Dist. 18, Part 2, Art. 1, Q. 4
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/4/d/18/q/bon-sent-IV-d18-p2-a1-q4
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### Question IV. *Whether someone can be excommunicated many times.*

Fourthly the question is asked concerning the repetition of excommunication, and it is asked whether someone can be excommunicated many times. And that he can, it seems.

1. *First*, because the practice of the universal Church holds this, which it is impossible to err, as it seems.

2. Likewise, we see in other imposed penalties that at one and the same time several fasts can be imposed, and likewise vigils and prayers: therefore by parity of reasoning several excommunications can be inflicted.

3. Likewise, we see this in *remedies*, that if the disease is repeated, so too is the remedy; thus also in penalties, that the penalties are multiplied according to merits: therefore since excommunication is both a *remedy* and a penalty, it seems therefore that, just as the cause can be repeated and multiplied, so too can the excommunications. But that the causes can be repeated is plain — for someone can be an arsonist, a breaker of churches, a striker of clerics, and so of the rest — therefore etc.

4. Likewise, if they could not be excommunicated, from the fact that they are excommunicated, while those also who are without excommunication can be excommunicated: therefore the excommunicated would be of a better condition than the non-excommunicated.

**On the contrary:**
1. The excommunicated person has been slain with the spiritual sword; but one who has been slain cannot be slain more or less: therefore neither can the excommunicated be excommunicated again.

2. Likewise, the excommunicated person has been cast out from the communion of the Church; but, as the Apostle says in the first letter to the Corinthians, the fifth chapter: *What is it to me to judge those who are outside?* but to be able to excommunicate is to be able to judge: therefore if it does not belong to one to judge such persons, it seems likewise that neither is it to excommunicate them.

3. Likewise, the excommunicated person is deprived of ecclesiastical benefits, and excommunication is a privation; but privations do not admit of more and less — for one blind man is not said to be more blind than another and less — therefore etc.

4. Likewise, one person is not absolved more nor less than another, nor is the same person more than himself: therefore by parity of reasoning neither is the excommunicated more and less, indeed much more so.

> ### Conclusion.
> *The excommunicated person can be excommunicated again.*

**I respond:** It must be said that the excommunicated person can well be excommunicated again, either by a repetition of the same excommunication for his greater confusion, or even by another on account of the commission of a new fault; and then there will be as many excommunications as there are principal causes for which he is excommunicated. For just as the fault is repeated, so reasonably can and ought the penalty itself to be repeated. — And the reasons for this side are to be granted.

**To the arguments for the opposite side:**
*To 1.* To that, then, which is first objected concerning slaying, it must be said that, just as one who sins mortally is dead and slays himself through the expulsion of grace and can yet sin still more — because, although he does not live unto doing good, nevertheless the will to do evil still lives in him; and although grace has been expelled, he can yet be further distanced from grace — so it is to be understood in the case at hand, since, although according to that state the ecclesiastical Sacraments and suffrages avail nothing, he can nevertheless still be distanced more and more. Nor is it similar to bodily slaying, in which the first slaying renders one incapable of life; it is not so in the case at hand, because there still remains an aptitude for returning.

*To 2.* To that which is objected, that he is outside; it must be said that, because he has the baptismal character indelibly, however wicked he may be, he therefore does not entirely go out from the power of the Church; and therefore she punishes and corrects him more than the pagans and unbelievers, who were never under the power of the Church. And of such, namely the pagans, the Apostle speaks, not of wicked subjects and the excommunicated; for he himself was judging concerning these.

*To 4.* To that which is objected, that absolution does not admit of repetition nor of intensification; it must be said that this is false; and this is clear in the case of one who has been excommunicated by several excommunications for diverse causes by the same person, or who has been excommunicated by diverse bishops; who can be absolved from one excommunication in such a way that he is not absolved from another, because there is not such a connection in absolution as there is in the infusion of grace.

*To 3.* To that which is objected, that privations do not admit of more and less; it can be answered in two ways: first, because that is true in pure privations, not in others. For a lame man is said to be more and less so, because [lameness] does not totally deprive [him] of the power of walking; and likewise an unjust man more and less. — Or it could be said that, even if they do not admit of more and less by reason of an act or a habit, they do nevertheless by reason of *causes*; whence one who has been injured in the nerve and in the pupil and in the crystalline humor is more distanced from sight than one who [has been injured] in only one of these. Understand likewise in the case at hand.

*(Scholion: the scholion for this Articulus Unicus, §§ I–VII, is rendered with Question I — see `bon-sent-IV-d18-p2-a1-q1`.)*

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