"Hardened sinners" (says Lea) "might despise such imprecations, but their effect on believers was necessarily unutterable, when, amid the gorgeous and impressive ceremonial of worship, the bishop, surrounded by twelve priests bearing flaming candles, solemnly recited the awful words which consigned the evil-doer and all his generation to eternal torment with such fearful amplitude and reduplication of malediction, and as the sentence of perdition came to its climax, the attending priests simultaneously cast their candles to the ground and trod them out, as a symbol of the quenching of a human soul in the eternal night of hell. To this was added the expectation, amounting almost to a certainty, that Heaven would not wait for the natural course of events to confirm the judgment thus pronounced, but that the maledictions would be as effective in this world as in the next. Those whom spiritual terrors could not subdue thus were daunted by the fearful stories of the judgment overtaking the hardened sinner who dared to despise the dread anathema." St. Giles. Let them be accursed in the four quarters of the earth. In the East be they accursed, and in the West disinherited; in the North interdicted, and in the South excommunicate. Be they accursed in the day-time and excommunicate in the night-time. Accursed be they at home and excommunicate abroad; accursed in standing and excommunicate in sitting; accursed in eating, accursed in drinking, accursed in sleeping, and excommunicate in waking; accursed when they work and excommunicate when they rest. Let them be accursed in the spring time and excommunicate in the summer; accursed in the autumn and excommunicate in the winter. Let them be accursed in this world and excommunicate in the next. Let their lands pass into the hands of the stranger, their wives be given over to perdition, and their children fall before the edge of the sword. Let what they eat be accursed, and accursed be what they leave, so that he who eats it shall be accursed. Accursed and excommunicate be the priest who shall give them the body and blood of the Lord, or who shall visit them in sickness. Accursed and excommunicate be he who shall carry them to the grave and shall dare to bury them. Let them be excommunicate and accursed with all curses if they do not make amends and render due satisfaction. And know this for truth, that after our death no bishop nor count, nor any secular power shall usurp the seigniory of the blessed St. Giles. And if any presume to attempt it, borne down by all the foregoing curses, they never shall enter the kingdom of Heaven, for the blessed St. Giles committed his monastery to the lordship of the blessed Peter." 2. The ANATHEMA is generally used in the same sense as excommunication or separation from church communion and church privileges. But in a narrower sense, it means the "greater" excommunication,' which excludes from all Christian intercourse and makes the offender an outlaw; while the "minor" excommunication excludes only from the sacrament. Such a distinction was made by Gratian and Innocent III. The anathema was pronounced with more solemn ceremonies. The Council of Nicæa, 335, anathematized the Arians, and the Council of Trent, 1563, closed with three anathemas on all heretics. 3. The INTERDICT2 extended over a whole town or diocese or district or country, and involved the innocent with the guilty. It was a suspension of religion in public exercise, including even the rites of marriage and burial; only baptism and extreme unction could be performed, and they only with closed doors. It cast the gloom of a funeral over a country, and made people tremble in expectation of the last judgment. This exceptional punishment began in a small way in the fifth century. St. Augustin justly reproved Auxilius, a brother bishop, who abused his power by excommunicating a whole family for the offence of the head, and Pope Leo the Great forbade to enforce the penalty on any who was not a partner in the crime. But the bishops and popes of the middle ages, from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, thought otherwise, and resorted repeatedly to this extreme remedy of enforcing obedience. They had some basis for it in the custom of the barbarians to hold the family or tribe responsible for crimes committed by individual members. 1 Corresponding to the Cherem, as distinct from Niddui (i. e. separation), in the Jewish Synagogue. See J. Lightfoot, De Anathemate Maranatha, and the commentators on Gal. 1: 8, 9 (especially Wieseler). 2 Interdictum or prohibitio officiorum divinorum, prohibition of public worship. A distinction is made between interd. personale for particular persons; locale for a place or district; and generale for whole countries and kingdoms. 