Condemned Book, Bell, and Candle (Church Penalties, Part 1)

[Bennie]

We have had a lot of discussion on making the Church scary again. I posted some discussion on RPA costs, but the part 2 of this discussion is bringing up ecclesastical censures for those who attract the ire of Church authority. The first I'd like to examine is excommunication and its place in our theme.

I recently read a book on the governance of the church during the middle ages ("Ecclesiastical Administration in Medieval England: The Anglo-Saxons to the Reformation" by Robert E. Rodes, Jr.). I will be using it as my basis in this discussion also drawing on original ideas and further research.

Excommunication is the most well known penalty, and the most severe, in the church system. Excommunication could be seen as the religious equivalent of the civil state's outlawry. In essence, it excludes a person from the fabric of the involved society, in this case, the church's own spiritual communion. In the traditional Catholic canon law (this jurisprudence no longer applies, after the revisions of the 1983 Code of Canon Law), the following were the legal consequences of excommunication:

Res Sacrae Vetantur: Prohibited from the administration and reception of the sacraments. Excommunicated laymen cannot receive the sacraments. Excommunicated clergy administer sacraments validly (save marriage and confession, which are invalid), though illicitly, save in situations of grave danger.
Ritus Vetantur: Excommunicated persons may not participate or assist at church rituals (the mass, divine office, etc).
Communio Vetantur: The excommunicated are excluded from being prayed for in public settings. They may not receive indulgences, blessings, etc.
Crypta Vetantur: The excommunicated are excluded from receiving a church burial rituals, or burial in consecrated cemetaries. Burial of vitandi (see later) dsecrates those cemitaries.
Potestas Vetantur: The excommunicated are prohibited from active and passive voice in canonical settings. That is, the Church has no official relation with the excommicant, save for in the in negotiating his absolution. Excommunicants may receive no papal favors (save for in connection with their excommunication). Further, excommunicants cannot themselves exercise any church authority, ie they cannot hold any office or hold any jurisdiction within the Church. There are some nuances in the last bit (active voice) which I need not go into.
Praedia Sacra Vetantur: Excommunicants are excluded from ecclesiastical benefices. A benefice is the stable right to receive ecclesiastical revenues in exchange for a spiritual service. Basically, this prohibits excommunicants from receiving a "church job."
Forum Vetantur: Excommunicants may not make use of church courts in his advantage. Therefore, he may not be the plaintiff, procurator, or advocate in a church legal case. He may, however, be a defendant.
Civilia Jura Vetantur: The excommunicant is excluded from the social structure of a given society. The following were considered social relations prohibited in the medieval canonical jurisprudence: conversations, exchange of letters/gifts, prayer in common, granting marks of honor or respect, going about business, taking meals together. Ignorance of the excommunication, duties owed between subordinates and superiors, and necessity were all exceptions to this prohibition.
Other: Excommunicants were automatically suspected of heresy if they persisted a full year in excommunication and could be convicted based on this fact alone. (Source on these consequences)

Excommunicants were divided by the Pio-Benedictine Code into two categories: the vitandi and the tolerati. Vitandi were basically completely excluded. The tolerati were not so strongly excluded, especially in matters of social interaction. Most of the effects were manifested in the exclusion from sacred things.

The helpfile on excommunication in game identifies excommunication as having the following effects: social exclusion, prohibition on entering churches, crimes against the excommunicant are no longer sinful, loss of rights to private property, exclusion from church rites, exclusion from church burial.

I have also been reading about the medieval practice of signification, which occurred in medieval England. Signification was a process whereby the diocesean bishop could order civil sanctions on obstinate excommunicants. Particularly, it was the arrest and imprisonment of these persons.

All of this considered, I am proposing slight changes to the excommunication system in the game. I would like to see excommunication used more often, since it is a way to unleash ire on heretical PCs without totally punishing their RP with social exclusion. I am also leery of the no-sin-to-kill thing, especially since the Reeves don't seem to back it up. Of the bat, I'd either strip the social exclusion out completely or reserve it for a higher level like the vitandi (apostates, anathemites, or somesuch) who gain that until absolution with a more common form of excommunication more or less stripping a person of their ecclesiastical benefits/rights until repentance. This is what I propose for vanilla excommunication:

1) Public Denunciation: Excommunication would be a public state. Excommunicants would have to wear some article of clothing and the fact they were excommunicant were excommunicated would be public knowledge. Social exclusion might exist, but in a more defacto than dejure sort of way, which would allow the excommunicant to RP around/confront that exclusion. I could see freeman excommunicants being pressed into Southside.
2) Spiritual and Canonical Exclusion: Excommunicants are excluded from entry into church buildings. They may not receive any spiritual blessings, be it marriage, confession, a simple blessing, or spiritual purging of illness. In addition, they may not be buried in church ceremonies or on consecrated ground. Excommunicants may not seek redress from the Order and may not seek Church sanctuary.
3) Loss of Public Voice: Excommunicants may not exercise public office. For those not formally removed on excommunication, all those subject to them are absolved of their obligations to follow orders and commands. This results in excommunicated lord's laws not having spiritual effect, which is one reason the excommunication of titled nobles is reserved to the Cardinal holding jurisdiction over them. Excommunicants are automatically suspended from any church office, be it knighthood or priesthood. If they are not formally removed, however, they are automatically reinstated upon absolution.
4) Signification: Excommunicants who persist in their condition over three months may be signified to the public authority. Signification is a formal request for the the private property of an excommunicant to be seized by the state. Writs of Signification, ordering this action, may be issued by the Monarch or the Justiciar.
5) Suspicion: Excommunicants who persist in their state longer than a full year are automatically suspected of heresy. Further, their properties and persons may be searched by the Knights at any time without warrants.

The above rules would apply for excommunicants simple, apostates would themselves be totally excluded from society and the rules regarding no-sin killing apply. Basically, apostasy is a "wanted dead or alive" aspect of the Church. The no-sin killing aspect may be suspended by the Church if the excommunicant supplicates and asks to be reconciled with the Church.

Excommunication as a state can be removed by someone with competency to apply it, that is a cleric ranking as bishop or higher. The basic requirement is that either a) the person make public repentance and penance or b) the person was given the penalty in injustice. For way a, the far more common one, reeducation would likely also be involved. The entire process becoming somewhat lengthy.

What are people's thoughts regarding this censure of the Church in our game? I am interested in seeing it used a little more, but for the moment it is a very fuzzy, and potentially very powerful, tool of the Church.

[Dice]

I hate to be a wet blanket here, but I don't like this very much.

I feel like excommunication should be reserved for one case and one case only: people who have repeatedly thwarted the Church to such a serious extent they can be seen as rejecting its auspices entirely.

Individuals who are heretics yet show some sign of potential remorse/repentance should be branded, and the meaning of branding changed to remove the social exclusion. If anything, it should explicitly call for social inclusion: "this person is marked as one susceptible to weakness, we must help them walk the straight and narrow."

But excommunication? That's got to be exclusion, by its very basic dint and nature, and as such I feel it should be used very, very rarely (much like Reeves no longer throw people in jail as a punishment). I'd be happier if it didn't even exist thematically, but there you go.

[Applesauce]

I hate to be a wet blanket here, but I don't like this very much.

Agreed.

For one, all the RL references just bring too much Catholicism into it, and we've been trying to move AWAY from that in-game. I know you were providing background rather than saying "lets do it just like RL" but IMO it's better not to use Catholic/Latin terms as your base reference so there's not as much risk of drawing that sort of influence.

I agree that social exclusion sucks for an RP game, but if we're calling the thing "excommunication" it doesn't make sense any other way. Maybe that can be impetus enough to make it an exceedingly rare punishment.

I think most of the other stuff you're proposing is already how it works, though maybe not as clearly defined as you've laid it out here.

[Voxumo]

I agree so far with what has been said. Excommunication so far has been reserved for the worst of crimes against the church. I do not think it should be something handed out willy nilly like you are proposing but reserved for worst case scenarios.

[Onyxsoulle]

I've been trying to think of how I wanted to respond to this one. Excommunication should be kept rare, it's the Order's version of Draw-and-Quarter.

I have only ever seen one player who has been excommunicated. While Excommunication -says- no contact, I think we all know this won't happen. Cloaks, masks, and secret meeting places get around this very easily.

What I think would be a way to continue the rp for someone who is going to be Ex'd is the following.

Stage 1- Steve the Barber sins, continues sinning, then sins some more. Order catches him, hand-smack, thousand Hail Davies and be on your way(don't forget to tip!). Order makes the appropriate gnotes.

Stage 2- Steve is still at it, nothing is sacred!!!! Order steps it up a notch, public humiliation (Steve's a bad boy, help him find Dav!), more hand smacking, monthly confessing, do x amount of service for the church.

Stage 3- Steve just won't learn. Order gets really violent. Arrests Steve, announces what will happen in Church Square. Steve gets branded with and H on his cheek. The H is for Heretic, and Steve is so being a Heretic.

Stage 4- Boss fight. I mean uh, yeah. Steve still hasn't learned. Arrest Steve again, do as was done before. Only real change is that he gets another brand, an E on his other cheek. Now anyone who sees him knows he's constantly been given chances and has chosen not to heed them, and is now pretty much about as low as a Daravi.

Stage 5- Find him and cleanse him if he continues.

Optional: Skip steps 1-4.

[Dice]

In general, Onyx, that'd be how I'd see that going - at the least, steps 1-3, for sure.

We used to execute heretics who seemed unrepentant; I'm not sure if we should just say "the church doesn't do that at all anymore, and if somebody is a complete and unrepentant heretic they get excommunicated instead". Maybe that would settle the question of the "use" of excommunication in theme?

