§ 61. Life, Discipline and Morals.182When whole crowds of worldly-minded men, who only sought worldly advantages from professing Christ, were drawn into the church after the State had become Christian, the Christian life lost much of the earnestness, power and purity, by which it had conquered the old world of heathenism. More and more the church became assimilated and conformed to the world, church discipline grew more lax, and moral decay made rapid progress. Passionate contentions, quarrels and schisms among bishops and clergy filled also public life with party strife, animosity and bitterness. The immorality of the court poisoned by its example the capital and the provinces. Savagery and licentiousness grew rampant amid the devastating raids of the barbarians. Hypocrisy and bigotry speedily took the place of piety among those who strove after something higher, while the masses consoled themselves with the reflection that every man could not be a monk. But in spite of all Christianity still continued to act as a leaven. In public and civil life, in the administration of justice and the habits of the people, the Christian spirit, theoretically at least, and often also practically, was still everywhere present. The requirements of humanity and the rights of man were recognised; slavery was more and more restricted; gladiatorial shows and immoral exhibitions were abolished; the limits of proud exclusive nationality were broken through; polygamy was never tolerated, and the sanctity of marriage was insisted upon, the female sex obtained its long unacknowledged rights; benevolent institutions (§60, 4) flourished; and the inveterate vices of ancient paganism could at least be no longer regarded as the sound, legitimate and natural conditions and expressions of civil and social life. Even the pagan, who, adopting the profession of Christianity, remained pagan at heart, was obliged at least to submit himself to the forms and requirements of the church, to its discipline and morals. The shady side of this period is glaring enough, but a bright side and noble personages of deep piety, moral earnestness, resolute denial of self and the world, are certainly not wanting.
When whole crowds of worldly-minded men, who only sought worldly advantages from professing Christ, were drawn into the church after the State had become Christian, the Christian life lost much of the earnestness, power and purity, by which it had conquered the old world of heathenism. More and more the church became assimilated and conformed to the world, church discipline grew more lax, and moral decay made rapid progress. Passionate contentions, quarrels and schisms among bishops and clergy filled also public life with party strife, animosity and bitterness. The immorality of the court poisoned by its example the capital and the provinces. Savagery and licentiousness grew rampant amid the devastating raids of the barbarians. Hypocrisy and bigotry speedily took the place of piety among those who strove after something higher, while the masses consoled themselves with the reflection that every man could not be a monk. But in spite of all Christianity still continued to act as a leaven. In public and civil life, in the administration of justice and the habits of the people, the Christian spirit, theoretically at least, and often also practically, was still everywhere present. The requirements of humanity and the rights of man were recognised; slavery was more and more restricted; gladiatorial shows and immoral exhibitions were abolished; the limits of proud exclusive nationality were broken through; polygamy was never tolerated, and the sanctity of marriage was insisted upon, the female sex obtained its long unacknowledged rights; benevolent institutions (§60, 4) flourished; and the inveterate vices of ancient paganism could at least be no longer regarded as the sound, legitimate and natural conditions and expressions of civil and social life. Even the pagan, who, adopting the profession of Christianity, remained pagan at heart, was obliged at least to submit himself to the forms and requirements of the church, to its discipline and morals. The shady side of this period is glaring enough, but a bright side and noble personages of deep piety, moral earnestness, resolute denial of self and the world, are certainly not wanting.
