Excommunication from the Church as a Method of Repression

Excommunication is a traditional religious punishment that is applied in Christianity and applies to people who can damage their ecclesial authority through their behavior or expressed beliefs. Although there is evidence that such measures were applied to apostates and violators in Judaism and pagan religions (for example, among the ancient Celts). At present, it exists in the form of a so-called partial, small excommunication (prohibition) and anathema. The first of these is a temporary measure, and the second is carried out for a period until the guilty party fully repents.

It can be said that the meaning of this measure of punishment goes back to early Christianity. Since the Greek meaning of the word "church" means "assembly", or community of believers, then a person who, having joined this group of people ("ecclesia") and making certain promises, violated them, deprived any communication with them.

In addition, "Communion" in those days was associated with a joint thankful meal, which was held in memory of the Last Supper. Therefore, the excommunication from the church was perceived as a prohibition against the guilty to communicate with believers to repentance.

However, later the significance of this religious punishment has undergone very serious changes, and even became the instrument of repression, including political ones. First, it was extended to people who had beliefs that were significantly or not very different from those of the majority, and above all of the power group. Such people were called heretics. Then there was such an excommunication from the church as an interdict, practiced mainly in Western Europe, when in a city or village that suffered punishment, they did not baptize, crown or be buried in cemeteries.

Moreover, in the XII-XIII centuries such a seemingly religious punishment became automatically more serious Consequences and legal responsibility. Excommunication from the church - expulsion from the so-called "Christian people", led to the fact that the person who suffered it 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 handed over to the secular authorities "for the execution of a proper punishment" - for the death penalty at the stake.

In the Orthodox Church, this punishment was also often repressive. In particular, the excommunicated person He could be buried according to Christian customs. A striking example of this is the story with such an outstanding writer as Leo Tolstoy. The excommunication of such a "master of doom" for criticizing Orthodoxy and adhering to his own views on Christianity, in particular, on dogmatism and rituals, caused a sharp protest reaction. His wife, being a law-abiding Orthodox Christian, wrote an indignant letter to the Holy Synod.

Similarly, not only secular humanists or revolutionary youth, but religious philosophers, and even the legal adviser of Emperor Nicholas II, who called this decision of the Synod "stupidity", reacted in a similar way. On the excommunication of Tolstoy from the Church, the writer himself replied with a letter, where he noted that this document was illegal, not compiled according to the rules, and encouraging other people to do bad things. He also said that he himself did not want to belong to the community, whose teachings he considers false and harmful, hiding the very essence of Christianity.