The Lateran council of 1139 restored peace to the Church, excommunicating Roger of Sicily, against whom Innocent undertook an expedition which proved unsuccessful.
He followed this up by excommunicating the barons who had obtained it, and in the autumn of 1215 the inevitable war began.
Clement continued the struggle of his predecessors with the emperor Louis the Bavarian, excommunicating him after protracted negotiations on the 13th of April 1346, and directing the election of Charles of Moravia, who received general recognition after the death of Louis in October 1347, and put an end to the schism which had long divided Germany.
They brought themselves into notoriety by excommunicating the philosopher - an act of weak self-defence on the part of men who had themselves but recently been admitted to the country, and were timorous of the suspicion that they shared Spinoza's then execrated views.
The archdeacon had thus become, on the one hand, the oculus episcopi, but on the other hand, armed as he was with powers of imposing penance and, in case of stubborn disobedience, of excommunicating offenders, his power tended more and more to grow at the bishop's expense.