Word of the Week 6/17/18: Anathema

From Wikipedia:

"Anathema, in common usage, is something or someone that is detested or shunned. In its other main usage, it is a formal excommunication. The latter meaning, its ecclesiastical sense, is based on New Testament usage. In the Old Testament, anathema referred either to something (living or inanimate) that was consecrated or something denounced as evil or accursed and set aside for sacrificial offering.

"Anathema derives from Ancient Greek: anáthema, meaning 'an offering' or 'anything dedicated', itself derived from the verb, anatíthēmi, meaning 'to offer up'. In the Old Testament, it referred to both objects consecrated to divine use and those dedicated to destruction in the Lord's name, such as enemies and their weapons during religious wars. Since weapons of the enemy were considered unholy, the meaning became 'anything dedicated to evil' or 'a curse'.

"The Old Testament applied the word to anything set aside for sacrifice, and thus banned from profane use and dedicated to destruction—as, in the case of religious wars, the enemy and their cities and possessions. The New Testament uses the word to mean a curse and forced expulsion of someone from the Christian community.

"Although in the canons of ecumenical councils the word 'anathema' continued to be used to mean exclusion for heresy from the society of the faithful, the word was also used to signify a major excommunication inflicted with particular solemnity. Anathema in this sense was a major excommunication pronounced with the ceremonies described in the article 'bell, book, and candle', which were reserved for the gravest crimes

"The ceremony traditionally involved a bishop, with 12 priests with candles, and is solemnly pronounced in some suitably conspicuous place. The bishop would then pronounce the formula of the anathema. After this recitation the priests would respond: Fiat, fiat, fiat ('So be it! So be it! So be it!') The bishop would then ring a bell, close a holy book, and he and the assisting priests would snuff out their candles by dashing them to the ground."