(of *ex*, "out of," and *humus*, "ground"), the act of digging up a body interred in holy ground, by the authority of the judge. In France, the exhumation of a dead body is ordered, upon proof that he was killed in a duel. By the French laws a parson has a right to demand the exhumation of the body of one of his parishioners, when interred out of the parish without his consent.