3 Aug. Ep. 250, 1; Leo, Ep. X. cap. 8-quoted by Gieseler, and Lea, p. 301. St. Basil of Cæsarea is sometimes quoted as the inventor of the interdict, but not justly. See Lea, p. 302 note. The first conspicuous examples of inflicting the Interdict occurred in France. Bishop Leudovald of Bayeux, after consulting with his brother bishops, closed in 586 all the churches of Rouen and deprived the people of the consolations of religion until the murderer of Pretextatus, Bishop of Rouen, who was slain at the altar by a hireling of the savage queen Fredegunda, should be discovered.' Hincmar of Laon inflicted the interdict on his diocese (869), but Hinemar of Rheims disapproved of it and removed it. The synod of Limoges (Limoisin), in 1031, enforced the Peace of God by the interdict in these words which were read in the church: "We excommunicate all those noblemen (milites) in the bishopric of Limoges who disobey the exhortations of their bishop to hold the Peace. Let them and their helpers be accursed, and let their weapons and horses be accursed! Let their lot be with Cain, Dathan, and Abiram! And as now the lights are extinguished, so their joy in the presence of angels shall be destroyed, unless they repent and make satisfaction before dying." The Synod ordered that public worship be closed, the altars laid bare, crosses and ornaments removed, marriages forbidden; only clergymen, beggars, strangers and children under two years could be buried, and only the dying receive the communion; no clergyman or layman should be shaved till the nobles submit. A signal in the church on the third hour of the day should call all to fall on their knees to pray. All should be dressed in mourning. The whole period of the interdict should be observed as a continued fast and humiliation.2 The popes employed this fearful weapon against disobedient kings, and sacrificed the spiritual comforts of whole nations to their hierarchical ambition. Gregory VII. laid the province of Gnesen under the interdict, because King Bolislaw II. had murdered bishop Stanislaus of Cracow with his own hand. 1 Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. VIII. 31. 2 Conc. Lemovicense II. See Mansi XIX. 541; Harduin VI. p. 1, 885; Hefele IV. 693-695; Gieseler II. 199 note 12. Alexander II. applied it to Scotland (1180), because the king refused a papal bishop and expelled him from the country. Innocent III. suspended it over France (1200), because king Philip Augustus had cast off his lawful wife and lived with a concubine. The same pope inflicted this punishment upon England (March 23, 1208), hoping to bring King John (Lackland) to terms. The English interdict lasted over six years during which all religious rites were forbidden except baptism, confession, and the viaticum. Interdicts were only possible in the middle ages when the church had unlimited power. Their frequency and the impossibility of full execution diminished their power until they fell into contempt and were swept out of existence as the nations of Europe outgrew the discipline of priestcraft and awoke to a sense of manhood. § 87. Penance and Indulgence. NATH. MARSHALL (Canon of Windsor and translator of Cyprian, d. 1729): The Penitential Discipline of the Primitive Church for the first 400 years after Christ, together with its declension from the fifth century downward to its present state. London 1714. A new ed. in the "Lib. of Anglo-Cath. Theol." Oxford 1844. EUS. AMORT: De Origine, Progressu, Valore ac Fructu Indulgentiarum. MURATORI: De Redemtione Peccatorum et de Indulgentiarum Origine, in G. E. STEITZ: Das römische Buss-Sacrament, nach seinem bibl. Grunde DOMIN. PALMIERI (R. C.): Tractat. de Pœnit. Romæ 1879. 1 See the graphic description of the effects of this interdict upon the state of society, in Hurter's Innocenz III., vol. I. 372–386. For the authoritative teaching of the Roman church on the Sacramentum Pænitentiæ see Conc. Trident. Sess. XIV. held 1551. The word repentance or penitence is an insufficient rendering for the corresponding Greek metanoia, which means a radical change of mind or conversion from a sinful to a godly life, and includes, negatively, a turning away from sin in godly sorrow (repentance in the narrower sense) and, positively, a turning to Christ by faith with a determination to follow him.' The call to repent in this sense was the beginning of the preaching both of John the Baptist, and of Jesus Christ.2 In the Latin church the idea of repentance was externalized and identified with certain outward acts of self-abasement or selfpunishment for the expiation of sin. The public penance before the church went out of use during the seventh or eighth century, except for very gross offences, and was replaced by private penance and confession.3 The Lateran Council of 1215 under Pope Innocent III. made it obligatory upon every Catholic Christian to confess to his parish priest at least once a year. Penance, including auricular confession and priestly absolution, was raised to the dignity of a sacrament for sins committed 1 Penitence is from the Latin pœnitentia, and this is derived from pœna, towý (compensation, satisfaction, punishment). Jerome introduced the word, or rather retained it, in the Latin Bible, for uɛrávoia, and pœnitentiam agere for uɛravoɛiv. Hence the Douay version: to do penance. Augustin, Isidor, Rabanus Maurus, Peter Lombard, and the R. Catholic theologians connect the term with the penal idea (pœna, punitio) and make it cover the whole penitential discipline. The English repentance, to repent, and the German Busse, Bussethun follow the Vulgate, but have changed the meaning in evangelical theology in conformity to the Greek μετάνοια. 2 Matt. 312; 4: 17; Mark 1. 15. Luther renewed the call in his 95 Theses which begin with the same idea, in opposition to the traffic in indulgences. Pope Leo the Great (440-461) was the first prelate in the West who sanctioned the substitution of the system of secret humiliation by auricular confession for the public exomologesis. Ep. 136. Opera I. 355. 4 Can. 21: "Omnis utriusque sexus fidelis, postquam ad annos discretionis pervenerit, omnia sua solus peccata confiteatur fideliter, saltem semel in anno, proprio sacerdoti." Violation of this law of auricular confession was threatened with excommunication and refusal of Christian burial. See Hefele V. 793. |