Re: Excommunication

From: David Weihe <weihe_at_wireless.danet.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 13:12:28 EST

> From: Peter Metcalfe <P.Metcalfe_at_student.canterbury.ac.nz>
> David Weihe:
> >The Excommunication spell seems to be too powerful to be allowed. Unless
> >I have misread the description, it seems that one High Priest could launch
> >Excommunications at his or her rivals and effectively destroy them with no
> >danger.
>
> The rivals must have fallen into error first (ie become inactive or
> sacreligious) for the excommunication spell to work. That is why
> one can't excommunicate Illuminates.

But why can't an illuminated High Priest excommunicate his rivals? He can tell the god whatever lies he wants to without fear, so he can just claim that the rival did all sorts of things in an enemy god's temple, and how is the god to know otherwise? Believe the accused (who might even be just an initiate who is supporting the real rival, and thus far less close to the god)?

> If an Orlanthi were excommunicated by his High Priest and joined
> the Red Moon, he would not show up in the Halls of Silence. If
> a Pentan was cursed by his shaman and joined the Kralori, then
> he would not show up in the Pentan afterlife.
Obviously. If he joined the Red Moon he would be sent to the Lunar afterlife *without* excommunication, just as an ex-Orlanthi Humakti doesn't go to Orlanth's Stead but Humakt's Barracks in Hell, without any Orlanth-sacrilege that I know about.

But what about an Orlanthi excommunicated by his High Priest by a BAD High Priest who arranged his enemy's capture by the Lunar authorities?

> ObPedant: the Icelandic and the Germans weren't too upset because
> they followed the Pope in the Latin rites and not the Greeks. What
> happened here was a schism. The Greeks were abusing the rites of
> excommuincation to make cheap political points in Latin eyes. And
> vice versa.

It did concern lots of other writers of the period, though, who were more concerned with the theological questions (Irish monastics, or Italian clerics in ex-Imperial areas, frex) than the recently converted at the edges of the World. Who cares if the rites were abused for (you claim political, they claimed religious) reasons, unless you are some Donatist heretic who claims that only the sinless can administer the sacrements?

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