HISTORY of the CHRISTIAN CHURCH*
CHAPTER VIII.
CHURCH DISCIPLINE.
Comp. vol. II. § 57, and vol.
III. § 68.
§ 85. The Penitential Books.
I. The Acts of
Councils, the Capitularies of Charlemagne and his successors, and the
Penitential Books, especially that of Theodore of Canterbury, and that of Rome.
See Migne’s Patrol. Tom. 99, fol. 901-983.
II. Friedr. Kunstmann (R.C.): Die
latein. Pönitentialbücher der Angelsachsen. Mainz 1844. F. W. H. Wasserschleben: Bussordnungen der abendländ.
Kirche. Halle
1851. Steitz: Das
röm. Buss-Sacrament. Frankf. 1854. Frank (R.C.):
Die Bussdisciplin der Kirche. Mainz 1867. Probst (R.C.): Sacramente
und Sacramentalien. TĂĽbingen 1872. Haddan and
Stubbs: Councils and
Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, vol. III.
Oxf. 1871. H. Jos. Schmitz (R.C.):
Die BussbĂĽcher und die Bussdisciplin der Kirche. Nach handschriftl. Quellen. Mainz 1883 (XVI. and 864 p.).
Comp. the review of this book by Wasserschleben in the "Theol.
Literaturzeitung," 1883, fol. 614 sqq.
Bingham, Bk
XIV. Smith and Cheetham, II. 608 sqq. (Penitential
Books). Herzog,2 III. 20 sqq. (BussbĂĽcher). Wetzer and Welte2
II. 209-222 (BeichtbĂĽcher); II. 1561-1590 (Bussdisciplin).
Comp. Lit. in § 87.
The discipline of the Catholic
church is based on the power of the keys intrusted to the apostles and their
successors, and includes the excommunication and restoration of delinquent members.
It was originally a purely spiritual jurisdiction, but after the establishment
of Christianity as the national religion, it began to affect also the civil and
temporal condition of the subjects of punishment. It obtained a powerful hold
upon the public mind from the universal belief of the middle ages that the
visible church, centering in the Roman papacy, was by divine appointment the
dispenser of eternal salvation, and that expulsion from her communion, unless
followed by repentance and restoration, meant eternal damnation. No heresy or
sect ever claimed this power.
Discipline was very obnoxious to
the wild and independent spirit of the barbaric races. It was exercised by the
bishop through synodical courts, which were held annually in the dominions of
Charlemagne for the promotion of good morals. Charlemagne ordered the bishops
to visit their parishes once a year, and to inquire into cases of incest,
patricide, fratricide, adultery, and other vices contrary to the laws of God.389 Similar directions were given by Synods in Spain and England. The
more extensive dioceses were divided into several archdeaconries. The
archdeacons represented the bishops, and, owing to this close connection, they
possessed a power and jurisdiction superior to that of the priests. Seven
members of the congregation were entrusted with a supervision, and had to
report to the inquisitorial court on the state of religion and morals. Offences
both ecclesiastical and civil were punished at once with fines, fasting,
pilgrimages, scourging, imprisonment. The civil authorities aided the bishops
in the exercise of discipline. Public offences were visited with public
penance; private offences were confessed to the priest, who immediately granted
absolution on certain conditions.
The discipline of the Latin
church in the middle ages is laid down in the so-called "Penitential
Books."390 They
regulate the order of penitence, and prescribe specific punishments for certain
sins, as drunkenness, fornication, avarice, perjury, homicide, heresy,
idolatry. The material is mostly derived from the writings of the fathers, and
from the synodical canons of Ancyra (314), Neocaesarea (314), Nicaea (325),
Gangra (362), and of the North African, Frankish, and Spanish councils down to
the seventh century. The common object of these Penitentials is to enforce
practical duties and to extirpate the ferocious and licentious passions of
heathenism. They present a very dark picture of the sins of the flesh. They
kept alive the sense of a moral government of God, who punishes every violation
of his law, but they lowered the sense of guilt by fostering the pernicious
notion that sin may be expiated by mechanical exercises and by the payment of a
sum of money.
