It might
also be employed, when persuasion failed, to induce a parishioner to
accept office when chosen by his fellows.[180] But, it would seem, one
single definition would comprise all cases: excommunication was
employed against all those who disobeyed some order of the spiritual
judge, express or implied--it was a summary process for contempt of
court, in fact, and was daily used as such.
To recapitulate: a very large part of the parishioner's life and
activity fell under the surveillance and regulation of the
ecclesiastical courts. They compelled him to attend on specified days
his parish church, and no other; to be married there; to have his
children baptized and his wife churched there; to receive a certain
number of times communion there; to contribute to the maintenance of
church and churchyard, as well as to the finding of the requisites for
service or the church ornaments or utensils. In his parish church he
and his children were catechized and instructed, and, if the latter
were taught in a neighboring school-house, it was under the strict
supervision of the ordinary and by his or the bishop's licence and
allowance. So true was this that the schoolmaster was, like the
parson, a church officer. For the parishioner his church was the place
of business where all local affairs, civil or ecclesiastical, were
transacted, as well as the centre of social life in the village.
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