or BAN (from the Brit. ban, i.e. clamour), is a proclamation or public notice, any public summons or edict, in short, whereby a thing is commanded or forbidden. The word banns is used in England and in Scotland in publishing matrimonial contracts; which is done in the church before marriage, to the end that if any persons can speak against the intention of the parties, either in respect of kindred, precontract, or other just cause, they may take their exception before the marriage be consummated. The use of matrimonial banns is said to have been first introduced into the Gallican church, though something like it obtained even in the primitive times; and it is this that Tertullian is supposed to mean by trinundina promulgatio. The council of Lateran first extended the usage and made it general.

BANN is also used to denote proscription or banishment for a crime proved, because anciently published by sound of trumpet; or, as Vossius thinks, because those who did not appear at the above-mentioned summons were punished by proscription. Hence "to put a prince under the bann of the empire," was to declare him divested of all his dignities.

BANN is further used as a solemn anathema, or excommunication attended with curses. In this sense we read of papal bannus, &c.