History of Excommunication

This passage comes from pages 411 to 412 of Curiosities of Popular Customs and of Rites, Ceremonies, Observances, and Miscellaneous Antiquities by William S. Walsh (1925).

Excommunication. The formal exclusion of a person from religious communion and privileges. Excommunication, often with very severe consequences, was practiced in various ways by the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Jews. It is still in use among Mohammedans. In the early Christian Church it consisted simply in the exclusion of an offending member from fellowship by some formal action. This is still the practice among most Protestant denominations. As the power of the Church increased, excommunication became more complicated in method and severe in effect. In the Roman and related Churches excommunication may be either partial or total, temporary or perpetual. By the partial, or excommuncatio minor, the culprit is merely excluded from the sacraments; by the total, or excommunicatio major, he is excluded from the mass, from all intercourse with Christians, from ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and from burial in consecrated ground. Bell, book, and candle are the three instruments employed in the formal ceremony of excommunication. The ringing of the bell apprises the faithful within the church of what is about to happen, the sentence is read out of the book, and the lighted candle is then extinguished to denote the spiritual darkness in which the excommunicated person must for the future abide.