There were many such books,
British, Irish, Frankish, Spanish, and Roman. The best known are the
Anglo-Saxon penitentials of the seventh and eighth centuries, especially that
of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury (669-690). He was a Greek by birth, of
Tarsus in Cilicia, and reduced the disciplinary rules of the East and West to a
system. He was not the direct author of the book which bears his name, but it
was drawn up under his direction, published during his life-time and by his
authority, and contains his decisions in answer to various questions of a
priest named Eoda and other persons on the subject of penance and the whole
range of ecclesiastical discipline. The genuine text has recently been brought
to light from early MSS. by the combined labors of German and English
scholarship.391 The
introduction and the book itself are written in barbarous Latin. Traces of the
Greek training of Theodore may be seen in the references to St. Basil and to
Greek practices. Next to Theodore’s collection there are Penitentials under the
name of the venerable Bede (d. 735), and of Egbert, archbishop of York (d.
767).392
The earliest Frankish
penitential is the work of Columban, the Irish missionary (d. 615). He was a
severe monastic disciplinarian and gave prominence to corporal punishment among
the penalties for offences. The Cummean Penitential (Poenit. Cummeani) is of Scotch-Irish origin, and
variously assigned to Columba of Iona (about 597), to Cumin, one of his disciples,
or to Cummean, who died in Columban’s monastery at Bobbio (after 711).
Haltigar, bishop of Cambray, in the ninth century (about 829) published a
"Roman Penitential," professedly derived from Roman archives, but in
great part from Columban, and Frankish sources. An earlier work which bears the
name "Poenitentiale
Romanum,"
from the first part of the eighth century, has a more general character, but
its precise origin is uncertain. The term "Roman" was used to
designate the quality of a class of Penitentials which enjoyed a more than
local authority.393 Rabanus
Maurus (d. 855) prepared a "Liber Poenitentitae" at the request of the archbishop Otgar of
Mayence (841). Almost every diocese had its own book of the kind, but the
spirit and the material were substantially the same.
Notes.
As specimens of these Penitential
Books, we give the first two chapters from the first book of the Poenitentiale Theodori (Archbishop of Canterbury), as
printed in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Eccles. Doc. relating to Great
Britain and Ireland, vol. IIIrd. p. 177 sqq. We insert a few better
readings from other MSS. used by Wasserschleben.
I. De Crapula et Ebrietate.
1. Si quis Episco pus aut aliquis
ordinatus in consuetudine vitium habuerit ebrietatis, aut desinat aut deponatur.
2. Si monachus pro ebrietate
vomitum facit, XXX. dies peniteat.
3. Si presbiter aut diaconus pro
ebrietate, XL. dies peniteat.
4. Si vero pro infirmitate aut quia
longo tempore se abstinuerit, et in consuetudine non erit ei multum bibere vel
manducare, aut pro gaudio in Natale Domini aut in Pascha aut pro alicujus
Sanctorum commemoratione faciebat, et tunc plus non accipit quam decretum est a
senioribus, nihil nocet. Si Episcopus juberit, non nocet illi, nisi ipse
similiterfaciat.
5. Si laicus fidelis pro ebrietate
vomitum facit, XV. dies peniteat.
6. Qui vero inebriatur contra
Domini interdictum, si votum sanctitatis habuerit VII. dies in pane et aqua,
LXX. sine pinguedine peniteat; laici sine cervisa [cervisia].
7. Qui per nequitiam inebriat
alium, XL. dies peniteat.
8. Qui pro satietate vomitum facit,
III. diebus [dies] peniteat.
9. Si cum sacrificio communionis,
VII. dies peniteat; si infirmitatis causa, sine culpa.
II. De Fornicatione.
1. Si quis fornicaverit cum
virgine, I. anno peniteat. Si cum marita, IIII. annos, II. integros, II alios
in XL. mis. III. bus., et III dies in ebdomada peniteat.
2. Qui sepe cum masculo aut cum
pecude fornicat, X. annos ut peniteret judicavit.
3. Rem aliud. Qui cum pecoribus
coierit, XV. annos peniteat.
4. Qui coierit cum masculo post XX.
annum, XV. annos peniteat.
5. Si masculus cum masculo
fornicaverit, X. annos peniteat.
6. Sodomitae VII. annos peniteat
[peniteant]; molles [et mollis] sicut adultera.
