BELL, BOOK, AND CANDLE. The ex communication by bell, book, and candle is a solemnity belonging to the Church of Rome. The officiating ecclesiastic pronounces the formula of ex•ounimnication, consisting of maledictions on the head of the person anathematized, and closes the pronouncing of the sentence by shutting the book from which it is read. taking a lighted can dle and casting it to the ground, and tolling the bell as for the dead. This mode of excommunica tion appears to have existed in the Western churches as early as the Eighth Century. Its symbolism may be explained by quoting two or three sentences from the conclusion of the form of excommunication used in the Scottish Church before the Reformation: "Cursed be they from the crown of the- head to the sole of the foot. Out be they taken of the book of life. And as this candle is cast from the sight of men, so be their souls cast from the sight of God into the deepest pit of hell. Amen." The rubric adds:
"And then the candle being dashed on the ground and quenched, let the bell be rung." So. also, the sentence of excommunication against the murderers of the Archbishop of Dublin in 1534: "And to the terror and fear of the said damnable persons, in sign and figure that they be accursed of God, and their bodies committed into the hands of Satan, we have rung these hells, erected this cross with the figure of Christ: and as ye see this candle's light taken from the cross and the light quenched. so be the said accursed mur derers excluded from the light of heaven, the fellowship of angels and all Christian people, and sent to the low darkness of fiends and damned creatures, among whom everlasting pains do endure." See EXCOMMUNICATION.