Excommunication. The word 'excommunication' denotes exclusion, whether temporary or permanent, from fellowship in religious rites, involving also, where participation in such rites is required in the civil order, privation of the rights of citizenship. It is not peculiar to the biblical religions, but is found in most of the systematised cults, whatever be their origin. Thus, Cæsar describes its operation amongst the Gauls, stating that contempt of the decisions of their judges was visited with interdiction from the sacrifices. 'This is a most severe penalty with them. For those so interdicted are counted as sinful and wicked; all keep aloof from them, and avoid approaching or addressing them, lest they should incur some injury by contact; they are granted no right which they claim, nor is any honour bestowed upon them' (Bell. Gall. vi. 13). The absence of any remark as to a corresponding usage amongst the Romans and Greeks of the time is enough to show that Cæsar was not familiar with the practice; but slight indications are discoverable of analogous usages, so far as regards exclusion from common acts of worship, amongst which the Latin word profanus—signifying that which is 'outside the temple'—may be specially cited. The clearest analogy, however, to the Christian discipline of excommunication is that furnished by the Rabbinical code. This is ultimately based on the legislation of the Pentateuch, which excluded the ceremonially unclean, as well as offenders of a graver kind, both from religious and civil fellowship (Lev. xiii. 46; Numb. v. 2, 3; xii. 14, 15); and the penalty is recorded in Ezra, x. 8, as enforced against such Jews of the captivity as disobeyed the proclamation to assemble at Jerusalem. The offender first received a public admonition, and seven days later, if he did not make satisfaction, the lesser excommunication, Niddui, was pronounced against him, whereby he was isolated during thirty days from contact with all save his wife and children, being obliged to keep at least 4 cubits' distance from all others; and although the sentence did not technically include expulsion from the synagogue, yet this provision practically enforced it. At the expiration of the 30 days, a second term of like duration was enjoined in case of continued impenitence; and the contumacious were then visited with the greater excommunication of Cherem, which excluded both from the synagogue and from all social intercourse, and the offender was treated as a leper. These two grades of excommunication were the only ones anciently in use; but the later Rabbins added a third and severer one, styled Shammatha or Anathema Maranatha, which was lifelong, attended with solemn imprecations, and sometimes entailing forfeiture of goods.
The Christian system of excommunication is based doctrinally on the precept of Christ (Matt. xviii. 15-18) and on the precepts and practice of St Paul (Rom. xvi. 17; 1 Cor. v. 3-5, 11; 2 Thess. iii. 14) and St John (2 John, 10, 11); while its practical method was borrowed from the synagogue, and formulated certainly by the 3d century, perhaps as early as the 2d. It was primarily, as the word denotes, exclusion from communion in the eucharist and the agape or love-feast, including also suspension from office in the case of clerical offenders; and it was distinguished as major and minor, each having various degrees of severity. Thus, the lightest form of excommunication permitted the offender to join in all acts of public worship except to make oblations and actual reception of the eucharist; the grade next below was not suffered to be present during the latter part of the liturgy, but only during the preliminary prayers and the remaining public offices; below this class again came those who were excluded entirely from the prayers, but permitted to enter church to hear the Scriptures read and sermons preached; while the lowest grade of all was refused permission to enter church, being obliged to remain outside the doors until the expiry of their term of penance. Similarly, the major excommunication, besides its exclusion of offenders as well from social intercourse as from all participation in church fellowship and ordinances, which applied in all cases, had also the graver form of anathema, fulminated against the most obstinate offenders, and chiefly such as taught or abetted heresy, or, at a somewhat earlier date, those who had lapsed in time of persecution, and had either sacrificed to idols or obtained certificates alleging them to have done so. The controversy as to the possibility of readmitting such persons to communion at all—denied by the Novatianist or rigorist school—was one of the most serious which agitated the church in the 3d century; and, though the milder course ultimately prevailed, yet even the moderate party insisted upon very severe and prolonged penalties, seldom pardoning the offender till the very close of life, unless at the personal intercession of a martyr. Notice of such greater excommunication was sent by circular to all churches in the case of clerical offenders or laics in official positions, to insure the universal incidence of the penalty; and intercourse with any one underlying it involved the same punishment as the original offence, the lesser excommunication being incurred ipso facto, and the greater by persistence in such intercourse after admonition. At a very early date the aid of the civil power was invoked in support of the spiritual sentence, not only by preventing resistance thereto, but by superadding a temporal penalty. Thus, the fifth canon of the Council of Antioch in 341, after enacting that any cleric setting up a schismatical place of worship