"Morinus has shown, indeed demonstrated, that down "to the twelfth century absolution was always given among the Latins in a precatory form. This same "precatory form still continues to be used, as it has "from the beginning by the Greeks." Thomas Aquinas, writing about the middle of the thirteenth century, although contending that the proper form of absolution should be "ego te absolvo," etc., yet admits that “ Christ did not institute this form, neither was it even then in common use (Christus non legitur hanc formam instituisse, neque etiam in communi usu habetur1)." The first requirement for its use in the English Church was in the year 1268. It was then introduced by Othobon, a legate from the Bishop of Rome, who was allowed by the weakness of Henry III to hold a council as Papal Legate in London, but of whom John Johnson says, "His coming hither was for very good cause much resented by all degrees of Churchmen; but being supported by the king, who wished to use the power of the Pope to extort money from the clergy, he induced or constrained the Council to approve certain ordinances agreeable "to the chief pontiffs and the legates of the Apostolic see," which are known as

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1 Aquinas, Summa, Part III, Quest. LXXXIV, Art. 3.

2 Johnson's "English Canons," Vol. II, pp. 215, 211.

Carter (of Clewer) says, p. 49 (ut sup.), "There is a remarkable "similarity between the changes which took place (in the twelfth and "thirteenth centuries) in the ministry of penance and the more eventful developments affecting the Holy Eucharist. In both cases alike the "transition was gradual and at first almost imperceptible."

And he might have added with truth, in both cases the result was alike the destruction of Catholic doctrine and Catholic usages, and the substitution in their stead of principles and practices wholly medieval and unscriptural.

"The Constitutions of Othobon." In the second of these we find the new formula and the equally new doctrine of authoritative priestly absolution enforced together upon the Church and people of England; its language is, "Let all who hear confessions expressly absolve their penitents by pronouncing the under-written words: 'By the authority of which I am possessed I absolve thee from thy sins.""

The general history of the transition from the primitive to the medieval form is given very clearly, and shown to be in substantial accord with the above statements by the Roman writer on Church Polity already cited. Pelliccia (English Translation, pp. 460,461): "Respecting the absolution itself, which the ancients “used during long centuries, even down to the end of "the Middle Ages, it was not declaratory (indicitiva) as it is now, but deprecatory;" and after quoting at some length from fathers who declare that the penitent is absolved by "prayers appointed by Christ," and that it is by "the Holy Ghost sins are forgiven," he adds, "All the ministerial office consists in prayers; "the ministers of penance ask and God forgives." "For a very long time indeed, the (Western) Church "continued to use this precatory absolution. "have the distinct testimony of St. Bernard that, as 'regards the twelfth century, this was the doctrine "held at that time, but then by degrees the one was introduced which is imperative in form," "and in the thirteenth century the imperative form, which we now use, was generally adopted in the Latin Churches," while "the Greek Church, on the other hand, has kept to the deprecatory form from the earliest ages even to our

We

own day;" so that in the primitive Church, and through all those ages which properly determine what is Catholic doctrine and Catholic usage, the power of pronouncing authoritative, private, positive absolution in the terms now claimed as Catholic, or, indeed, in any terms at all, was utterly unknown and unthought of. And during all the earlier centuries of the Church, certainly for six or seven hundred years, absolution in any form was not regarded as a power inherent in the priestly office, or as an act which a priest had authority to perform at all, otherwise than by a delegated power from the bishop, and as his assistant or in his stead, and for some imminent or specified necessity.

The form which the doctrine of penance, however, finally assumed was, like every other element of Church thought and life during the Middle Ages, changed very widely from its primitive type by the influence of the political and social conditions of that period.

From the middle of the fifth century, and for five hundred years thereafter, a continued series of invasions, conquests and settlements of hosts of Northern barbarous peoples had wiped out of existence through all Western Europe every trace of that vast fabric called the Roman Empire, and on its ruins had established a score of petty barbarian kingdoms, each struggling with brutal ferocity to secure what it had grasped, or to subject to its dominion as many of the provinces of its neighboring fellow-robbers as it was able to overcome.

Each of these foreign communities brought with it the coarse, rude, barbarian laws, opinions and usages which belonged to the wild, untutored state in which

they had all lived in their native forests, and of necessity these were intermingled through the old Roman thought and customs in all the various provinces of the West which they conquered and occupied, and constituted an important element in all the new nations they founded.

The only institution of the ancient world that maintained itself as a living power through this chaotic period was the Christian Church, and with it the mighty influence of the Christian faith, worship and law. The Church, of course, like all else in that fearful time, suffered terribly from the calamities that then overspread the world, but by the divineness of its nature, the power of its truths, the fervor of its ministry, and the spirit and holy lives of multitudes who sacrificed themselves to make its blessings known to their rude and often cruel conquerors, it not only withstood the long perils of these destroying invaders, but by its mighty influence it rose supreme in the end above all these hostile agencies, and became in its sphere and for its great purposes the spiritual conqueror and master of one and all of the new nations which these wild Gothic tribes were thus forming as the germ of modern Europe.

But although the Church did become eventually, both as an organism and in its essential principles, dominant over these new and barbarian peoples, it was also, in its turn, largely influenced, and in some very important matters much perverted by the conceptions and institutions which these strange and foreign races and communities had brought with them, and some of which remained for centuries as integral elements of their religious and social life.

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The coarse, uncultivated minds of peoples such as these were wholly incapable of apprehending a truly spiritual religion, or of conceiving the possibility of agencies and results which concerned themselves wholly with the spiritual realities of the Divine nature, or the corresponding relations in the life of man. Accordingly, the doctrines of the Church were, in the very nature of the case, and as history abundantly testifies, now moulded into forms and associated with principles which could be appreciated by these peoples and made effective in their control.

It is true this period is often highly vaunted as "an age of faith," a time when men lived in "the habitual presence of the world of spirits." So far as the mere words may go this undoubtedly was so. It was an age of superstition and credulity. Everybody believed in signs and miracles and terrors, but at the same time it was an age of the most universal and unqualified materialism, for what they called "spirits" were only beings of a more subtle and potent material substance than ourselves. The joys of eternal blessedness consisted essentially in material delights. Hell was a physical torture by fire "corporeal" in its nature, and of the "same species" as the fire of earth. Christ could be "really present" only in a body to which belongs "whatsoever pertains to the character of a true

1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa, Part III, Qu. XCVII, Art. 5: "They, the damned, punientur igne corporeo."

Ib., Qu. XCVII, Art. 5: Quocumque ignis inveniatur (speaking of the fire of the damned) semper est idem in specie quantum ad naturam ignis pertinet; potest autum esse diversitas in specie quantum ad corpora quae materia ignis sunt," and concludes that whatever be the difference in the matter, all fire is of the same species.