7. Item hoc; virile scelus semel
faciens IIII annos peniteat; si in consuetudine fuerit, ut Basilius dicit, XV.
Si sine, sustinens unum annum ut mulier. Si puer sit, primo II. bus annis; si
iterat IIII.
8. Si in femoribus, annum I. vel.
III. XL. mas.
9. Si se ipsum coinguinat, XL. dies
[peniteat.]
10. Qui concupiscit fornicari
[fornicare] sed non potest, XL. dies vel XX. peniteat. Si frequentaverit, si
puer sit, XX. dies, vel vapuletur.
11. Pueri qui fornicantur inter se
ipsos judicavit ut vapulentur.
12. Mulier cum muliere fornicando
[si ... fornicaverit], III. annos peniteat.
13. Si sola cum se ipsa coitum
habet, sic peniteat.
14. Una penitentia est viduae et
puellae. Majorem meruit quae virum habet, si fornicaverit.
15. Qui semen in os miserit, VII
annos peniteat: hoc pessimum malum. Alias ab eo judicatum est ut ambo usque in
finem vitae peniteant; vel XXII. annos, vel ut superius VII.
16. Si cum matre quis fornicaverit,
XV. annos peniteat, et nunquam, mutat [mutet] nisi Dominicis diebus: et hoc tam
profanum incertum [incestum] ab eo similiter alio modo dicitur ut cum
peregrinatione perenni VII. annos peniteat.
17. Qui cum sorore fornicatur, XV.
annos peniteat, eo modo quo superius de matre dicitur, sed et istud XV. alias
in canone confirmavit; unde non absorde XV. anni ad matrem transeunt qui
scribuntur.
18. Qui sepe fornicaverit, primus
canon judicavit X. annos penitere; secundus canon VII.; sed pro infirmitate
hominis, per consilium dixerunt III. annos penitere.
19. Si frater cum fratre naturali
fornicaverit per commixtionem carnis, XV. annos ab omni carne abstineat.
20. Si mater cum filio suo parvulo
fornicationem imitatur, III. annos se abstineat a carne, et diem unum jejunet
in ebdomada, id est, usque ad vesperum.
21. Qui inludetur fornicaria
cogitatione, peniteat usque dum cogitatio superetur.
22. Qui diligit feminam mente,
veniam petat ab eo [a Deo] id est, de amore et amicitia si dixerit si non est
susceptus ab ea, VII. dies peniteat."
The remaining chapters of the
first book treat De
Avaritia Furtiva; De Occisione Hominum [De Homicidio]; De his qui per Heresim
decipiuntur; De Perjurio; De multis et diversis Malis; De diverso Lapso
servorum Dei; De his qui degraduntur vel ordinari non possunt; De Baptizatis
his, qualiter peniteant; De his qui damnant Dominicam et indicta jejunia
ecclesiae Dei; De communione Eucharistiae, vel Sacrificio; De Reconciliatione;
De Penitentia Nubentium specialiter; De Cultura Idolorum. The last chapter shows how
many heathen superstitions prevailed in connection with gross immorality, which
the church endeavored to counteract by a mechanical legalism. The second book
treats De
Ecclesiae Ministerio; De tribus gratlibus; De Ordinatione; De Baptismo et
Confirmatione; De Missa Defunctorum, etc.
§ 86. Ecclesiastical Punishments. Excommunication, Anathema,
Interdict.
Friedrich Kober (R.C.): Der Kirchenbann nach den Grundsätzen des canonischen
Rechts dargestellt. TĂĽbingen 1857 (560 pages). By the same author: Die
Suspension der Kirchendiener. TĂĽb. 1862.
Henry C. Lea: Excommunication, in his Studies
in Church History (Philadelphia 1869), p. 223-475.
The severest penalties of the
church were excommunication, anathema, and interdict. They were fearful weapons
in the hands of the hierarchy during the middle ages, when the church was
believed to control salvation, and when the civil power enforced her decrees by
the strong arm of the law. The punishment ceases with repentance, which is
followed by absolution. The sentence of absolution must proceed from the bishop
who pronounced the sentence of excommunication; but in articulo mortis every priest can absolve on
condition of obedience in case of recovery.
