What’s the origin of the phrase ‘Bell, book and candle’?
In the excommunication ceremony officials close the book, quench the candle and toll a bell, as for someone who had died. The phrase is old and first appears, in Old English, circa 1300:
“Curced in kirc an sal ai be wid candil, boke, and bell.”
Shakespeare used the phrase in King John, 1595:
BASTARD:
Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back,
When gold and silver becks me to come on.
Bell, book and candle was taken up as the title of a 1958 US film starring Kim Novak.