The liturgy of excommunication was designed to be as intimidating as possible. A dozen priests would meet after dark, by candlelight, perhaps in the crypt of the church, summoned by their bishop. They would ring a bell in anticipation of the death knell that would one day announce the end of life itself. In the Middle Ages, bells were understood to have special powers to ward off evil. Some bells were even baptised. But at this ceremony, the ringing of the bell was a terrifying warning to the excommunicated: death is always close and if you die outside the bosom of holy mother church, you will be delivered to the fires of the enemy.
The charge against the accused was read. The attending priests would shout “Fiat, fiat, fiat. Amen” – Latin for ‘let it be done’. A book of the Gospels was dramatically slammed shut and the priests would blow out their candles and then throw them to the floor. This is how they did cancel culture back then. It was a lot more stylish than some lazy mob pile-in on Twitter.
But its purpose was very much the same: to cut off the accused from the body of the faithful. It meant that other Christians — apart from your spouse and children — were not allowed to talk to you. No one was allowed to join you “in eating or drinking, in buying or selling, in prayer or greeting”. Your social network was immediately to abandon you. It also meant that you were denied the sacraments of the church. And if you died while under the sentence of excommunication, you could not be buried within consecrated ground. With excommunication you were cancelled, not just in this life but in the life to come.
And, as with Twitter, it was of the utmost importance to communicate the sentence of condemnation to others. The notice of excommunication was read out in neighbouring churches and posted in public places. And those who broke the rules and spoke to the accused were threatened with the censure of the church.
Napoleon was excommunicated. From Elizabeth I to Fidel Castro, all manner of people fell under the church’s most powerful curse. And in the 20th century there were a succession of unfortunate priests in Latin America who were excommunicated for preaching too liberal, too political a theology.
Though there were different sorts of excommunication and it changed quite a bit over the years — increasingly becoming more of a legal business from the 12th century onwards, for instance — its purpose was always the same: to get the person concerned to change their ways in order to return them to the church. Though it was often abused, theologically speaking the purpose of excommunication was always remedial, medicinal even, and never simply a punishment.
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