CHAPTER 22
SOME PROBLEMATIC CASES?
Student The words which you report force me to ask you incidentally whether, if some truths together with those affirming them were excommunicated at Paris, those maintaining those truths at Paris fell under a sentence of excommunication, since a sentence imposed for an unfair reason is seen not to involve anyone.
Master Some people think that if some catholic assertions were excommunicated by the said sentence of excommunication, it could in fact in no way have bound anyone holding the condemned truth, nor should such a person have regarded himself as bound, although others who believe that the said sentence was not unfair should have avoided him as an excommunicate.
They try to prove this assertion by three arguments of which this is the first. According to Innocent III, as we find in Extra, De sententia excommunicationis, c. Per tuas [col.906], a sentence of excommunication that contains an intolerable error is not binding; but to excommunicate a catholic assertion is an intolerable error; therefore such a sentence binds no one.
The second argument is this: no one can be forced to evil; to deny a catholic assertion, however, is of itself evil; therefore no one can be forced to this by any sentence, and consequently a sentence forcing someone to this is null. However, a sentence of excommunication by which a catholic truth is excommunicated forces the denial of a catholic truth, as far as a formal sentence can do; therefore such a sentence is null and consequently is not binding on anyone.
The third argument is this: the sentence of a heretic is binding on no one, as we find in 24, q. 1, c. Audivimus [col.967]; but if the said sentence of excommunication extended to catholic truths those imposing that sentence were heretics because, if someone who doubts in a matter of faith is an unbeliever, much more is it the case that he who condemns a catholic truth in a sentence should be considered a heretic; if those imposing the said sentence were heretics, however, it did not bind anyone at all.
part 1, book 2, chapters 17-34
Text and translation by John Scott.
Copyright © 1999, The British Academy
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