genuine gold and silver from ignorant dupes.
There seems to be no doubt that had the famous scheme to obtain gold
from sea water, which caused serious loss to so many foolish and even
poor people a few years ago, come up during the time of John XXII., he
would have prevented it from being so lucrative to its promoters, by
publicly denouncing them and promulgating a law for their punishment.

It may be considered that excommunication was not a very severe
penalty for such dishonest practices, and that the sharpers who gave
themselves to such a profession, which would be about that of the
confidence or green goods men of our time, were not likely to be
affected much by this merely religious deprivation. It must not be
forgotten, however, that in those ages of faith, excommunication
became an extremely telling social punishment. It was forbidden that
anyone, even nearest and dearest friends, should have anything to do
with the one excommunicated until the ban was removed. It was bad
enough in a town where everyone belonged to the same church, and all
went to church frequently, to be forbidden to go there; it was
infinitely worse, however, to have everybody who passed refuse to
greet you or have relations of any kind with you. President Hadley, of
Yale, said, not long since, that social ostracism is the only
effective punishment for such manifest extra legal irregularities,
which are yet not so essentially criminal as to bring those guilty of
them under legal punishment. The sentence of excommunication was an
effective social ostracism--the {128} completest possible. This is an
aspect of excommunications usually missed, but well deserving of study
by those who resent the use of such an instrument by ecclesiastical
authorities. Just as soon as the man repented of what he had done and
promised to do so no more, he was received back into the Church, and
the ostracism ceased, so long as he did not relapse into his forbidden
ways.

When the eminently beneficial character of this Papal document is thus
appreciated, it is indeed painful to have to realize, that for its
issuance John has been held up more to scorn and ridicule than perhaps
has ever been the case for any other single formal document that has
ever been issued by an ecclesiastical or political authority. He was
simply correcting an abuse in his day, the existence of which we
recognize and would like to be able to correct in ours. For this
eminently proper exercise