Word Finder - excommunication

definition

The act of excommunicating, disfellowshipping or ejecting; especially an ecclesiastical censure whereby the person against whom it is pronounced is, for the time, cast out of the communication of the church; exclusion from fellowship in things spiritual.

On the 17th of July Innocent formally renewed the sentence of excommunication on the emperor, and declared him deposed from the imperial throne and that of Naples.

Excommunication and interdict (April 17, 1606) were met with defiance.

It provided for the visitation of the clergy by the bishop, and for the power of the clergy to exclude their lay folk from the Holy Communion, subject to appeal to the bishop. Both minor and major excommunication had been in use, and for a long time public penance was required.

It is clear from these illustrations that within the New Testament there is development from spontaneous towards strictly regulated methods; also that the use of excommunication is chiefly for disciplinary and protective rather than punitive purposes.

The use of excommunication as a form of Christian discipline is based on the precept of Christ and on apostolic practice.

According to the general supposition, the negotiations which led to the excommunication of Arius and his followers among the presbyters and deacons took place in 318 or 319, but there are good reasons for assigning the outbreak of the controversy to the time following the overthrow of Licinius by Constantine, i.e.

But Alexander too was active; by means of a circular letter he published abroad the excommunication of his presbyter, and the controversy excited more and more general interest.

An attempt was made to prevent the emigration of labourers, and finally the spiritual arm was invoked to secure obedience to these laws by threats of excommunication.

Raymund Rhupen died in 1221; and after the event Bohemund reigned in Antioch and Tripoli till his death, proving himself a determined enemy of the Hospitallers, and thereby incurring excommunication in 1230.

Celestine did not dare so much as to threaten him with excommunication.

On the r4th of February Mgr Amette, the new archbishop of Paris, prohibited his diocesans to read or defend the two books, which "attack and deny several fundamental dogmas of Christianity," under pain of excommunication.

Innocent was raised to the Holy See when it was at deadly feud with the emperor Frederick II., who lay under excommunication.

Nothing is said as to the nature and effects of excommunication.

Excommunication still continued to be occasionally used in the spirit of genuine Christian fidelity, as.

Even the hastiest survey of that long and interesting period enables the student to notice a marked development in the theory and practice of excommunication.

By means of lighted candles violently dashed to the ground and extinguished the faithful were graphically taught the meaning of the greater excommunication - though in a somewhat misleading way, for it is a fundamental principle of the canon law that disciplina est excommunicatio, non eradicatio.

The first instance, however, of excommunication by "bell, book and candle" is comparatively late (c. 1190) .

In the law of England sentence of excommunication, upon being properly certified by the bishop, was followed by the writ de excommunicato capiendo for the arrest of the offender.

In the churches which consciously shaped their polity at or after the Reformation the principle of excommunication is preserved in the practice of church discipline.

He differentiates decisively between excommunication and anathema.

This is called the greater excommunication.

The question whether the power of excommunication rests in the church or in the clergy has been an important one in the history of English and American churches.

And that the censures of admonition and excommunication be in due manner executed, for sinne, convicted, and obstinately stood in.

At the end of June 1802 the pope removed Talleyrand from the ban of excommunication and allowed him to revert to the secular state.

Heimburg's denunciations of the pope were widely circulated, and in spite of the major excommunication he was taken into the service of the archbishop of Mainz and was his representative at the diet of Nuremberg in 1462.

The pope replied by ordering Henry under pain of excommunication to put away Anne and restore Catherine, his legal wife, within ten days.

He wished for the complete independence and self-government of the Church, with the right of excommunication to be used against the ungodly.

What he calls heresy, under the sanction of excommunication or that more formal excommunication known as anathema, is heresy.

They were feared, too, as ministers of the taboo and were entitled to pronounce a kind of excommunication for offences against its rules.