1. Excommunication was the exclusion from the sacraments,
especially the communion. In the dominions of Charlemagne it was accompanied
with civil disabilities, as exclusion from secular tribunals, and even with
imprisonment and seizure of property. A bishop could excommunicate any one who
refused canonical obedience. But a bishop could only be excommunicated by the
pope, and the pope by no power on earth.394 The sentence was often accompanied with awful curses upon the
bodies and souls of the offender. The popes, as they towered above ordinary
bishops, surpassed them also in the art of cursing, and exercised it with
shocking profanity. Thus Benedict VIII., who crowned Emperor Henry II. (a.d. 1014), excommunicated some
reckless vassals of William II., Count of Provence, who sought to lay
unhallowed hands upon the property of the monastery of St. Giles,395 and consigned them to Satan with
terrible imprecations, although be probably thought he was only following St.
Peter’s example in condemning Ananias and Sapphira, and Simon Magus.396
"Hardened sinners"
(says Lea) "might despise such imprecations, but their effect on believers
was necessarily unutterable, when, amid the gorgeous and impressive ceremonial
of worship, the bishop, surrounded by twelve priests bearing flaming candles,
solemnly recited the awful words which consigned the evil-doer and all his
generation to eternal torment with such fearful amplitude and reduplication of
malediction, and as the sentence of perdition came to its climax, the attending
priests simultaneously cast their candles to the ground and trod them out, as a
symbol of the quenching of a human soul in the eternal night of hell. To this
was added the expectation, amounting almost to a certainty, that Heaven would
not wait for the natural course of events to confirm the judgment thus
pronounced, but that the maledictions would be as effective in this world as in
the next. Those whom spiritual terrors could not subdue thus were daunted by
the fearful stories of the judgment overtaking the hardened sinner who dared to
despise the dread anathema."
2. The Anathema is generally used in the same sense as
excommunication or separation from church communion and church privileges. But
in a narrower sense, it means the "greater" excommunication,397 which excludes from all
Christian intercourse and makes the offender an outlaw; while the
"minor" excommunication excludes only from the sacrament. Such a
distinction was made by Gratian and Innocent III. The anathema was pronounced
with more solemn ceremonies. The Council of Nicaea, 335, anathematized the
Arians, and the Council of Trent, 1563, closed with three anathemas on all
heretics.
3. The Interdict398 extended over a whole town or
diocese or district or country, and involved the innocent with the guilty. It
was a suspension of religion in public exercise, including even the rites of
marriage and burial; only baptism and extreme unction could be performed, and
they only with closed doors. It cast the gloom of a funeral over a country, and
made people tremble in expectation of the last judgment. This exceptional
punishment began in a small way in the fifth century. St. Augustin justly
reproved Auxilius, a brother bishop, who abused his power by excommunicating a
whole family for the offence of the head, and Pope Leo the Great forbade to
enforce the penalty on any who was not a partner in the crime.399 But the bishops and popes of the middle ages, from the eleventh to
the thirteenth century, thought otherwise, and resorted repeatedly to this
extreme remedy of enforcing obedience. They had some basis for it in the custom
of the barbarians to hold the family or tribe responsible for crimes committed
by individual members.
The first conspicuous examples
of inflicting the Interdict occurred in France. Bishop Leudovald of Bayeux,
after consulting with his brother bishops, closed in 586 all the churches of
Rouen and deprived the people of the consolations of religion until the
murderer of Pretextatus, Bishop of Rouen, who was slain at the altar by a
hireling of the savage queen Fredegunda, should be discovered.400 Hincmar of Laon inflicted the interdict on his diocese (869), but
Hincmar of Rheims disapproved of it and removed it. The synod of Limoges
(Limoisin), in 1031, enforced the Peace of God by the interdict in these words
which were read in the church: "We excommunicate all those noblemen (milites) in the bishopric of Limoges
who disobey the exhortations of their bishop to hold the Peace. Let them and
their helpers be accursed, and let their weapons and horses be accursed! Let their lot be with Cain, Dathan, and
Abiram! And as now the lights are
extinguished, so their joy in the presence of angels shall be destroyed, unless
they repent and make satisfaction before dying." The Synod ordered that public worship be closed, the altars laid
bare, crosses and ornaments removed, marriages forbidden; only clergymen,
beggars, strangers and children under two years could be buried, and only the
dying receive the communion; no clergyman or layman should be shaved till the
nobles submit. A signal in the church on the third hour of the day should call
all to fall on their knees to pray. All should be dressed in mourning. The
whole period of the interdict should be observed as a continued fast and
humiliation.401
The popes employed this fearful
weapon against disobedient kings, and sacrificed the spiritual comforts of
whole nations to their hierarchical ambition. Gregory VII. laid the province of
Gnesen under the interdict, because King Bolislaw II. had murdered bishop
Stanislaus of Cracow with his own hand. Alexander II. applied it to Scotland
(1180), because the king refused a papal bishop and expelled him from the
country. Innocent III. suspended it over France (1200), because king Philip
Augustus had cast off his lawful wife and lived with a concubine.402 The same pope inflicted this punishment upon England (March 23,
1208), hoping to bring King John (Lackland) to terms. The English interdict
lasted over six years during which all religious rites were forbidden except
baptism, confession, and the viaticum.
