Bell, book, and candle

The_Potty_1

I was just reading a novel, and came across the phrase 'Book, Bell, and candle' in the context of referring to an impromptu wedding conducted by a ship's captain. This struck me as a little bizarre, because these are the items used to open the portal leading to the second level of watcher's keep.

The plot thickens, because according to wikipedia, the phrase actually refers to the Catholic ritual of excommunication. To the non-catholics, this was a formal ceremony to boot you out of the religion, and also effectively out of your entire circle of family and friends. The only options remaining to someone so treated were repentance, suicide, or walking 100 km and never returning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell,_book,_and_candle

The phrase "bell, book, and candle" refers to a method of excommunication, known as anathema, imposed on one who had committed a particularly grievous sin.

The ceremony traditionally involved a bishop, with 12 priests with candles, and is solemnly pronounced in some suitably conspicuous place. The bishop would then pronounce the formula of the anathema. After reciting this wall of latin, the priests would respond: Fiat, fiat, fiat ("So be it! So be it! So be it!") The bishop would then ring a bell, close a holy book, and he and the assisting priests would snuff out their candles by dashing them to the ground. However, the rite of anathema as described in the Pontificale Romanum only prescribes the candles to be dashed to the ground.

In practice, I imagine the developers were tasked to come up with a series of 5 tests which are required to perform in order to open the 5 levels of watcher's keep. This being coded in 1999 (before wikipedia or google), one of the developers late at night hit upon some half-remembered ceremony that hasn't been performed for 500 years, and adapted it. This may also explain why level 5 has a fruit salad of 3 tests, those are the leftover ideas.

The_Potty_1

OK on your options if you were excommunicated, in the specific case where you are the king of France and have married your cousin, it seems you can negotiate a bit.

Also, does anyone feel like updating wikipedia to include Baldur's gate in the list of games that reference the phrase ...

Sharguild

In the ex-communicum of King Henry II by Thomas Becket, the Bell, Book and Candle ritual was used (later to be rescinded by the Pope) this is not uncommonly known.
Do you have a question as to it's usage?
p.s. Wikipedia tells you only enough to be ill-informed. At least it provides a title subject to query.

edit - I also consider your inference that the developers were rubes that sort of winged it when they developed certain aspects of the game to be Il-conceived and ignorant. I've talked to a few of them personally and I've discovered they are anything but.

dunbar

Strange as it may seem, some ideas do actually pre-date the computer age.

BelgarathMTH

I'd heard of this before, but I always thought it had to do with exorcism. The wiki explains that the misunderstanding comes from a 1950's movie with the title "Bell, Book, and Candle". I can't confirm it, but I was thinking the priest in the movie "The Exorcist" also tried a variation of this ritual that didn't work. I could swear I've seen it done as exorcism in other movies, and parodies of those movies as well.

@The_Potty_1‌ , thanks for the historical reference.

I may have read it done as an excommunication ritual in Kathryn Kurtz's "Chronicles of the Deryni" series of novels, which are loosely based on Catholicism, reimagined into a world where a significant minority of people have psionic/magical abilities.

I was also a religious studies major, so I may have run across it during my history of religions readings. I'm pretty sure anyone with a good liberal arts course of studies as part of their college educations could have run across it in history, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, or psychology.

So, it doesn't surprise me that the Baldur's Gate writers knew about it, since one assumes they were all college graduates of one stripe or another.

Or, one or more of them could have been 1950's movie fans, and had seen the movie. Given all the pop culture references and easter eggs in the game, they were obviously television and movie fans.

dunbar

@BelgarathMTH Thanks for reminding me about Kathryn Kurtz's 'Deryni' books, now I'll have to add those to my 'find and re-read' list which along with my 'to read' list is now totally out of control!

The_Potty_1

@Sharguild no offence was intended to the developers, and perhaps I should clarify that I'm a developer myself. I can attest that when deadlines loom, and no-one seems to find your extension requests terribly interesting, your kludge skill suddenly becomes a perk not a drawback.

Jarrakul

I remember noticing this waaaaaay back when I first played TOB and being a tad confused as to why I was excommunicating someone to open a door. I have no idea whether the reference was intentional, but I suspect if it was the dev in question knew what they were referencing. If it sounds cool and tonally-appropriate, and can easily be translated into a puzzle, I think the average game dev isn't likely to care about the ritual's real-world use. The content beast must be fed, after all, and frankly most of the playerbase has more important things clogging up their heads than how to excommunicate someone.