DEGRADATION. - Etymologically the privation of a rank or demotion to a lower rank, in canon law it is the most serious of the vindictive penalties applicable only to clerics, inasmuch as it entails the deposition of the guilty party, the perpetual prohibition of wearing the ecclesiastical habit (v.), and reduction to the lay state: the effects of degradation are therefore simultaneously those of these three penalties (cf. CIC, can. 2305 § 1).
Under current law, only clerics guilty of one of the following crimes can be punished with degradation: a) enrollment in a non-Catholic sect and persistence in it despite admonitions (can. 2314 § 1, no. 3); b) personal violence against the supreme pontiff (can. 2343 § 1 no. 3); c) homicide (can. 2354 § 2); d) solicitation, in the more serious cases (can. 2368 § 1); e) marriage, if it is a matter of a major cleric (can. 2368 § 1); and furthermore all those who, after having already been deposed and deprived of the ecclesiastical habit, continue to give grave scandal for at least one year (can. 2305 § 2).
Degradation can be inflicted only following a judicial trial, by means of a sentence pronounced by a tribunal of five judges (can. 1576 § 1 no. 2). In the Pontificale Romanum (part 3) a solemn ceremony is prescribed for the degradation of a cleric; he is stripped of the sacred vestments, his tonsure is shaved, the instrumenta handed to him at ordination are taken from his hands; degradation followed by such a ceremony is called real degradation, whereas that applied by the mere pronouncement of the sentence is called verbal degradation (can. 2305 § 5).
When the penalty of degradation is prescribed by law for a crime, the judicial reprimand (v.; can. 1948 § 1) is not applicable; and the conditional suspension of the penalty of degradation cannot be ordered (can. 2288).
Until the 12th century it was not distinguished from the penalty of deposition (v.); but with Innocent III and Boniface VIII (cf. in the Corpus Iuris Canonici: c. 7, X, V, 20; c. 27, X, V, 40; c. 2, V, 9 in Sext.) the distinction was clearly established, and it remained so in the following centuries. The CIC has reduced the number of crimes punishable with degradation, and has placed on an equal footing in every respect the effects of verbal and of real degradation (a distinction introduced by Boniface VIII).