Interdicts were only possible in
the middle ages when the church had unlimited power. Their frequency and the
impossibility of full execution diminished their power until they fell into
contempt and were swept out of existence as the nations of Europe outgrew the
discipline of priestcraft and awoke to a sense of manhood.
§ 87. Penance and Indulgence.
Nath. Marshall (Canon of Windsor and translator of Cyprian, d. 1729): The Penitential
Discipline of the Primitive Church for the first 400 years after Christ,
together with its declension from the fifth century downward to its present
state. London 1714. A new ed. in the "Lib. of Anglo-Cath.
Theol." Oxford 1844.
Eus. Amort: De Origine, Progressu, Valore
ac Fructu Indulgentiarum. Aug. Vindel.
1735 fol.
Muratori: De Redemtione Peccatorum et de
Indulgentiarum Origine, in Tom. V. of his Antiquitates Italicae Medii Aevi. Mediol. 1741.
Joh. B. Hirscher (R.C.): Die
Lehre vom Ablass.
TĂĽbingen, 5th ed. 1844.
G. E. Steitz: Das
römische Buss-Sacrament, nach seinem bibl. Grunde und seiner gesch. Entwicklung. Frankf a. M. 1854 (210 pages).
Val. Gröne (R.C.):
Der Ablass, seine Geschichte und Bedeutung in der
Heilsökonomie.
Regensb. 1863.
Domin. Palmieri (R.C.): Tractat. de Poenit. Romae 1879.
George Mead:
Art. Penitence, in Smith and Cheetham II. 1586-1608. Wildt, (R.C.): Ablass, in Wetzer
and Welte2 I. 94-111; Beichte and Beichtsiegel, II.
221-261. Mejer in Herzog2 I.
90-92. For extracts from sources comp. Gieseler
II. 105 sqq.; 193 sqq.; 515 sqq. (Am. ed.)
For the
authoritative teaching of the Roman church on the Sacramentum Poenitentiae see Conc. Trident. Sess.
XIV. held 1551.
The word repentance or penitence
is an insufficient rendering for the corresponding Greek metanoia, which
means a radical change of mind or conversion from a sinful to a godly life, and
includes, negatively, a turning away from sin in godly sorrow (repentance in
the narrower sense) and, positively, a turning to Christ by faith with a
determination to follow him.403 The call to repent in this sense was the beginning of the preaching
both of John the Baptist, and of Jesus Christ.404
In the Latin church the idea of
repentance was externalized and identified with certain outward acts of
self-abasement or self-punishment for the expiation of sin. The public penance
before the church went out of use during the seventh or eighth century, except
for very gross offences, and was replaced by private penance and confession.405 The Lateran Council of 1215 under Pope Innocent III. made it
obligatory upon every Catholic Christian to confess to his parish priest at
least once a year.406
Penance, including auricular
confession and priestly absolution, was raised to the dignity of a sacrament
for sins committed after baptism. The theory on which it rests was prepared by
the fathers (Tertullian and Cyprian), completed by the schoolmen, and
sanctioned by the Roman church. It is supposed that baptism secures perfect
remission of past sins, but not of subsequent sins, and frees from eternal
damnation, but not from temporal punishment, which culminates in death or in
purgatory. Penance is described as a "laborious kind of baptism," and
is declared by the Council of Trent to be necessary to salvation for those who
have fallen after baptism, as baptism is necessary for those who have not yet
been regenerated.407
The sacrament of penance and
priestly, absolution includes three elements: contrition of the heart,
confession by the mouth, satisfaction by good works.408 On these conditions the priest grants absolution, not simply by a
declaratory but by a judicial act. The good works required are especially
fasting and almsgiving. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, Tours, Compostella, and
other sacred places were likewise favorite satisfactions. Peter Damiani
recommended voluntary self-flagellation as a means to propitiate God. These
pious exercises covered in the popular mind the whole idea of penance. Piety
was measured by the quantity of good works rather than by quality of character.
