Ernulfus’s excommunication

Ernulfus’s excommunication is a Latin church document presented as a fearsome instrument of spiritual punishment, but in the novel it becomes comic theatre: Mr. Shandy produces it for Dr. Slop to read aloud, while Toby answers its accumulating curses with the tune “Lillabullero.” The document’s solemn authority is thus made to coexist with a domestic dispute over a minor offense, and its sweeping language is redirected toward Obadiah and the knots he has tied.

Identity and Provenance

The text is identified as a chapter of the Rochester church’s book, written by Ernulfus, bishop of Rochester. Mr. Shandy, who collects curious documents, says that he obtained a copy from the register book of the church of Rochester. The work is introduced under the Latin heading “Textus de Ecclesiâ Roffensi, per Ernulfum Episcopum,” followed by a chapter title identifying it as an excommunication.

The narrator also gives a reason for printing the original: the genuineness of the Sorbonne consultation concerning baptism had been doubted and denied by some, so the excommunication is offered in a related documentary context, with Mr. Shandy acknowledging the chapter clerk of Rochester for the copy. This framing lends the text archival and ecclesiastical weight even as the scene that follows makes its use deliberately comic.

From Private Forms to Public Performance

Before the document appears, Mr. Shandy describes a gentleman who distrusted his own discretion enough to compose forms of swearing suited to different degrees of provocation and keep them close at hand. Mr. Shandy says he had been reading one such form to Toby over tea. When Dr. Slop reacts to the idea that anyone would prepare curses in advance, Mr. Shandy offers him a particular document from his collection, judging it too forceful for a small offense such as a cut thumb.

Dr. Slop has injured his thumb and has it wrapped in a handkerchief. He initially accepts the offered excommunication without suspicion and begins to read it aloud. Mr. Shandy insists that reading silently would violate their arrangement and says he wants the pleasure of hearing it again. Slop is reluctant, but when Toby offers to take over the reading, Slop proceeds aloud under the cover of Toby’s whistling. The paper’s legal-religious form has become a prop in a staged exchange among the three men.

The Curse and Its Comic Redirection

The text invokes God, the holy canons, the Virgin Mary, the angels, and an extensive company of saints before pronouncing excommunication and anathema. As Slop reads, Mr. Shandy inserts Obadiah into the curse, making the servant the target for tying the knots at issue. The formal text is therefore not simply recited: its sweeping condemnation is interrupted and customized to fit the immediate household grievance.

The curse extends across places and ordinary conditions of life, calling for Obadiah to be damned wherever he may be, whether at home, in the stables, garden, field, on the road, in the woods, in water, or in church. It also covers living and dying, eating and drinking, hunger and thirst, sleep and waking, work and rest, and other bodily functions. Later it enumerates the faculties and parts of the body, moving from the whole person to a long inventory of particular features. The scale and comprehensiveness of the language are central to the scene’s effect: an enormous ecclesiastical sentence is made to answer a petty domestic offense.

Voices, Music, and the Document’s Effect

Toby whistles “Lillabullero” through the reading. When the passage reaches the heavenly armies, he compares their curses with the soldiers’ swearing in Flanders and remarks that the document goes further; he adds that he could not bring himself to curse his dog in such a fashion. His reaction supplies a humane counterweight to the text’s relentless severity, while his tune repeatedly competes with Slop’s voice.

The interplay of recitation and interruption also exposes the document’s theatrical potential. Slop’s reading gives the old formula a voice, Mr. Shandy’s additions attach it to a present target, and Toby’s tune prevents the solemn performance from becoming wholly solemn. The excommunication retains its elaborate religious form, but within this scene that form is redirected into household banter: its authority is displayed, exaggerated, and made comic without erasing the striking breadth of its threatened penalties.