§ 61.1.Church Discipline.—The Penitential Discipline of the 3rd century (§39, 2) dealt only with public offences which had become common scandal. But even those who were burdened in conscience with heavy but hidden sins and thereby felt themselves excluded from church fellowship, were advised to seek deliverance from this secret excommunication by public confession of sin before the church in the form ofexomologesisand to submit to whatever humiliation the church should lay upon them. In presence of this hard and unreasonable demand the need must have soon become apparent of a secret and private tribunal in place of this public one, which when once introduced would soon drive the earlier out of the field. The first step in this direction was taken in the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th century in the Eastern church by the appointment of a special penitential presbytery (πρεσβ. ἐπὶ τῆς μετανοίας), who under an oath of secresy heard the confession of such sinners and laid upon them the proper penances. But when inA.D.391, a female penitent, a married lady of good family in Constantinople, having committed adultery in the church with a deacon during her time of penance, confessed this sin also to a priestly confessor and so brought about the excommunication of the guilty deacon, the Patriarch Nectarius was obliged on account of the popular feeling excited to again abolish the whole institution and to leave to the consciences of such sinners themselves the question of partaking in the sacraments. But it was evident that this could not exclude pastoral advice and guidance by the clergy. In the West, notwithstanding the confident assertions of Socrates, we never meet with a penitential priest expressly appointed to such duties. Jerome on Matt. xvi. 19 calls it pharisaic pride in a bishop or presbyter to arrogate the judicial function of forgiving sins, “cum apud Deum non sententia sacerdotum, sed reorum vita quæratur.” Augustine distinguishes three kinds of penance corresponding to the three classes in the congregation.The penance of catechumens; all their previous sins are atoned for by baptism.The penance of believers whose venial sins (peccata venialia) occasioned by the universal sinfulness of human nature obtain forgiveness in daily prayer.The penance of those who on account of serious actual breaches of the decalogue (peccata gravia s. mortalia) are punished with ecclesiastical excommunication.In estimating the church discipline to be exacted of this last class of offenders he lays down the principle that the degree of its publicity is to be measured in accordance with the degree of publicity of the offence committed, and according to the magnitude of the scandal which it has occasioned. And when some Italian bishops demanded “in pœnitentia, quæ a fidelibus postulatur” the reading before the congregation of a written confession of their sin, Leo the Great forbade this extreme practice, as unevangelical as it was unreasonable, declaring that it was quite enough to confess the sin first to God and then in secret confession to the priest. But when Leo added the assertion:divina bonitate ordinatum esse, ut indulgentia Dei nisi supplicationibus sacerdotum nequeat obtineri; et salvatorem ipsum, qui hane præpositis ecclesiæ tradidit potestatem, ut et confidentibus actionem pœnitentiæ durent, et eosdem salubri satisfactione purgatos ad communionem sacramentorum per januam reconciliationis admitterent, huic utique operi incessabiliter intervenire,—we have here the first foundation laid of the present Roman Catholic doctrine of penance. But thisconfessio secretais still something very different from the later so-called Auricular Confession. Leo’s ordinance treats only of the confession of grave offences, which, if openly committed or proclaimed, would have called forth punishment from the judicial tribunal;quibus, says Leo,possint legum constitutione percelli. But still more important is the distinction that even Leo does not confer upon the priest absolute power of forgiving sin as God’s vicegerent, but only allows him to officiate as “peccator pro delictis pœnitentium.” Besides Leo’s view of the unconditional necessity of confession in order to obtain divine forgiveness of heinous sins by no means gained universal acceptance in the church. The opinion that it was enough to confess sins to God alone, and that confession to a priest, while helpful and wholesome, was not absolutely necessary, was universally prevalent in the East, where Chrysostom especially maintained it, and even in the West down to the time of Gratian,A.D.1150, and Petrus [Peter] Lombardus [Lombard], †A.D.1164, had numerous and important representatives among the teachers of the church (§ 104, 4). An important step onwards on the path opened up by Leo was taken soon after him in the West when not merely actual sins but even sinful dispositions and desires, ambition, anger, pride, lust, etc., of which Joh. Cassianus enumerates eight asvitia principalia, as well as the sinful thoughts springing from them, were included in the province of secret confession. A system of confession as a regular and necessary preparation for observing the sacrament did not as yet exist.—The so-called Penitential books from the 6th century afforded a guide to determine the penances to be imposed upon the penitents in the form of fasts, prayers, almsgiving, etc., according to the degree of their guilt.The first Penitential book for the Greek church is ascribed to the Patriarch of Constantinople, Joh. the Faster or Jejunator, †A.D.595, and is entitled: Ἀκολουθία καὶ τάξις ἐπὶ τῶν ἐξομολογουμένων.183—Continuation §89, 6.§ 61.2.Christian Marriage.