Another mediaeval institution
must here be mentioned which is closely connected with penance. The church in
the West, in her zeal to prevent violence and bloodshed, rightly favored the
custom of the barbarians to substitute pecuniary compensation for
punishment of an offence, but wrongly applied this custom to the sphere of
religion. Thus money, might be substituted for fasting and other satisfactions,
and was clothed with an atoning efficacy. This custom seems to have proceeded
from the church of England, and soon spread over the continent.409 It degenerated into a regular traffic, and became a rich source
for the increase of ecclesiastical and monastic property.
Here is the origin of the indulgences
so called, that is the remission of venial sins by the payment of money and
on condition of contrition and prayer. The practice was justified by the
scholastic theory that the works of supererogation of the saints constitute a
treasury of extra-merit and extra-reward which is under the control of the
pope. Hence indulgence assumed the special meaning of papal dispensation or
remission of sin from the treasury of the overflowing merits of saints, and
this power was extended even to the benefit of the dead in purgatory.410
Indulgences may be granted by
bishops and archbishops in their dioceses, and by the pope to all Catholics.
The former dealt with it in retail, the latter in wholesale. The first
instances of papal indulgence occur in the ninth century under Paschalis I. and
John VIII. who granted it to those who had fallen in war for the defence of the
church. Gregory VI. in 1046 promised it to all who sent contributions for
the repair of the churches in Rome.
Urban II., at the council of Clermont (1095), offered to the crusaders "by
the authority of the princes of the Apostles, Peter and Paul," plenary
indulgence as a reward for a journey to the Holy Land. The same offer was
repeated in every crusade against the Mohammedans and heretics. The popes found
it a convenient means for promoting their power and filling their treasury.
Thus the granting of indulgences became a periodical institution. Its abuses
culminated in the profane and shameful traffic of Tetzel under Leo X. for the
benefit of St. Peter’s church, but were overruled in the Providence of God for
the Reformation and a return to the biblical idea of repentance.
Note.
The charge is frequently made
against the papal court in the middle ages that it had a regulated scale of
prices for indulgences, and this is based on the Tax Tables of the Roman
Chancery published from time to time. Roman Catholic writers (as Lingard,
Wiseman) say that the taxes are merely fees for the expedition of business and
the payment of officials, but cannot deny the shameful avarice of some popes.
The subject is fully discussed by Dr. T. L. Green (R.C.), Indulgences,
Sacramental Absolutions, and the Tax-Tables of the Roman Chancery and
Penitentiary, considered, in reply to the Charge of Venality, London
(Longmans) 1872, and, on the Protestant side, by Dr. Richard Gibbings (Prof. of
Ch. Hist. in the University of Dublin), The Taxes of the Apostolic
Penitentiary; or, the Prices of Sins in the Church of Rome, Dublin 1872.
Gibbings reprints the Taxae Sacrae Poenitentiariae Romanae from the Roman ed. of 1510 and the Parisian ed.
of 1520, which cover 21 pages in Latin, but the greater part of the book (164
pages) is an historical introduction and polemical discussion.
* Schaff, Philip, History of
the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997.
This material has been carefully compared, corrected¸ and emended (according to
the 1910 edition of Charles Scribner's Sons) by The Electronic Bible Society,
Dallas, TX, 1998.
389 See the passages in Gieseler IL 55 (Harpers’ ed.) The Synodical
courts were called Sendgerichte (a corruption from Synod).