shall be deposed for life, adds: 'And if he persist in troubling and disturbing the church, let him be corrected by the civil power as a seditious person.' And in the third Council of Carthage in 397 a canon (xxxviii.) was passed to petition the governor of the province to remove an intruding bishop who had disregarded the ecclesiastical censures passed upon him; which was embodied later in the general code of the African Church, as well as two others of a like nature (ixvii. and xciii.) directed against the Donatists. In the Theodosian Code there is a law imposing a fine of ten pounds of gold upon all heretical persons conferring or receiving ordination, further confiscating the place where the act occurred, if done with the knowledge and assent of the owner; and many such enactments appear in later history, such as the decree of Childebert in 596, the Capitularies of Pepin in 755, and the Constitutions of Lothar I. in 825, whereby excommunicated persons were put to the ban of the empire; while a constitution of Frederick II. in 1220, alleging that the material sword is appointed for the aid of the spiritual sword, enacts that, in the event of excommunicated persons not making satisfaction within six weeks from the sentence, the civil ban is to issue thereupon, and not to be revoked until the previous removal of the excommunication. The theory that the spiritual sword might be turned against the civil power itself, and that excommunication deprived sovereigns and other magistrates of their authority, voiding, indeed, all civil rights, is peculiar to Latin Christianity, and is a development of the Hildebrandine era and policy (see ALLEGIANCE), first put into actual execution by Gregory VII. against the Emperor Henry IV. in 1076, and again in 1080, renewed in 1084 by Urban II., and in 1102 by Paschal II.; and later against the Emperor Philip of Swabia, and in favour of his competitor Otho IV. by Innocent III. in 1210. It is compendiously stated thus by Cardinal Francis de Toledo (1532-96) in his Instructio Sacerdotum, a work of much repute, recommended by Bossuet: 'An excommunicated person cannot exercise an act of jurisdiction without sin; nay, if the excommunication be publicly made, his sentences are null' (lib. i. chap. 3). The latest instances of the kind are the excommunication of Napoleon I. by Pius VII. in 1809, and that of Victor Emmanuel II. by Pius IX. in 1870. But the omission of their names in these documents, which are vaguely and indefinitely fulminated against enemies and oppressors of the holy see, barred the full operation of the sentences in canon law, and left the question of allegiance untouched.
In the actually current discipline of the Roman Catholic Church a distinction is drawn between such sentences of excommunication as are incurred ipso facto (technically known as latæ sententiæ) and such as do not take effect till after the formal sentence of an ecclesiastical court (called ferendæ sententiæ); and those subject to such sentences are distinguished as tolerati and non-tolerati, the former of whom are still eligible for social and civil intercourse, while the latter are absolutely excluded from all such communion, as well as from the ordinances of religion. In theory the right to pronounce the greater excommunication is limited to the pope solely, as also the power to absolve therefrom; but in practice this authority is con- veyed to all bishops in their quinquennial faculties, for local exercise within their dioceses, and by them to the clergy under their jurisdiction, so far as regards absolution, but not for pronouncing sentence, which is never committed to any one below the rank of bishop or judge. In most Roman Catholic countries, if excommunication involves any civil disabilities, it cannot be published without the sanction of the civil power, and in some of them there is an appeal to the law-courts on the merits, to obtain fresh examination of the case at the hands of the ecclesiastical authorities. It is a mistake to ascribe to Roman Catholics the doctrine 'that excommunication may be pronounced against the dead.' The contrary is expressly laid down by all canonists (Liguori, Theologia Moralis, lib. vii. n. 13, 1). In the cases in which this is said to have been done, the supposed 'excommunication of the dead' was merely a declaration that the deceased individual had, while living, been guilty of some crime to which excommunication is attached by the church laws. Roman Catholic writers, moreover, explain that the civil effects of excommunication in the medieval period—such as incapacity to exercise political rights, and even forfeiture of the allegiance of subjects—were annexed thereto by the civil law itself, or at least by a common international understanding in that age. Examples are alleged in the law of Spain, as laid down in the Sixth Council of Toledo, a mixed civil and ecclesiastical congress (638); in the law of France, as admitted by Charles the Bald (859); in the Saxon and in the Swabian codes; and even in the English laws of Edward the Confessor; all which, and many similar laws, proceed on the great general principle of these medieval monarchies—viz. that orthodoxy and communion with the holy see were a necessary condition of the tenure of supreme civil power; just as by 1 Will. and Mary, sect. 2, chap. 2, profession of Protestantism is made the condition of succession to the throne of England. Hence, it is argued, the medieval popes, in excommunicating sovereigns, and declaring their subjects released from allegiance, did but declare what was, by the public law of the period, the civil effect of the exercise of what in them was a spiritual authority.
