378 FOURTH PEKIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
" Hardened sinners " (says Lea) " might despise such impre cations, 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 ex communicate abroad ; accursed in standing and excommunicate in sitting ; accursed in eating, accursed in drinking, accursed in sleeping, and excom municate 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 perdi tion, 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."
$86. ECCLESIASTICAL PUNISHMENTS. 379
2. The ANATHEMA is generally used in the sama 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 Niciea, 335, anathematized the Arians, and the Council of Trent, 15G3, 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.3 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 Chcrem, as distinct from Niddui (i. e. separation), in the Jewish Synagogue. See J. Lightfoot, De Anathemate J\Iaranatha, 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. personcde for particular persons ; locale for a place or district ; and generate 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 Csesarea is sometimes quoted as the inventor of the interdict, but not justly. See Lea, p. 302 note.