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Synodikon of Orthodoxy (843)

Local councils, tr. King, 1772; the Russian office

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IN the introduction to the Commination, or denouncing of God’s anger and judgment against sinners, appointed to be used, in the church of England, on the first day of Lent, it is said: “That in the primitive church there was a godly discipline, that at the beginning of lent, such persons as stood convicted of notorious sin were put to open penance, and punished in this world, that their souls might be saved in the day of the Lord; and that others, admonished by their example, might be the more afraid to offend.”

The service of the Greek church, with which the reader is now to be presented, is perhaps a part of that discipline, allowed, in the passage just quoted, to be very ancient. But the turn of it, in its present form, seems as if it was chiefly intended to declare the doctrine of the church; and to denounce the anathema against heretics, rather than against evil-livers. The Jews had three degrees of excommunication. The first, called Niddui, was the lowest; being only a separation of a sinner from the congregation, for a time. Then, if he continued impenitent, he was punished with a more severe excommunication, called Cherem; which answers to anathema, or cursing: because the sinner was cast out with solemn execrations out of the law of Moses. The third and highest degree, was more severe, and was called Shammatha; in which he was consigned totally and finally to the divine judgment, as a desperate and irrevocable sinner¹. Whether the primitive christian church formed its discipline in this respect upon the Jewish, is not very easy, at this time, to determine; but it appears evidently from the concurring testimony of ancient writers, that there was a form of excommunication used in the ancient church, called anathema; which was attended with execration, or devoting the sinner to destruction: and we learn from Sozomen, Socrates, and Athanasius, that such censure and execration were used against Arius, Julian the apostate, and others.

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