Question XXXIV. How manifold is the anathema? [How many kinds are there?]

The anathema, as was said in the previous question, is either salutary or destructive; and because [the discussion] is now about this destructive [one], its causes are here to be run through. And first, indeed, [its] end. For although, as was said above, all anathemas are made for the honor of God, yet this kind is referred chiefly to punishing sins, to showing detestation of them, and to persuading men [thereof], as will appear below. Secondly, [its] efficient cause: the commander, indeed, [is] God, or man; the executor, [is] man. Thirdly, [its] form is the separation of the things themselves from human use, and [their] abolition; and to it can be referred the mode of the separation and abolition itself, which is various according to the variety of things. For some are burned, some are slaughtered, some are affected only with a civil death — so that, although they are allowed to live and to be, yet [they are] as if already dead, [and] are set apart from all [normal] intercourse. Fourthly, [its] matter is twofold. One [is the] proper and proximate [matter] — namely, the impure man, who commits the sin worthy of that penalty. The less proper and, as it were, remote [matter] is whatever properly pertains to men of this kind among these lower creatures — such as clothes, resources, furniture, house, fields, cities, wife, and children. All these are gathered from the scriptures cited [in] q. 23; and, as to the manner of that civil death, from various writers. For first, Elias Levita testifies, in [his] Thisbi, under the word Schamattha, that among the Jews a man is struck with the anathema in a threefold [way] — namely, so that there is Nidui [נידוי], Cherem [חרם], and Schamattha [שמתא] — as I have expounded in [my commentary on] the last [chapter] of Ezra. Josephus, in book 2 of the [Jewish] War, chapter 7 [says]: “The Essenes expel from their congregation those caught in sins; and whoever has been so condemned is generally consumed by a miserable death: for, bound by their oaths and rites, he can neither take food offered by others, but, plucking herbs after the manner of cattle, and eaten away by hunger, is corrupted through [his] limbs; on which account [the Essenes], very often pitying most of them at [their] last gasp, have taken [them] back, judging that they had paid a penalty for their sins sufficient [even] to what had led them to death.” Among the Romans, whoever had been publicly devoted to the [avenging] deities for some unspeakable crime could be slain by anyone with impunity, as Diodorus says in book 2. Of the Druids, Caesar relates these [things] in book 6 of the Gallic War: “Concerning all controversies, public and private, they decide; and if any crime has been committed, if a murder has been done, if there is a controversy about inheritance [or] about boundaries, the same [Druids] adjudge [it], and appoint rewards and penalties. If anyone, whether a private [person] or a people, did not stand by their decree, they interdict [him] from the sacrifices. This penalty, among them, is the gravest: those to whom it is thus interdicted are reckoned in the number of the impious and the criminal; all depart from them, flee their approach and conversation, lest they receive some harm from the contagion; nor is justice rendered to them when they seek it, nor is any honor shared [with them].” “Not to show the way to one erring” — at Athens it was sanctioned by public execrations, says Cicero, book 3 On Duties. And after the imprecations, glowing masses of iron were wont to be cast into the sea, as Plutarch relates in [the life of] Aristides. In what manner, among the Christians, and how manifold, excommunication is, what it effects, and how it is imposed, I have said in [my] treatise on Ecclesiastical Censures; and the most Reverend Baronius may be seen, in volume 1 of the Annals, at the year of the Lord 57. But, with respect to the matter [at hand], this division is to be gathered: that one [kind] is a general anathema, by which both the man and all his [goods] are utterly destroyed; another [is] particular, by which either the man is not destroyed, or not all his [goods].