By the discipline of the Roman Catholic Church, kings or queens, and their children, are not included in any general sentence of excommunication, unless they be specially named.
Certain 'reserved cases' are limited to the pope alone, and are enumerated in the brief 'Apostolicæ Sedis,' promulgated by Pius IX. in 1869, which also contains a list of those sentences, latæ sententiæ, now in force within the Roman Church; but an ordinary priest is permitted to absolve those at the point of death from even the reserved excommunication.
The oriental discipline is much less elaborate, and more nearly accords with ancient practice; but the distinction between the greater and lesser excommunication is retained, and no fewer than 115 offences, involving various degrees of excommunication, are specified in the office-books, ranging from twenty years' exclusion, for such crimes as murder or magical practices, down to bigamy, with its penalty of one year and merely ceremonial disqualifications, yet briefer in effect. The greater anathema is fulminated yearly throughout the Eastern Church on Orthodoxy Sunday (first Sunday in Lent) against about sixty forms of heresy, for the most part extinct; but in the Russian Church they have been cut down to twelve still prevalent types of opinion.
In the Church of England the medieval practice conformed in the main to the current western usage, save in this one important respect, that an excommunication ipso facto was not really in operation; for though the term occurs frequently, yet what it denotes is only that, given a certain offence, excommunication must follow as the penalty, but a declaratory sentence of a competent court must precede the actual excommunication.
Various civil disabilities attended excommunication, and were continued after the Reformation, such as inability to hold a benefice, to practise as an advocate or attorney in the courts, to be admitted as a witness, and to receive Christian burial. By a canon of 1597 the ordinaries were to provide for the public denunciation monthly in the cathedral of the diocese and the parish church of the offender, in all cases where an excommunicated person had not made satisfaction and obtained absolution within three months after incurring sentence; and this was embodied in the canons of 1604 (lxv.), with the alteration to a half-yearly denunciation, but with the further provision that those present should be induced to apply for a writ De excommunicato capiendo, 'thereby to reduce them to due order and obedience.' This writ was issued by the Court of Chancery on the application of the diocesan, and addressed to the sheriff or other officer, and warranted the imprisonment of those arrested under it. The disabilities attending excommunication were abolished for England by the Act 53 Geo. III. chap. 127, and for Ireland by the 54 Geo. III. chap. 68; while all remaining penalties against persons dissenting from the worship and doctrines of the Church of England were repealed by 7 and 8 Vict. chap. 2, and 9 and 10 Vict. chap. 59. The most notable exercise of the power of excommunication in the modern Anglican Church was when Bishop Gray, as Metropolitan of Capetown, deprived and excommunicated Bishop Colenso of Natal in 1863, which sentence, approved by the Convocations of Canterbury and York, the General Convention of the American Episcopal Church, the Episcopal Synod of Scotland, and the Provincial Council of Canada (as well as by a large majority of the bishops assembled at the first Lambeth Conference in 1867), was reversed by the Judicial Committee of Privy-council in 1865, on the ground that the crown had no power to erect the see of Capetown into a metropole, nor to give Bishop Gray the coercive jurisdiction on which he had relied as empowering him to try one of his suffragans and pass sentence upon him.
In the Established and other Presbyterian churches of Scotland, the lesser excommunication, involving deprivation of all 'sealing ordinances,' can be pronounced by the kirk-session. The greater excommunication can be pronounced by authority of the presbytery only; it is now very rarely heard of, and since 1690 it does not carry with it any civil consequences.
A very singular kind of excommunication is that connected with the usage of tabu amongst the islanders of Polynesia. Tabu is a species of interdict which may apply to persons or things; in the latter case making any use of the interdicted article, or even contact with it, unlawful and penal; in the former cutting off the interdicted person from all intercourse or contact with others, and even prohibiting him to use his hands to feed himself; a chief or noble being allowed a servant, also put under tabu, to feed him, and a man of lower rank being obliged to pick up his food with his mouth only, like a beast.
Islam forms an exception to the almost universal incidence of the practice of excommunication. Under the Moslem code every religious offence carries with it a temporal penalty, such as fines, scourging, stoning or other mode of death, and only in this last manner can an offender be cut off from the congregation. See BELL, BOOK, AND CANDLE; also INTERDICT.