Marsilius denies, not only to the pope, but to the bishops and clergy, any coercive jurisdiction or any right to pronounce on their own authority excommunications and interdicts, or in any way to impose the observation of the divine law.
A like result has been produced when, in response to Ultramontane agitation, interdicts have been placed on churchyards in which non-Catholics have found their last resting-place.
The great victory, however, was not so much the defeat of the papal pretensions as the demonstration that interdicts and excommunications had lost their force.
No censures, excommunications or interdicts with which the Holy Father might vex or grieve the sovereign lord or his subjects, should be published or in any way impede the usual performance of the sacraments and the holding of the divine services.
Compared with this obscure process - this spread of the king's peace along the highways and through the distant forest lands of the 12th and 13th centuries - papal interdicts and jubilees, however impressive their spectacle, are but fleeting shows.