane infractions including non-payment of tithes (ecclesiastical taxes) and adultery. People were also excommunicated for the exhumation of bodies, something which was deemed sacrilegious. While an individual was excommunicated they were refused the sacraments and all others beyond their immediate family in their community were encouraged to avoid any social interaction with them. If the accused made efforts to repent the excommunication would be lifted. The records attendant on excommunication are useful from a genealogical perspective as they generally named the individuals who were being excommunicated and provided other details concerning them, while additional demographic information about their families and communities could be included.[3]
Where to find excommunication records
Most excommunication records today are found in the Vatican Apostolic Library. This has been leant a veneer of mystery by repeatedly being referred to as the ‘secret’ archive, a title which was even officially used by the Vatican until recent times.[4] This exaggerates the restrictions on the material in the archives of the Holy See. As with any major archive, there is a substantial block of material which cannot be widely consulted as it is either extremely valuable or very fragile, a practical approach for an archive housing documents dating back to the Early Middle Ages. A large number of the excommunication records at the Vatican are in the shape of Papal bulls which are famous documents in European history. For instance, Decet Romanum Pontificem[5] was issued in 1521 by Pope Leo X to excommunicate Martin Luther at the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, while Regnans in Excelsis[6] was issued by Pope Pius V in 1570 to excommunicate Queen Elizabeth I after the recent suppression of a Roman Catholic revolt in northern England. Most excommunication records are not as infamous as these latter ones. They will contain names of individuals excommunicated for various kinds of heresy or transgressing of the laws of the church from the twelfth century onwards. Not all will be found in the Vatican archives. Many were retained in the country where the excommunication occurred. In the National Archives of the United Kingdom, for example, there are 9,673 significations of excommunication in one collection alone dating to between 1220 and 1611. Though written in Latin, these documents are really valuable from a genealogical perspective, as they date to centuries before the first censuses were ever carried out in England.[7]
In many cases excommunication records, and records relating to heresy and other charges of that nature more generally, have survived in irregular ways. Take for instance the register (set of records) produced by Jacques Fournier, the future Pope Benedict XII, between 1318 and 1325 while he was serving as Bishop of Pamiers in the south of France near the Pyrenees. During these years Fournier oversaw efforts to stamp out some of the last vestiges of the Cathar heresy in the Languedoc region of France. It had emerged over a century earlier, with its adherents believing, amongst other things, that baptism should only occur at the end of life.[8]
Fournier’s records of the religious courts he held over several years resulted in the register, a highly detailed set of records found in the Vatican archive today. It was so detailed that the much esteemed French historian, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, was able to produce his acclaimed study Montaillou about the communities that lived here in the early fourteenth century. A family historian might well be able to identify a possible ancestor in the Fournier register, which was a product of the kind of investigation which often resulted in excommunication and charges of heresy. Thus excommunication records or any other kind of church record relating to heresy or contravention of the laws of the church were not produced in a systematic manner, but where they exist they can be extremely valuable for genealogical studies.[9]
Explore more about excommunication records
- Beyond the Church Register: Finding and using religious archives in Australia at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Cathars at World History Encyclopedia
- 1521 Excommunication of Martin Luther at World History Encyclopedia
References
- ↑ https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05678a.htm
- ↑ Marilyn Dunn, Arianism (York, 2021).
- ↑ Rosalind Hill, ‘The Theory and Practice of Excommunication in Medieval England’, in History, Vol. 42, No. 144 (1957), pp. 1–11.
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/28/vatican-secret-archives-no-longer-officially-secret-renaming-pope-francis
- ↑ https://www.papalencyclicals.net/leo10/l10decet.htm
- ↑ https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius05/p5regnans.htm
- ↑ https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius05/p5regnans.htm
- ↑ https://www.cathar.info/
- ↑ Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village, 1294–1324 (London, 2002).