—The ecclesiastical consecration of the marriage tie (§39, 1) performed after, as well as before, civil marriage by mutual consent before two secular witnesses, was made more solemn by being separated from the ordinary worship and celebrated at a special week-day service (missa pro sponsis), and a rich ritual grew up which gradually developed itself into an independent liturgy. Into this many bridal customs hitherto despised as heathenish were introduced, the wedding ring, veiling the bride, the crowning both betrothed parties with wreaths, bridal sashes, bridal torches, bridesmaids or παράνυμφοι. The granting of the wedding ceremony was regarded as an honour which would be refused in the case of marriages not approved by the church. But neither the refusal nor the neglect of the ceremony on the part of those newly married interfered with the validity of the marriage. Charlemagne was the first in the West and Leo VI. (§70, 2) was the first in the East, to make the church ceremony obligatory. Marriage between free and bond, which was regarded by the state as concubinage, was regarded by the church as perfectly valid. Blood relationship by consanguinity and affinity was regarded as hindrance to marriage; artificial relationship by adoption and spiritual relationship by baptismal and confirmational sponsorship (§58, 1) were also hindrances. Marriage between brothers’ or sisters’ children was pronounced unbecoming by Augustine. Gregory the Great forbade it on physiological grounds, and permitted marriage only in the third or fourth degree of relationship. With gradually increasing strictness the prohibition was extended even to the seventh degree, but finally was fixed at the fourth by Innocent III. inA.D.1215. In direct opposition to the Roman law of hereditary claims which established the degree of relationship according to the number of actual descendants, so that father and son were counted as related in the first degree to one another, brothers and sisters as in the second degree, uncle and niece or nephew as in the third, brothers’ or sisters’ children as in the fourth degree, the canon law on hindrances to marriage begins this reckoning after the withdrawal of the common parents, so that brother and sister are related in the first degree, uncle and niece in the second, etc. Several Councils of the 4th century wished to make the contracting of a second marriage occasion of church discipline; subsequently this demand was abandoned. Many canonists, however, contest even yet the legitimacy of a third marriage, and a fourth was almost universally admitted to be sinful and unallowable (§67, 2). The contracting of mixed marriages, with heathens, Jews or heretics, demanded penance, and was strictly forbidden by the second Trullan Council inA.D.692. Only adultery was usually admitted as affording ground for divorce; and also for the most part, unnatural vice, murder and apostasy. The Council at Mileve in Africa inA.D.416 for the first time forbade divorced persons marrying again, even the innocent party, and Pope Innocent I. †A.D.417, made this prohibition applicable universally.—Continuation §89, 4.§ 61.3.Sickness, Death and Burial.—The anointing the sick with oil (Mk. vi. 13; Jas. v. 14) as means of charismatic bodily healing is met with down to the 5th century. Innocent I. put it in a decretal ofA.D.416, for the first time as a sacrament for the dispensation of spiritual blessing to the sick. But many centuries passed before the anointing of the sick was generally observed as the sacrament of Extreme Unction (§70, 2; 104, 5). On the other hand, the Areopagite (§47, 11) reckoned the anointing of the dead a sacrament. The closing of the eyes implied that death was a sleep with the hope of an awakening in the resurrection. The fraternal kiss sealed the communion of Christians even beyond the grave. The putting garlands on the corpse as expressive of victory still met with opposition. Several Synods found it necessary to forbid the absurdity of squeezing the consecrated elements into the lips of the dead or laying them in the coffin. Passionate lamentation, rending of garments, wearing sackcloth and ashes, hired mourners, cypress branches, etc., were regarded as despairing, heathenish customs. So too festivals of the dead by night were condemned, while on the contrary funeral processions by day, with torches, lamps, palm and olive branches, were in high repute. Julian and the Vandals prohibited them. In the 4th century the celebration of the Agape and Supper at the grave was still frequent. In their place afterwards we find mourning feasts, but these, on account of their being abused, were disallowed by the church.§ 61.4.Purgatory and Masses for Souls.—The connection of the custom already referred to by Tertullian of not only praying in family worship for members of the family that had fallen asleep, but also by oblations of sacramental elements on the memorial days of the dead (Oblationes pro defunctis) of giving to the intercessions at the Supper in public worship a special direction to them, with the doctrine ofPurgatory(Ignis purgatorius) which had developed itself in the West since the 5th century, gave rise to the institution of masses for souls (§58, 3). The idea of a place of punishment between death and the resurrection, in which the venial sins (peccata venialia) of believers must be atoned for, was quite unknown to the whole ancient church down to the age of Augustine and to the Greek church till even after his day (§67, 6). Mention is made indeed even by Origen of a future πῦρ καθάρσιον or καθαρτικόν; but he means by it a mere spiritual burning, from which even a Paul and a Peter were not exempted. In the West it was first Augustine who deduced from Matt. xii. 32, that even in the hereafter forgiveness of sins is possible, holding in accordance with 1 Cor. iii. 13-15 that it is not incredible, but yet always questionable, that many believers who took over with them into the hereafter a sinful connection with their earthly past life, might there he purified by an “ignis purgatorius” of longer or shorter duration as the continuation and completion of the earthly “ignis tribulationis,” fiery trial, from the earthly dross still adhering to them, and so might be saved. With greater confidenceCæsarius of Arlesteaches that believers who during their earthly life had neglected to atone for their minor offences by almsgiving and other good works, must be purified by a lingering fire in the next world, in order to win admission into eternal blessedness. Finally, Gregory the Great raised this idea into an established dogma of the Western church, while he, at the same time, taught that by the intercession of the living for the dead, and especially by the sacrifices of the mass offered for them their purgatorial pains would be moderated and curtailed. He too referred to Matt. xii. and 1 Cor. iii. The reference to 2 Maccabees xii. 41-46 belongs to a later period.—Continuation, § 106, 2, 3.
