I haven't been able to find a previous question that specifically addressed this. Excommunication is meant to encourage repentance and stopping the terrible actions, but popes endorsed invasions of excommunicated rulers, so clearly there was some red line where violence was deemed appropriate/necessary.
I have a range of questions. Answers to any of these would be great:
Did the Church either actively condone/encourage the murder of these people?
Did the Church have a view on how this affected the killer's salvation?
If so, did the motive matter (e.g. killing for the Church vs killing for personal honour/disagreements)?
I can help out a bit here! This is gonna be long so hold onto your hat.
I’m writing my honours thesis on Innocent III and his involvement in England between 1205 and 1215.
This is a tricky question because it depends on a number of things. The three which come to mind are 1) who the pope was and what kind of pope they were, 2) where the excommunicated person was from, 3) when exactly in the Middle Ages & Early Reformation.
Some pope’s don’t have rich histories, others, like Innocent III, Gregory VII, and Boniface VIII have plenty of talking points because they did so many things — some questionable or contentious🤓
I’ll talk about Innocent III because he’s the pope I know best.
Generally speaking, common people weren’t excommunicated much, or rather, we don’t have a lot of records showing that specific common people were excommunicated. There were two main tools used by the papacy in order to get something out of secular people, excommunication and interdict. Interdict is less well known and in modern terms it’s like a general strike of the clergymen (the Church) within a geographic area.
Innocent, for example, in 1207/1208 laid interdict over all of England because John would not accept Stephen Langton as the Archbishop of Canterbury. The purpose was to punish all of England such that the people (commoners and barons alike) would hate John and pressure him to submit to Innocent. In 1209 Innocent excommunicated John because the pressure of interdict wasn’t enough. Innocent had no intention of physical harm being brought to John, that wasn’t (and isn’t) the purpose of the Church. So that’s an example of excommunication being used as a leverage tactic. (Feel free to ask more about this if you like).
There are other examples from Innocent’s pontificate in which he spoke out against the Cathar heretics in Languedoc, southern France. The Cathars had noble supporters including Raymond of Toulouse. After a catholic priest was murdered, Raymond and his lands were placed under interdict and he was excommunicated (and later absolved and then excommunicated again) as well as the suspected murderer. Innocent didn’t call for Raymond to be killed. However, the crusaders did see him as a target. So the answer to your question is “no” but sorta kinda “yes.”
Sources:
Edward Krehbiel, the interdict: it’s operation: with especial attention to the time of pope Innocent iii, 1198-1216
Cheney & Semple, Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III
Feel free to ask about anything. I’ll be more helpful with the England stuff and interdict & excommunication in general than the Cathar Crusade.