Commination--A Theological and Historical Journey I

A gurgling linguistic and verbal volcano sits under us as we blithely live our lives in our 21st century ignorance. That volcano consists of all those words which once had play in our language but have, through a combination of change of circumstances and time, lost their meaning. Yet they threaten to explode once again, even after being dormant for centuries, potentially to fill our lives and mental vision fields again with rich meaning. One such word is commination. Oh, of course, the word appears in the Unabridged and OED and many other dictionaries, but the attestations aren't any more recent than the mid-19th century. In addition, the meaning loosely ascribed to it--denunciation, threatening or anathematizing--is incomplete and invites further reflection. Though its English-language origin may be traced to the mid-15th century, and meant a "denunciation of punishment or vengeance," it took on a theological meaning in the 16th century, especially when the word became of central importance in the Ash Wednesday Service as recorded in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

In short, a "Commination against Sinners" was a part of the liturgy in which God uttered a curse against sinners, sinners who were admitting their sinfulness and shortcomings on Ash Wednesday. As you might imagine, this commination faded out by the 18th-19th centuries, when we adopted a much more positive view of human nature, and now is only a relic in the museum of theological curios. The purpose of this and the next two essays is to explore the development of divine threatenings against sinners as part of the Christian liturgy and then give you the "flow" of that long-abandoned liturgy in the Anglican Church. If it is true, and I believe it is, that we learn as much about ourselves by what we discard as by what we save, we have a true treasure of self-revelation on our hands....And, we might find through studying the word that we want to reclaim it for today.

The Function of Penitence in Pre-Reformation Christian Liturgy

As this book indicates, the observance of Ash Wednesday originated in the early Church. One aspect of this observance was "when those whose notorious sins had caused scandal were excommunicated." In other words, there was an official "outing" of the really bad sinners, a sort of display of them to the entire community, so that they would be humbled, people would be warned and the entire community, eventually, would return to faith in time for the Easter celebration. During Lent, then, these notorious sinners would undergo rituals of penitence, wear sackcloth and ashes, have prayers said over them, and be dismissed from the celebration of the liturgy before communion. The goal, of course, was not simply to humiliate these sinners; they were to be special examples of divine grace so that when they were restored to the community all could praise God for his bountiful mercy. And, as luck would have it, the Bible is full of penitential Psalms (well, there are seven of them--Psalms 6,32,38,51,102,130 and 143); thus the task of confession was made easier for all. As the commentary on the Book of Common Prayer says,

"Services in Lent contained readings, scrutinies, and prayers for the penitents, who continued to be excluded from communion. Near the end of Lent (Maundy Thursday in the Roman rite, Good Friday in the Gallican) the penitents were reconciled," pp. 218-219.

A Digression on "Scrutinies"

Well, before we go any further, we need to look at that word "scrutinies." What are they? We use the word "scrutiny" today to express "the action of looking searchingly at something; a searching gaze," but that is only definition 3 in the OED and is labeled "in recent use." The word is derived from the Latin scrutari (to examine or search), but its oldest meaning is "the formal taking of individual votes, as a method of electing to an office or dignity, or of deciding some question proposed to a deliberative assembly." As early as 1450, we have this interesting use of the term in a list of the ways that votes were taken: "The thre formes of eleccion schal be declared..That is to say, the wey of the holy-goste, the wey of scrutyny, and the wey of compromys." From Holland's 1600 translation of Livy: "The people went to a scrutinie and began to give their voices." A scrutiny could also be an "investigation" or "critical inquiry." So, what our author quoted above does not do is tell us whether the "scrutinies" undergone by the pentitents were votes to re-admit them or further investigations into their lives. It helps, however, to know both meanings of the term.

While on the word scrutiny, I thought I would wander to other words related to it. A scrutator is not only "one who examines or investigates," but "one whose office it is to examine or investigate closely, esp. one who acts as an examiner of votes at an election." From the 18th century: "The justices of the peace..shall be scrutators of the ballot." Actually, the word I like best is scrutineer. It may either be a noun or a verb, and is, like the scrutator, one who examines in general or also scrutinizes the votes at an election (or, now in car or motor-boat racing, one who inspects the car/boat to make sure it complies with regulations). From 1976 we have the phrase, "he is the most demanding of literary scrutineers..." One can either scrutinize, scrutiny, or scrutate the results of an election. This process is called scrutation. I think that is enough for now, don't you? Now let's move to the ritual of commination in the Book of Common Prayer--that is what you paid your money for....

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