§ 61.1.Church Discipline.—The Penitential Discipline of the 3rd century (§39, 2) dealt only with public offences which had become common scandal. But even those who were burdened in conscience with heavy but hidden sins and thereby felt themselves excluded from church fellowship, were advised to seek deliverance from this secret excommunication by public confession of sin before the church in the form ofexomologesisand to submit to whatever humiliation the church should lay upon them. In presence of this hard and unreasonable demand the need must have soon become apparent of a secret and private tribunal in place of this public one, which when once introduced would soon drive the earlier out of the field. The first step in this direction was taken in the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th century in the Eastern church by the appointment of a special penitential presbytery (πρεσβ. ἐπὶ τῆς μετανοίας), who under an oath of secresy heard the confession of such sinners and laid upon them the proper penances. But when inA.D.391, a female penitent, a married lady of good family in Constantinople, having committed adultery in the church with a deacon during her time of penance, confessed this sin also to a priestly confessor and so brought about the excommunication of the guilty deacon, the Patriarch Nectarius was obliged on account of the popular feeling excited to again abolish the whole institution and to leave to the consciences of such sinners themselves the question of partaking in the sacraments. But it was evident that this could not exclude pastoral advice and guidance by the clergy. In the West, notwithstanding the confident assertions of Socrates, we never meet with a penitential priest expressly appointed to such duties. Jerome on Matt. xvi. 19 calls it pharisaic pride in a bishop or presbyter to arrogate the judicial function of forgiving sins, “cum apud Deum non sententia sacerdotum, sed reorum vita quæratur.” Augustine distinguishes three kinds of penance corresponding to the three classes in the congregation.
In estimating the church discipline to be exacted of this last class of offenders he lays down the principle that the degree of its publicity is to be measured in accordance with the degree of publicity of the offence committed, and according to the magnitude of the scandal which it has occasioned. And when some Italian bishops demanded “in pœnitentia, quæ a fidelibus postulatur” the reading before the congregation of a written confession of their sin, Leo the Great forbade this extreme practice, as unevangelical as it was unreasonable, declaring that it was quite enough to confess the sin first to God and then in secret confession to the priest. But when Leo added the assertion:divina bonitate ordinatum esse, ut indulgentia Dei nisi supplicationibus sacerdotum nequeat obtineri; et salvatorem ipsum, qui hane præpositis ecclesiæ tradidit potestatem, ut et confidentibus actionem pœnitentiæ durent, et eosdem salubri satisfactione purgatos ad communionem sacramentorum per januam reconciliationis admitterent, huic utique operi incessabiliter intervenire,—we have here the first foundation laid of the present Roman Catholic doctrine of penance. But thisconfessio secretais still something very different from the later so-called Auricular Confession. Leo’s ordinance treats only of the confession of grave offences, which, if openly committed or proclaimed, would have called forth punishment from the judicial tribunal;quibus, says Leo,possint legum constitutione percelli. But still more important is the distinction that even Leo does not confer upon the priest absolute power of forgiving sin as God’s vicegerent, but only allows him to officiate as “peccator pro delictis pœnitentium.” Besides Leo’s view of the unconditional necessity of confession in order to obtain divine forgiveness of heinous sins by no means gained universal acceptance in the church. The opinion that it was enough to confess sins to God alone, and that confession to a priest, while helpful and wholesome, was not absolutely necessary, was universally prevalent in the East, where Chrysostom especially maintained it, and even in the West down to the time of Gratian,A.D.1150, and Petrus [Peter] Lombardus [Lombard], †A.D.1164, had numerous and important representatives among the teachers of the church (§ 104, 4). An important step onwards on the path opened up by Leo was taken soon after him in the West when not merely actual sins but even sinful dispositions and desires, ambition, anger, pride, lust, etc., of which Joh. Cassianus enumerates eight asvitia principalia, as well as the sinful thoughts springing from them, were included in the province of secret confession. A system of confession as a regular and necessary preparation for observing the sacrament did not as yet exist.—The so-called Penitential books from the 6th century afforded a guide to determine the penances to be imposed upon the penitents in the form of fasts, prayers, almsgiving, etc., according to the degree of their guilt.The first Penitential book for the Greek church is ascribed to the Patriarch of Constantinople, Joh. the Faster or Jejunator, †A.D.595, and is entitled: Ἀκολουθία καὶ τάξις ἐπὶ τῶν ἐξομολογουμένων.183—Continuation §89, 6.