390 Liber
Poenitentialis, Poenitential, Confessionale, Leges Poenitentium, Judicia
Peccantium.
391 By Prof. Wasserschleben of Halle, 1851 (from several Continental
MSS.), and Canon Haddan and Prof. Stubbs, Oxford, 1871, (III. 173-203) from a
Cambridge MS. of the 8th century. The texts of the earlier editions of Theodori
Poenitentiale by Spelman (1639), D’Achery (1669), Jaques Petit (1677, reprinted
in Migne’s Patrol. 1851, Tom. 99), Thorpe (1840), and Kunstmann (1844)
are imperfect or spurious. The question of authorship and of the MS. sources is
learnedly discussed in a note by Haddan and Stubbs, III. 173 sq. See extracts
in the Notes.
392 Both are given in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, etc. III.
326 sqq. and 413 sqq.
393 This is the view of Wasserschleben, while Schmitz thinks that the Poenitentiale
Romanum was originally intended for the Roman church, and that the Westem
Penitentials are derived from it.
394 But during the papal schism, the rival popes excommunicated each
other, and the Council of Constance deposed them.
395 Aegidius (Aijgivdio");
Italian: Sant Egidio; French: S. Gilles. He was an abbot and confessor in
France during the reign of Charles Martel or earlier, and much more celebrated
than reliably known. He is the special patron of cripples, and his tomb was
much visited by pilgrims from all parts of France, England and Scotland. Almost
every county in England has churches named in his honor, amounting in all to
146. See Smith and Wace I. 47 sqq.
396 Bened. Papae VIII. Epist. 32 (ad Guillelmum Comitem). In Migne’s Patrol. T.
139, fol. 1630-32. Lea translates it in part, l.c. p. 337.
"Benedict Bishop, Servant of the servants of God, to Count William and his
mother, the Countess Adelaide, perpetual grace and apostolic benediction ....
Let them [who a tempted to rob the monastery] be accursed in their bodies, and
let their souls be delivered to destruction and perdition and torture. Let them
be damned with the damned: let them be scourged with the ungrateful; let them
perish with the proud. Let them be accursed with the Jews who, seeing the
incarnate Christ, did not believe but sought to crucify Him. Let them be
accursed with the heretics who labored to destroy the church. Let them be
accursed with those who blaspheme the name of God. Let them be accursed with
those who despair of the mercy of God. Let them be accursed with those who he
damned in Hell. Let them be accursed with the impious and sinners unless they
amend their ways, and confess themselves in fault towards St. Giles. Let them
be accursed in the four quarters of the earth. In the East be they accursed,
and in the West disinherited; in the North interdicted, and in the South
excommunicate. Be they accursed in the day-time and excommunicate in the
night-time. Accursed be they at home and excommunicate abroad; accursed in
standing and excommunicate in sitting; accursed in eating, accursed in
drinking, accursed in sleeping, and excommunicate in waking; accursed when they
work and excommunicate when they rest. Let them be accursed in the spring time
and excommunicate in the summer; accursed in the autumn and excommunicate in
the winter. Let them be accursed in this world and excommunicate in the next.
Let their lands pass into the hands of the stranger, their wives be given over
to perdition, and their children fall before the edge of the sword. Let what
they eat be accursed, and accursed be what they leave, so that he who eats it
shall be accursed. Accursed and excommunicate be the priest who shall give them
the body and blood of the Lord, or who shall visit them in sickness. Accursed
and excommunicate be he who shall carry them to the grave and shall dare to
bury them. Let them be excommunicate, and accursed with all curses if they do
not make amends and render due satisfaction. And know this for truth, that
after our death no bishop nor count, nor any secular power shall usurp the
seigniory of the blessed St. Giles. And if any presume to attempt it, borne
down by, all the foregoing curses, they never shall enter the kingdom of
Heaven, for the blessed St. Giles committed his monastery to the lordship of
the blessed Peter."
397 Corresponding to the Cherem, as distinct from Niddui
(i.e. separation), in the Jewish Synagogue. See J. Lightfoot, De Anathemate Maranatha, and the commentators on Gal.
1:8, 9 (especially Wieseler).
398 Interdictum
orprohibitio officiorum divinorum, prohibition of public worship.
