Excommunication is a traditional religious punishment that is applied in Christianity and extends to people who, by their behavior or expressed beliefs, can damage ecclesial authority. Although there is evidence that similar measures were applied to apostates and violators in Judaism and pagan religions (for example, among the ancient Celts). Currently, it exists in the form of the so-called partial, small excommunication (prohibition) and anathema. The first of them is a temporary measure, and the second is imposed for a period until the guilty person has completely repented.
We can say that the meaning of this punishment is rooted in early Christianity. Since the Greek meaning of the word “church” means “meeting”, or a community of believers, a person who, having joined this group of people (“ecclesia”) and having made certain promises, violated them, was deprived of any communication with them.
In addition, "communion" in those days was associated with a joint thank-you meal, which took place in memory of the Last Supper. Therefore, excommunication was perceived as prohibiting the guilty from communicating with believers before repentance.
However, later the significance of this religious punishment underwent very serious changes, and even became an instrument of repression, including political ones. Firstly, it was extended to people who had beliefs that were significantly or not very different from the views of the majority, and, above all, the power group. Such people were called heretics. Then there was such an excommunication as an interdict, which was practiced mainly in Western Europe, when the town or village that suffered the punishment was not baptized, crowned, or buried in cemeteries.
Moreover, in the XII-XIII centuries, this seemingly religious punishment automatically began to carry more serious
ny consequences and legal liability. Excommunication - the expulsion from the so-called “Christian people”, led to the fact that the person whom it comprehended could be killed or robbed, and no one should help him. The anathema of the unrepentant heretic in practice and in the language of the Inquisition meant that he was transferred to the secular authorities "for the execution of due punishment" - for the death penalty at the stake.
In the Orthodox Church, this punishment was also often repressive. In particular, an excommunicated person
He could not be buried according to Christian customs. A striking example of this is the story of such an outstanding writer as Leo Tolstoy. The excommunication of such a “ruler of thoughts” because he criticized Orthodoxy and held his own views on Christianity, in particular on dogma and rituals, provoked a sharp protest reaction. His wife, being a law-abiding Orthodox Christian, wrote an indignant letter to the
Holy Synod.Not only secular humanists or revolutionary youth reacted in a similar way, but religious philosophers, and even the legal adviser of Emperor Nicholas II, who called this decision of the Synod "stupidity." To the excommunication of Tolstoy from the Church, the writer himself answered in a letter, where he noted that this document was illegal, compiled not according to the rules and encouraged other people to do wrong. He also said that he himself would not want to belong to a community, the teaching of which he considers false and harmful, hiding the very essence of Christianity.