Apostasy, ἀποστασία, revolt , renunciation of one’s chosen course of action to follow another. This word is formed from the Greek ἀπὸ, ab [from], contra [against], and from ἵστημι, to be standing up , to hold fast , that is to say, to stand against the doctrine one used to follow, to embrace an opinion contrary to one’s old beliefs; from which the Latin forms apostatare , to scorn or to violate anything at all. It is in this sense that we find it in the Laws of Edward the Confessor: Qui leges apostatabit terroe suoe, reus sit apud regem ; that whoso violates the laws of the kingdom is guilty of lese-majesty. Apostasy means more specifically the renunciation of the true religion to embrace a false one. Such was the action of Emperor Julian when he gave up Christianity for idolatrous practices.

Among Catholics, apostasy also refers to the desertion of a religious order to which one has made a profession of faith, and that one quits without a legitimate dispensation. See Order and Dispensation.

The ancients differentiate among three kinds of apostasy : the first, à supererogatione [to excess] that which is committed by a priest or a person who has taken holy orders who quits his estate of his own authority to return to the secular estate, and this is called a supererogation, because it adds a new degree of crime to either one of the two kinds of which we will speak, and without either one of which it would never exist: the second, à mandatis Dei [to God’s law], that is whoever commits a violation of the law of God, though he persists in his faith; the third, à fide [to faith]; that is the total defection of one who abandons his faith. See Renegade.

This last is subject to the justice of civil law. In France a Catholic who abandons his religion to embrace the so-called reformed religion can be punished by amende honorable , permanent banishment from the kingdom, and the confiscation of his property, by virtue of numerous edicts and declarations published under the reign of Louis the Great.