A distinction is made between interd. personale for particular persons; locale for place or district; and generale for whole countries and
kingdoms.
399 Aug. Ep. 250, § 1; Leo, Ep. X. cap, 8_quoted by
Gieseler, and Lea, p. 301. St. Basil of Caesarea is sometimes quoted as the
inventor of the interdict, but not justly. See Lea, p. 302 note.
400 Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. VIII. 31.
401 Conc. Lemovicense II. See Mansi XIX. 541; Harduin VI. p. 1, 885;
Hefele IV. 693-695; Gieseler II. 199 note 12.
402 See the graphic description of the effects of this interdict upon
the state of society, in Hurter’s Innocenz III., vol. I. 372-386.
403 Penitence is from the Latin poenitentia, and this is derived from poena, poivnh (compensation,
satisfaction, punishment). Jerome introduced the word, or rather retained
it, in the Latin Bible, for metavnoia, and poenitentiam agere for metanoei'n
Hence the Douay version: to do penance. Augustin, Isidor, Rabanus Maurus, Peter
Lombard, and the R. Catholic theologians connect the term with the penal idea (poena, punitio) and make it cover the
whole penitential discipline. The English repentance, to repent, and the German
Busse, Bussethun follow the Vulgate, but have changed the meaning in
evangelical theology in conformity to the Greek metavnoia.
404 Matt. 3:2; 4:17; Mark 1:15. Luther renewed the call in his 95
Theses which begin with the same idea, in opposition to the traffic in
indulgences.
405 Pope Leo the Great (440-461) was the first prelate in the West who
sanctioned the substitution of the system of secret humiliation by auricular
confession for the public exomologesis. Ep. 136. Opera I. 355.
406 Can. 21: "Omnis utriusque sexus fidelis, postquam ad annos discretionis pervenerit,
omnia sua solus peccata confiteatur fideliter, saltem semel in anno, proprio
sacerdoti."Violation
of this law of auricular confession was threatened with excommunication and
refusal of Christian burial. See Hefele V. 793.
407 Conc. Trid. Sess. XIV. cap.2 (Schaff’s Creeds I. 143). The
Council went so far in Canon VI. (II. 165) as to anathematize any one "who
denies that sacramental confession was instituted or is necessary to salvation,
of divine right; or who says that the manner of confessing secretly to a priest
alone, which the church has ever observed from the beginning (?), and doth
observe, is alien from the institution and command of Christ, and is a human
invention."
408 Contritio
cordis, confessio oris, satisfactio operis. See Conc. Trid. Sess. XIV. cap. 3-6
(Creeds, II. 143-153). The usual Roman Catholic definition of this sacrament
is: "Sacramentum
poenitentiae est sacramentum a Christo institutum, quo homini contrito,
confesso et satisfacturo (satisfacere volenti) per juridicam sacerdotis
absolutionem peccata post baptismum commissa remittuntur." Oswald, Die
dogmat. Lehre von den heil. Sacramenten der katholischen Kirche, II. 17 (3rd ed. MĂĽnster 1870).
409 Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury is the reputed author of this
commutation of penance for a money-payment. See his Penitential I. 3 and 4, and
the seventh penitential canon ascribed to him, in Haddan and Stubbs III. 179,
180, 211. "Si
quis"says
Theodore, "pro
ultione propinqui hominem occiderit, peniteat sicut homicida, VII. vel X.
annos. Si tamen reddere vult propinquis petuniam aestimationis, levior erit
penitentia, id est, dimidio spatii."The Synod of Clove-ho (probably Abingdon), held
under his successor, Cuthbert, for the reformation of abuses, in September 747,
decreed in the 26th canon that alms were no longer to be given for diminishing
or commuting the fastings and other works of satisfaction. See Haddan and
Stubbs, III. 371 sq.
410 This theory was fully developed by Thomas Aquinas and other
schoolmen (see Gieseler II. 521 sq.), and sanctioned by the Council of Trent in
the 25th Session, held Dec. 4, 1563 (Creeds II. 205 sq.), although the
Council forbids "all evil gains" and other abuses which have caused
"the honorable name of indulgences to be blasphemed by heretics." The
popes still exercise from time to time the right of granting plenary
indulgences, though with greater caution than their mediaeval predecessors.
