Imagine going to Church on Sunday and finding the doors locked. Not only are they locked, but there is an announcement posted on the door saying that the Church will be closed until further notice. You drive to a nearby Church – only to find the same thing there. In fact, you discover that every single Church in the country is closed. You learn that priests have been forbidden to say Mass, and are not even allowed to bury the dead. Hard to imagine? Eight hundred years ago, this was exactly what happened in England.
It all began in the year 1207. Hubert Walter, the archbishop of Canterbury, had died. England was now ruled by King Henry II’s youngest son, John, and King John was determined that he would choose the new archbishop. Technically, the archbishop would be chosen by the monks of Canterbury’s Christ Church Cathedral, but the King expected to them to elect a man of his choice. Unfortunately some of the monks, held a hurried election of their own. King John was furious, and insisted they hold another vote, this time to elect his own candidate. Both the would-be archbishops, together with some of the monks, rushed off to Rome in the hope that Pope Innocent III would sort out the mess. He did, but not in the way John wanted. Instead of choosing between the two men, he had the monks elect a third – Stephen Langton. If John was furious before, this time he was incandescent with rage. Stephen Langton was well-qualified, a doctor of theology from the University of Paris who had recently been made a Cardinal, but as far as John was concerned his years at Paris had made Langton too close to his enemy, the King of France. And he certainly wasn’t the royal supporter the King had hoped to see at Canterbury! John refused absolutely to countenance the idea of Langton as archbishop. There was stalemate. Neither side would give way. The Pope was determined John must accept Langton, and John was equally determined he would not. In March 1208 Pope Innocent played his trump card. He placed England under an interdict.
When a Pope had a disagreement with a King or other ruler, he had only one way he could fight: with spiritual weapons. An interdict was his big gun. It meant that no services – Masses, weddings or funerals – could be held in the land placed under an interdict, and Churches were to be kept locked. The only sacraments available were the two most essential – baptism for babies, and confession for the dying. Even faced with this dire punishment of his people, John would not give in. Pope Innocent went one step further, and personally excommunicated** the King himself. Still he would not budge. For five years the stalemate continued. By this time John was in a mess. In 1204 he had lost his lands in Normandy to the King of France. Over the following years he raised large sums of money – including money that should by rights have belonged to the Church – to fund a campaign to recover Normandy. By 1213 John found himself in deep trouble. His barons were angry. They had been forced to pay a great deal of money to the king, they had suffered at the hand of his government, and after the wife and son of one of them starved to death in one of the king’s dungeons they were frightened. John needed friends, and decided that he would rather have the Pope as a friend than an enemy, even if this meant accepting Stephen Langton as archbishop. In May 1213, John was reconciled with Pope Innocent, and even swore homage* to him, placing England under the Pope’s protection. Stephen Langton was finally able to come to England and the interdict was lifted, though this took another year as they argued over the money John had taken from the Church during the previous years.
What had happened to the people of England during this time? In practice, things were never quite as bad as they might have been. Clergy were still permitted to preach, and many probably still heard confessions. Marriages took place outside the Church instead of inside. Monasteries were allowed one Mass a week, though it was supposed to be said behind closed doors. Laymen rarely received Communion even in normal times, so the contrast was not as great as it would have been in these days when people receive Communion far more frequently. Even so, it must have been a dramatic and unsettling change for the ordinary people of England. Today, it is impossible to imagine a Pope imposing such a punishment on a whole Church, or diocese, or country, because of the fault of an individual. In the middle ages things were seen differently. It seemed to Innocent III absolutely essential that the Church should have control of its own affairs, and the brief spiritual desert to which he subjected the English people seemed better than to let their king ride roughshod over the Church.
As for Stephen Langton, he proved a disappointment to the Pope as well as to the King. The fury of the English barons eventually led them into outright rebellion against the King, and they forced him to sign a Great Charter guaranteeing them certain rights. This Charter, better known by its Latin name of Magna Carta, later became a guarantee of certain freedoms to both the British and the American people. One of the authors of the Charter was Stephen Langton’s brother, Simon, and Stephen himself may also have been involved. He refused to carry out the Pope’s order to excommunicate the rebels, and ended up being denounced by the Pope who had been so determined to win him his office.
* To swear homage meant to promise allegiance to someone in return for their protection over both the “vassal” (the person swearing homage) and his land.
** To excommunicate means to ban someone from taking Communion
SEQUENCE FOR PENTECOST:
(Veni sancte Spiritus – ascribed to Stephen Langton)
Holy Spirit, Lord of light,
from the clear celestial height,
thy pure beaming radiance give;
come, though Father of the poor,
come, with treasures which endure;
come, thou Light of all that live!
Thou, of all consolers best,
thou, the soul’s delightsome guest,
dost refreshing peace bestow:
thou in toil art comfort sweet;
pleasant coolness in the heat;
solace in the midst of woe.
Light immortal, light divine,
visit thou these hearts of thine,
and our inmost being fill:
if thou take they grace away,
nothing pure in us will stay;
all our good is turned to ill.
Heal our wounds, our strength renew;
on our dryness pour that dew;
wash the stains of guilt away:
bend the stubborn heart and will;
melt the frozen, warm the chill;
guide the steps that go astray.
Thou, on those who evermore
thee confess and thee adore,
in thy sevenfold gifts descend:
give them comfort when they die;
give them life with thee on high;
give them joys that never end.
TIMELINE:
Stephen Langton c.1150 – 1228
Pope Innocent III 1160 – 1216
Interdict 1208 – 1214
© Kathryn Faulkner 2005. All rights reserved.
