EXCOMMUNICA'TION is exclusion from the fellowship of the Christian church. The ancient Romans had something analogous in the exclusion of persons from the temples and from participation of the sacrifices, which persons were also given over with awful ceremonies to the furies. The Mosaic law decreed E. in case of certain offenses; and the intimate connection of things civil and ecclesiastical under the Jewish polity, rendered it terrible even as a temporal punishment. The Jews, in practice, had three degrees of excommunication. The first, niddui, was an exclusion from the synagogue for thirty days, that the offender might be ashamed. The second, eherem, was also for thirty days, but, besides exclusion from the synagogue, carried with it a prohibition to all other Jews of any intercourse with the individual, and was often proclaimed with sound of trumpet. The third, shammatha or anathema maranatha (see 1 Cor. xvi. 22), was exclusion from the synagogue and privileges of the Jewish church for life, with loss of civil rights, and was accompanied with terrible curses, in which the offender was given over to the judgment of God. In the Christian church, E. has in all ages been prac ticed, as indeed every society must necessarily have the power of excluding unworthy members and those who refuse to comply with its rules, and the New Testament plainly recognizes and establishes this right in the church. But two different degrees of E. were soon distinguished—the first or lesser, a mere exclusion from the Lord's table and from other privileges of members of the church; the second or greater, pronounced upon obstinate offenders and persons who departed from orthodox doctrine, more solemn and awful, and not so easily capable of being revoked. Penances and public profes sions of repentance were required; and in Africa and Spain, the absolution of lapsed persons (i.e., those who in time of persecution had yielded to the force of temptation, and fallen away from their Christian profession by the crime of actual sacrifice to idols) was forbidden, except at the hour of death, or in cases where martyrs interceded for them. But for a long time, no civil consequences were connected with excommunica tion. Afterwards, the greater E. was accompanied with loss of political rights, and exclusion from public offices. The power of E. also, which had been at first in the church as a body, gradually passed into the hands of the bishops, and more especially of the popes, who did not scruple to exercise it against entire communities at once. The eapitularies of Pepin the less, in the 8th c., ordained that the greater E. should be followed by banishment from the country. The Roman Catholic church pronounces the sentence of E. with many circumstances of terrible solemnity, and it contains a pro hibition to all Christian persons of all intercourse with the person excommunicated, and of extending to him even the most ordinary social offices. The latest " examples" made by the pope were Napoleon I. in 1809, and Victor Emmanua], king of Italy, in 1860; nei ther of whom, however, was excommunicated by name, the pope having confined himself to a solemn and reiterated publication of the penalties decreed by his predecessors against those who unjustly invaded the territories of the holy see, usurped or violated its rights, or violently impeded their free exercise. Pope Innocent III., in the Lateran council (1215), declared that E. put an end to all civil rights and dignities, and to the possession of any property. The E. of a sovereign was regarded as freeing subjects from their allegi ance, and in the year 1102, this sentence was pronounced against the emperor Henry IV., an example which subsequent popes likewise ventured to follow. But the fearful weapons with which the popes armed themselves in this power of E., were rendered much less effective through their incautious employment, the evident worldly motives by which it was sometimes governed, and the excommunications which rival popes hurled against each other during the time of the great papal schism. The Greek church also makes use of E., and every year at Constantinople, on a certain Sunday, the greater ban is pronounced against the Roman Catholic church.—The reformers retained only that power of E. which appeared to them to be inherent in the constitution of the Chris
tian society, and to be sanctioned by the word of God; nor have any civil consequences been generally connected with it in Protestant countries. To connect such consequences with E. in any measure whatever, is certainly inconsistent with the principles of the reformation. Nevertheless, in England, until the 53d of Geo. IIL c. 127, and in Ire land, until the 54th, c. 68, persons excommunicated were debarred from bringing or maintaining actions, from serving as jurymen, from appearing as witnesses in any cause, and from practicing as attorneys in any of the courts of the realm. All these disabili ties were removed by the statutes above named ; and the excommunicated were declared no longer liable to any penalty, except "such imprisonment, not exceeding six months, as the court pronouncing or declaring such person excommunicate shall direct." In the Roman Catholic church, the power of excommunicating is held to reside, not in the congregation, but in the bishop; and this is believed to be in exact accord ance with the remarkable proceeding commemorated in the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians (1 Cor. v. 3-5), and with all the earliest recorded examples of its exer cise. Like all the other powers of the episcopate, it is held to belong, in an especial and eminent degree, to the Roman bishop as primate of the church; but it is by no means believed to belong to him exclusively, nor has such exclusive right ever been claimed by the bishops of Rome. On the contrary, bishops within their sees, arch bishops while exercising visatatorial jurisdiction, heads of religious orders within their own communities, all possess the power to issue E., not only by the ancient law of the church, but also by the most modern discipline. As to the prohibition of intercourse with the excommunicated, a wide distinction is made between those who are called " tolerated" and those who are " not tolerated." Only in the case of the latter (a case •extremely rare, and confined to heresiarchs, and other signal offenders against the faith or public order of the church) is the ancient and scriptural prohibition of intercourse -enforced. With the " tolerated," since the celebrated decree of pope Martin V. in the •council of Constance, the faithful are permitted to maintain the ordinary intercourse. It is a mistake, likewise, to ascribe to Catholics the doctrine "that excommunication may be pronounced against the dead." The contrary is expressly laid down by all •canonists (Liguori, Theologia 3fora1is, lib. uii. 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. Catholic writers, moreover, explain that the civil effects of E. in the mediaeval period—such as incapacity to exer cise political rights, and even forfeiture of the allegiance of subjects—were annexed thereunto 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 iu the sixth council of Toledo—a mixed civil and ecclesiastical congress—(638); in the law of France, as admitted by Charles le Chauve (859); in the Saxon and in the Swabian codes, and even in the English laws of Edward the confessor; all which, and many simi lar laws, proceed on the great general principle of these mediazval monarchies, viz., that orthodoxy and communion with the holy see were a necessary condition of the tenure of supreme civil power; just as by the 1 Will. and Mary, s. 2, c. 2, profession of Prot estantism is made the condition of succession to the throne of England. Hence, it is argued, the mediaeval popes, in excommunicating sovereigns and declaring their sub jects 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 E., unless they be specially named.