The Pope is effectively unwilling to grant excommunication requests against bishops, at -100.
Piety aside, there is a logic to this - I am asking him to flex my power over his domain. The bishops are his subordinates, not mine, and he strongly prefers to what he wants to do with them, not what I want him to do with them.
Conversely, he should be as highly unwilling to lift bishop excommunications, as he is highly unwilling to grant them in the first place. He regularly excommunicates them as a shameless attempt to veto Cardinals and Preferati, and he should not be as willing to lift these excommunications, as he is willing to lift the excommunication of, for example, my lustful genius niece who I had excommunicated, so I could put her in house arrest, so that she wouldn't birthe any more bastard children until she could marry her half-cousin, my successor, once he succeeds and divorces his first wife.
You know - family business.
He is just as willing to lift the one excommunication than the other, when one is just asking him to rubber stamp my agenda within my own domain, and the other is directly undermining his own agenda.
Plus, since he won't grant any excommunication requests against the clergy, then if they are excommunicated, either he excommunicated them himself, or they are branded apostates.
Come to think of it, he should be reasonably hesitant to lift the excommunications of branded apostates. Not as severely as against clergy, but perhaps at -30. Branded apostates are legitimate heretics, not just garden variety adulteress girls. It's one thing to be a common sinner, it's another thing entirely to be a heretic. It's cause enough to burn them at the stake.
Piety aside, there is a logic to this - I am asking him to flex my power over his domain. The bishops are his subordinates, not mine, and he strongly prefers to what he wants to do with them, not what I want him to do with them.
Conversely, he should be as highly unwilling to lift bishop excommunications, as he is highly unwilling to grant them in the first place. He regularly excommunicates them as a shameless attempt to veto Cardinals and Preferati, and he should not be as willing to lift these excommunications, as he is willing to lift the excommunication of, for example, my lustful genius niece who I had excommunicated, so I could put her in house arrest, so that she wouldn't birthe any more bastard children until she could marry her half-cousin, my successor, once he succeeds and divorces his first wife.
You know - family business.
He is just as willing to lift the one excommunication than the other, when one is just asking him to rubber stamp my agenda within my own domain, and the other is directly undermining his own agenda.
Plus, since he won't grant any excommunication requests against the clergy, then if they are excommunicated, either he excommunicated them himself, or they are branded apostates.
Come to think of it, he should be reasonably hesitant to lift the excommunications of branded apostates. Not as severely as against clergy, but perhaps at -30. Branded apostates are legitimate heretics, not just garden variety adulteress girls. It's one thing to be a common sinner, it's another thing entirely to be a heretic. It's cause enough to burn them at the stake.