bell, book and candle

English

Phrase

bell, book and candle

1. An expression denoting excommunication by anathema according to a rite of the Latin Church.
   • 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 36:

     I am afraid Jim Crow was a hardened sinner, and, alas! we had no one on board duly qualified to do for him with "bell, book and candle" what had been done ages before to his ancestor at Rheims.