This touched the clergy in the most tender spot, and aroused them to action. To save its revenues, the church began to resort to the use of its ecclesiastical jurisdiction; it summoned the rebellious nobles before its episcopal courts, and if they did not relent and penitently submit, they were placed under the ban of the church. This procedure put the nobility, their persons, their honor, their property, and their very lives at the mercy of the clergy. Their very existence, individual and collective, was in jeopardy as long as they were subject to the jurisdiction of episcopal courts. That such a situation could not last long soon became perfectly evident. The indignation of the nobility rose to a high pitch. The relation between the two estates became more tense and hostile than ever, and inevitably precipitated a bitter struggle over the fundamental question of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The jurisdiction of the clergy now became an intolerable burden to the Polish nobility. Its scope had gradually expanded until, in the fifteenth century, in spite of protests and attempts to fix limits, it came to cover not only questions of religion, but also all sorts of civil matters. In fact, it so happened that there was scarcely a question that the ecclesiastical courts regarded as foreign to their jurisdiction. Their authority, moreover, was greatly strengthened when the government, by the Edict of Wieluń (1424) and by a statute of 1458 confirming it, committed the execution of their verdicts to the starostas, thus lending the clergy the executive arm of civil authority.[438] The administration of justice by ecclesiastical courts in Poland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was very harsh, arbitrary, and light-minded. The most severe penalty, namely, that of excommunication, which carried the confiscation of property, deprivation of honor, exile and death, was frequently inflicted upon offenders for most trivial offenses. A noble was in danger of excommunication for getting into a fight and beating a precentor, an organist, or a grave-digger, not to speak of more serious offenses, such as seizing or withholding the tithes.[439] Sometimes a landlord was excommunicated for offenses committed by his peasants on the ground that he should have used his authority to bring the peasants to terms and into submission to the church. So terrible in its consequences was the church’s excommunication in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that everyone dreaded it.