[Leech]

I generally appreciate excommunication when it's targeted at a group, or a noble. It definitely has social ramifications than, and makes a bit more sense than excommunicating Steve the Barber.

Though, really, I suppose any heretic on the run that's known should get excommunicated. I just don't know what good it would do for a huge organization like the Church to acknowledge somebody small like Steve the Barber with such a huge proclamation.

[Bennie]

In general, Onyx, that'd be how I'd see that going - at the least, steps 1-3, for sure.

We used to execute heretics who seemed unrepentant; I'm not sure if we should just say "the church doesn't do that at all anymore, and if somebody is a complete and unrepentant heretic they get excommunicated instead". Maybe that would settle the question of the "use" of excommunication in theme?

I would be for excommunication vs. execution of a heretic in theme. However, I still maintain that a true act of heresy (aiding and abetting mages, preaching and disseminated doctrines to subvert the authority of Holy Church, outright defying the divine authority of the Church), in a sense an act of treason against the fabric of the Holy Church, would call for the Church's highest punishment if the Church is willing to hunt you down.

Sure, you are just Bob the Barber, but if Bob the Barber is hiding mages in his back room, Bob the Barber is basically undermining one of the most important missions of the Order. He is suddenly pretty important, in some degree.

Of course, lesser forms of heresy, like belonging to a heretical cult or the like, would likely result in a simple public denunciation + reeducation and other penances. But, I still think that the major forms of heresy, those that work against all the Order really stands for in theme, should be met with excommunication.

The inclusion of sources from Catholic excommunication was not meant to 'Catholic-ize' the game, but to show how excommunication is/was handled in real life and in medieval times. The push to de-Catholicize Davism, in my mind, is more about purging readily identifiable similarities (similar clothes, similar rites, similar doctrines) and less about saying we can draw no inspiration from Catholic sources. I think, sooner or later, when it comes the thematic administration of Davism, we will and in some sense should draw from the history of Catholic Europe, if only for the sake that we draw our models of secular administration from Catholic Europe as well and our theme is European in flavor.

To simply dismiss anything that draws from a Catholic source for theme, simply because it draws from a Catholic source, out of hand, should not be something we do. If we did that, this game would have no pyres and not be called 'The Inquisition.'

[Inertia]

In a game that requires interaction with other PCs for advancement, I always looked at excommunication as a sort of soft pkill - while you're not code-killing the character, you're essentially forcing their player to retire their PC, rename or exist as a pariah. If they do choose to hang around, the fact that they are no longer protected by any law leaves actual pkill a very real threat.

Thematically speaking, in a world where the majority believe in the Lord of the Springs, a soul and existence after death, excommunication is the Order's most powerful disciplinary tool because excommunicates are condemned to exist eternally unclean, outside of the Fountis and bereft of the LotS's shared perspective.

I think it should be an extremely rare and powerful moment when the church states that a soul is too sullied, too unworthy to ever rejoin the eternal community. It seems to me that every other punishment the Order doles out should already be considered an attempt to thwart an individual from reaching such a level of isolation/willful exclusion from their community in life.

TL;DR: I like excommunication as a final straw. I don't know if the steps-leading-up-to need to be so clearly defined but I'd support more penalties that 1) made it very clear where the sinner's path was ultimately leading them and 2) got the rest of the community more involved.

[Bennie]

Conceding the topic of not having excommunication being common (begrudgingly, but this seems the will of the pbase), I will shift the question: What should the coercive powers of bishops and ecclesiastical authority in theme be?

In the end, I want a tool box, something I can use as an inquisitor to work to enforce the will of the Church while still encouraging RP and not having to escalate to cleansing. Personally, I like the idea of denouncing individuals and placing them into legally enforced "states of life" that serve as punishments until repentance, like prison in some sense (you have a period of punishment) but still letting you RP and, I'd hope, giving you the RP challenge of playing your character when under such a state of authority.

In some sense, this is what I was trying to get at with excommunication, some sort of declaration at X has been a bad person and for that being bad, they will no longer have a place in the normal Davite community until such time as they are willing to recant and negotiate a return with the Church. I am not in favor of 0 contact (which is, as Inertia said, a soft pkill) and honestly I am not in favor of brands save for suitably extreme cases (brands can never be removed. If we are dealing with a punishment or state that suggests redeemability, a brand just seems out of place since, in a sense, it suggests permanently being marked as an enemy of the Order, especially if it is in a very visible face, like the face or the back of a hand).

Perhaps a state of being declared a Public Penitent, similar to the excommunication I mentioned above, but with a focus on repenting of one's sins against the Church and, in turn, having a chance of being reaccepted. It seems, perhaps, people are caught up on the term excommunication which, in the Christian use and in many of the equivalents of other religions, tends to be temporary and focused on goals of encouraging a voluntary return to normal society (through recanting the offense actions or opinions that prompted the initial punishment), not as pure vindictive punishment.