which at other times they allowed. They even legislated against
tournaments and against the use of certain deadly weapons in battle by
one Christian nation against another. But apart from the special
circumstances which called out and so justified the legislation, the
Church claimed at all times jurisdiction over certain classes of lay
persons and in certain categories of cases. Thus all persons needing
protection, such as widows, minors, and orphans, came under the
cognisance of the ecclesiastical courts, and to these the Popes added
Crusaders. Furthermore, all cases which could be regarded as in any
way involving a possible breach of faith were also claimed as
belonging to the jurisdiction of the Church, and these included
everything concerning oaths, marriages, and wills. Naturally the
Church had cognisance of all cases of sacrilege and heresy. These
excuses for interference in the transactions of daily life were
susceptible of almost indefinite extension, especially since the
Church asserted a right to hear cases of all sorts in her courts on
appeal on a plea that civil justice had failed. Even so stout a
champion of the Church as St. Bernard complains bitterly that all this
participation in worldly matters tends to stand between the clergy and
their proper duties. The secular powers constantly protested. Even
when Alfonso X in his legal code allowed that all suits arising from
sins should go to ecclesiastical courts, the Cortes of Castile
constantly protested. The chief attempts to check the growth of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction were made in France. Even under Louis IX
the barons combined to resist the encroachments of the Church, and
resolved that "no clerk or layman should in future indict any one
before an ecclesiastical judge except for heresy, marriage, or usury,
on pain of loss of possessions and mutilation of a limb, in order
that," they add with a justifiable touch of malice, "our jurisdiction
may be revived, and they [the clergy] who have hitherto been enriched