§ 106.1. =Ban and Interdict.=--From the 9th century a distinction was made between _Excommunicatio major_ and _minor_. The latter, inflicted upon less serious offences against the canon law, merely excluded from participation in the sacrament. The former, called =Anathema=, directed against hardened sinners with solemn denunciation and the church’s curse, involved exclusion from all ecclesiastical communion and even refusal of Christian burial. Zealots who slew such excommunicated persons were declared by Urban II. not to be murderers. Innocent III., at the 4th Lateran Council A.D. 1215, had all civil rights withdrawn from excommunicates and their goods confiscated. Rulers under the ban were deposed and their subjects released from their oath of allegiance. Bishops exercised the right of putting under ban within their dioceses, and the popes over the whole church.--The =Interdict= was first recognised as a church institution at the Synod of Limoges in A.D. 1031. While it was in force against any country all bells were silenced, liturgical services were held only with closed doors, penance and the eucharist administered only to the dying, none but priests, mendicant friars, strangers, and children under two years of age received Christian burial, and no one could be married. Rarely could the people endure this long. It was therefore a terrible weapon in the hands of the popes, who not infrequently exercised it effectually in their struggles with the princes of the 12th and 13th centuries.