Thus the pope’s first weapon in bringing peasants and princes to their knees was the threat of excommunication. He could pronounce their anathema and they would be “set apart” from the church, deprived of the grace essential for salvation. After some bishop read the solemn sentence of excommunication, a bell rang as for a funeral, a book was closed, and a candle was extinguished, all to symbolize the cutting off of the guilty man. If he entered a church during mass he was expelled or the mass was halted.
