Interdict
Interdict names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Interdict in old Roman civil law
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in old Roman civil law, a decree of the prætor pronounced besometimes enjoining, tween two litigants ats but more frequently prohibiting, something to be done. The interdiction of any one from fire and water - i. e., from obtaining those necessaries at Rome was tantamount to banishment from the city. In Roman Catholic ecclesiastical law and history, an ecclesiastical censure by which persons are debarred from "the use of certain sacraments, from all the divine offices, and from Christian burial." Interdicts seem to have commenced with bishops in the 9th century (e. g. Hincmar of Laon, 869). On March 23, 1208, Pope Innocent III. placed England under an interdict, which was not removed till Dec. 6, 1213. On Dec. 17, 1538, Pope Paul III. published a bull excommunicating and deposing Henry VIII., and placing the kingdom under an interdict. The Canon Law gradually introduced mitigations in the severity of interdicts. Baptism Baptisms and confirmations might be administered to persons in danger of death; marriage was permitted, but without solemnities; faithful ecclesiastics might be buried in the churchyard, but in silence; priests might be ordained if there were not enough previously; there might be Low Mass every week, and High Mass at the five great festivals of Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday, Corpus Christi, and the Assumption. In April, 1606, Pope Paul V. placed the republic of Venice under an interdict, which was met by determined and effectual resistance from the government, and soon afterward interdicts fell into disuse.
Interdict in Scotch law
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in Scotch law, an order issued by the Court of Session to stop or prohibit a person from doing an illegal or wrongful act. The party applying for it must have both title and interest to object to the act complained of - i. e., he must be more than a mere stranger. The principles on which it is granted in Scotland are substantially the same as those in which the parallel English writ of injunction is granted by English and American courts.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's, writing in 1921, was working from the pre-modern canon law and had just missed the first Code of Canon Law, promulgated in 1917, which tidied the interdict into a defined censure. The bigger break came with the 1983 Code, under which an interdict is imposed on individuals — barring them from the sacraments and from ministerial functions — rather than laid over a whole town or kingdom in the manner of Innocent III's interdict on England of 1208-13. Collier's observation that after Venice in 1606 "interdicts fell into disuse" as a political weapon has held: no pope since has attempted to shut down a nation's churches. The Scots-law half of the entry, by contrast, reads as accurately today as it did then: interdict, and especially interim interdict, remains the everyday Scottish equivalent of the English injunction, now extended to matters such as non-harassment and domestic abuse orders.
Written for this edition, 2026.