Always seems fastest to ask here: what are the effects on Dominion auras of the Pope placing England under the Interdict?
See RoP:TD p.76 box Interdiction.
Best check the specific Interdiction in your game against history first. Cheap books mix up a lot here.
EDIT: The interdiction of Pope Innocence III from Spring 1208 on is a real one. It lasted until Juli 1214.
unless of course you want a fictional interdict for dramatic purposes.
Also a lot of interdicts are only partially documented. There have been several cases where I have found where an interdict ended but not when it started, it seems to be (and this is my perspective and conjecture here) as if a new pope takes office and discovers that a place is under interdict and lifts it without having documentation as to when or why the interdict was placed in the first place- especially when it comes to Italian politics.
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It is about as likely, that a newly crowned king finds his kingdom at war without his court knowing why and since when.
Aside from the fact that being at war takes up a lot more effort and resources than putting someone under interdict, and a kingdom is a much smaller organization than the Catholic Church. In fact in the time in question the Church knew it was at war, Fredrick II had taken his armies to the threshold of Rime multiple times, and they were playing political games all over Europe involving interdicts and the threat of interdicts, and at the end of the 12th century the Pope Innocent II was declaring interdicts left and right.
Not quite. Putting a kingdom or realm under the interdiction came with a lot of ongoing tracking and negotiations from the side of the Holy See. Enemies of the ruler, his court and his party were to be supported politically, financially and by procuring military allies for them. Bishops in the realm under interdiction were put under a lot of pressure to abandon the realm's ruler. Bishops outside the realm were called up to persuade or pressure their colleagues within to side with the Pope. Any actions of the ruler under interdiction were tracked and responded to.
A real interdiction was not just a document to forget in some drawer of the papal chancellery: it was a tool in an encompassing action of the Holy See - its closest equivalent to waging a war on a realm within Christendom.
Forgetting about an interdiction is like forgetting armies, abandoning allies, compromising political positions built over decades.
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Well, if we're comparing forgetting an interdict to forgetting a declaration of war... Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War - Wikipedia
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Really obscure!
A war perhaps declared to a group of islands by a Dutch admiral certainly not entitled to declare wars, who also did not fire a single shot to follow it up, because it was resolved by the British themselves before.
Stuff for an island legend and an Atlas Obscura entry.
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I have another funny piece of history here: the one village Republic of Cospaia.
It existed for about 386 years, because the partners of a land division treaty, the Republic of Florence and the Holy See, were oh so chivalrous after a blunder in describing its borders.
No local legends here: everything looks nicely documented. The bell the citizens of the little republic have cast for their belfry can still be seen. It sports the inscription: Perpetua et firma libertas.
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I would like to see some documentation about these levels of political maneuverings being part of the process of an interdict, especially given the way Innocent II proclaimed an interdict at the drop of the hat, to the point were in some regions he wouldn't have had any enemies of the ruler to support. Given what I have seen it sounds like a flight of fantasy to think the Church was that involved in every interdict.
Certainly the way it is described in Dictionary : INTERDICT | Catholic Culture The Catholic Culture dictionary suggests an interdict to be a single proclamation by the Holy See, not this whole involved thing you are describing.
The interdict was an important and frequent event in medieval society. It was an ecclesiastical sanction which had the effect of closing churches and suspending religious services. Often imposed on an entire community because its leaders had violated the rights and laws of the Church, popes exploited it as a political weapon in their conflicts with secular rulers during the 13th century.
A political sanction is a very different thing from a declaration of war. I cannot find a single source that agrees with your description of an interdict.
Here you have something easy to access and to study: a well-documented wiki article about the contention between Innocent III and John Lackland.
It shows the role of the interdiction as a strong application of ecclesiastical power.
John treated the interdict as "the equivalent of a papal declaration of war".[169]
It also shows, that it's use required careful orchestration: making sure the English Church was not destroyed by it, that papal allies were not overly damaged and thus estranged, deligitimizing John by all means possible, playing up the threat of Philip II of France deposing John.
The result was a resounding success of Innocent III: through careful politics, certainly not through indiscriminate fire-and-forget use of interdiction.
That shows how one monarch reacted to an interdict, it does not define an interdict as an actual declaration of war nor necessitate any of the other intrigues and responses you describe as part of one.
by Analogy the war of Jenkins ear was fought with the justification that a man's ear had been cut off by a foreign government while he resided there. That example does not mean that every instance of cutting a man's ear off was a declaration of war. You have taken the most extreme example and presented it as the minimum.
War of Jenkins' Ear - Wikipedia
I did not say so either, but rather:
Even this you have not supported, however. All your wiki example demonstrated was how John reacted to an interdict, nothing about how involved it actually was or what level of involvement beyond issuing an interdict was required by the Holy See. On the other hand I have documented that interdicts at the time were common which suggests a possibility for one to be forgotten about, especially in changing administrations.
I showed you, what was required from the Holy See to win the contention with John.
What exactly do you even mean by "common"?
first the holy see arguably lost the contention with John given the way things actually turned out, secondly, how they dealt with that conflict is not the same standard as what is required to issue an interdict. You are moving the goalposts to declare victory.
Hmm. John took his English kingdom as a fief from the Pope! And this allegiance remained for centuries! This I would call a resounding victory for both Innocent and the Holy See. He also accepted the archbishop of Canterbury imposed by the Pope: Stephen Langton - so gave in to the initial contention.
John got the Pope's support against his barons. After becoming the liege of John, this was in the Pope's own best interest.
Which well documented examples do you have in mind?
John gave the pope titular power but retained control over his kingdom and stopped paying the agreed upon fines 1/3 of the way through, and in addition got papal support for everything he wanted to do from that point forward. To me that looks like England kicked the pope's posterior but allowed the papacy to save face by claiming to be a fiefdom in name only.
It's your claim, you find your own documentation. I have already posted references that interdicts were common and frequently have only a listed end or start date in the historical record.
This "titular power" was used by the Holy See again and again: already the politics and wars of young Henry III were firmly guided by the papal legate in England, the Cardinal Guala Bicchieri.
There is again the undefined "common".
Your "historical record" was last time the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia - a goto for first bearings, not for documentation.
And you did not even evaluate this old Encyclopedia properly: it tells that Afonso II of Portugal received the approval of the Holy See in 1211. So there cannot have been an interdiction over Portugal at that time, giving you a latest end date.