The peace decrees of these various synods differed considerably in detail, but in general they were intended fully to protect non-combatants; they forbade, under pain of excommunication, every act of private warfare or violence against ecclesiastical buildings and their environs, and against certain persons, such as clerics, pilgrims, merchants, women and peasants, and against cattle and agricultural implements.

The result of this disobedience was excommunication by Lucius III.

This act of ordaining ministers, probably after the Genevan order - which they certainly used from May 1568 - and their excommunication of certain deserters from their " church " (so Grindal), clearly mark the fact that this body of some 200 persons had now deliberately taken up a position outside the national church, as being themselves a " church " in a truer sense than any parish church, inasmuch as they conformed to the primitive pattern.

It refers not to an accusation, but to sin actually committed (after baptism); and it denotes the setting of the sinner free from the guilt of the sin, or from its ecclesiastical penalty (excommunication), or from both.

On hearing from Rome, Cyril at once held a synod and drew up a doctrinal formula for Nestorius to sign, and also twelve anathemas covering the various points of the Nestorian dogmatic. Nestorius, instead of yielding to the combined pressure of his two great rivals, merely replied by a counter excommunication.

By the king's desire he undertook the vindication of the practices of confirmation, absolution, private baptism and lay excommunication; he urged, but in vain, the reinforcement of an ancient canon, "that schismatics are not to be heard against bishops"; and in opposition to the Puritans' demand for certain alterations in doctrine and discipline, he besought the king that care might be taken for a praying clergy; and that, till men of learning and sufficiency could be found, godly homilies might be read and their number increased.

After a visit to England on business in connexion with the cotton trade, which was not successful and brought on him excommunication from his caste, he was appointed in 1874 to administer a native state in Kathiawar during the minority of the chief; and there he died in August 1875.

In 1178 he became archbishop of Lund, but very unwillingly, only the threat of excommunication from the holy see finally inducing him to accept the pallium.

Just before Ignatius was experiencing the call to conversion, Luther had begun his revolt against the Roman Church by burning the papal bull of excommunication on the 10th of December 1520.

In a convocation held at Oxford under Archbishop Arundel in 1408 it was enacted " that no man hereafter by his own authority translate any text of the Scripture into English or any other tongue, by way of a book, booklet, or tract; and that no man read any such book, booklet, or tract, now lately composed in the time of John Wycliffe or since, or hereafter to be set forth in part or in whole, publicly or privately, upon pain of greater excommunication, until the said translation be approved by the ordinary of the place, or, if the case so require, by the council provincial.

Sentence of excommunication was passed on Friedrich in April 1871, but he refused to acknowledge it and was upheld by the Bavarian government.

Even after his excommunication (May 12, 1497) he continued to exercise the functions of his office, under the shelter of the secular arm.

It was not till the 15th of June 1520 that his new theology was condemned by the bull Exsurge, and Luther himself threatened with excommunication - a penalty which was only enforced owing to his refusal to submit, on the 3rd of January 1521.

They turned from him and decided that the pope should be asked to judge Henry; that if, within a year, the sentence of excommunication were not removed, the king should lose his crown; and that in the meantime he should live in retirement.

Luther had confronted the cardinal legate Cajetan, had passed through his famous controversy at Leipzig with Johann Eck, and was about to burn the bull of excommunication.

The penalty of excommunication ipso facto is only maintained for reading books written by heretics or apostates in defence of heresy, or books condemned by name under pain of excommunication by pontifical letters (not by decrees of the Index).

In August 1087 he held a synod at Benevento, which renewed the excommunication of Guibert; banned Archbishop Hugo of Lyons and Abbot Richard of Marseilles as schismatics; and confirmed the prohibition of lay investiture.

Its lords took advantage of the excommunication of the emperor Frederick II.

Heedless of the excommunication they backed him, and the preaching friars proclaimed his to be a holy war.

Their excommunication by Rome does not trouble them at all.

On the 10th of May the brethren wrecked the monasteries of Perth, after a sermon by Knox,and the revolution was launched, the six or seven preachers already threatening the backward members of their party with excommunication.