§ 61.2.Christian Marriage.—The ecclesiastical consecration of the marriage tie (§39, 1) performed after, as well as before, civil marriage by mutual consent before two secular witnesses, was made more solemn by being separated from the ordinary worship and celebrated at a special week-day service (missa pro sponsis), and a rich ritual grew up which gradually developed itself into an independent liturgy. Into this many bridal customs hitherto despised as heathenish were introduced, the wedding ring, veiling the bride, the crowning both betrothed parties with wreaths, bridal sashes, bridal torches, bridesmaids or παράνυμφοι. The granting of the wedding ceremony was regarded as an honour which would be refused in the case of marriages not approved by the church. But neither the refusal nor the neglect of the ceremony on the part of those newly married interfered with the validity of the marriage. Charlemagne was the first in the West and Leo VI. (§70, 2) was the first in the East, to make the church ceremony obligatory. Marriage between free and bond, which was regarded by the state as concubinage, was regarded by the church as perfectly valid. Blood relationship by consanguinity and affinity was regarded as hindrance to marriage; artificial relationship by adoption and spiritual relationship by baptismal and confirmational sponsorship (§58, 1) were also hindrances. Marriage between brothers’ or sisters’ children was pronounced unbecoming by Augustine. Gregory the Great forbade it on physiological grounds, and permitted marriage only in the third or fourth degree of relationship. With gradually increasing strictness the prohibition was extended even to the seventh degree, but finally was fixed at the fourth by Innocent III. inA.D.1215. In direct opposition to the Roman law of hereditary claims which established the degree of relationship according to the number of actual descendants, so that father and son were counted as related in the first degree to one another, brothers and sisters as in the second degree, uncle and niece or nephew as in the third, brothers’ or sisters’ children as in the fourth degree, the canon law on hindrances to marriage begins this reckoning after the withdrawal of the common parents, so that brother and sister are related in the first degree, uncle and niece in the second, etc. Several Councils of the 4th century wished to make the contracting of a second marriage occasion of church discipline; subsequently this demand was abandoned. Many canonists, however, contest even yet the legitimacy of a third marriage, and a fourth was almost universally admitted to be sinful and unallowable (§67, 2). The contracting of mixed marriages, with heathens, Jews or heretics, demanded penance, and was strictly forbidden by the second Trullan Council inA.D.692. Only adultery was usually admitted as affording ground for divorce; and also for the most part, unnatural vice, murder and apostasy. The Council at Mileve in Africa inA.D.416 for the first time forbade divorced persons marrying again, even the innocent party, and Pope Innocent I. †A.D.417, made this prohibition applicable universally.—Continuation §89, 4.
§ 61.3.Sickness, Death and Burial.—The anointing the sick with oil (Mk. vi. 13; Jas. v. 14) as means of charismatic bodily healing is met with down to the 5th century. Innocent I. put it in a decretal ofA.D.416, for the first time as a sacrament for the dispensation of spiritual blessing to the sick. But many centuries passed before the anointing of the sick was generally observed as the sacrament of Extreme Unction (§70, 2; 104, 5). On the other hand, the Areopagite (§47, 11) reckoned the anointing of the dead a sacrament. The closing of the eyes implied that death was a sleep with the hope of an awakening in the resurrection. The fraternal kiss sealed the communion of Christians even beyond the grave. The putting garlands on the corpse as expressive of victory still met with opposition. Several Synods found it necessary to forbid the absurdity of squeezing the consecrated elements into the lips of the dead or laying them in the coffin. Passionate lamentation, rending of garments, wearing sackcloth and ashes, hired mourners, cypress branches, etc., were regarded as despairing, heathenish customs. So too festivals of the dead by night were condemned, while on the contrary funeral processions by day, with torches, lamps, palm and olive branches, were in high repute. Julian and the Vandals prohibited them. In the 4th century the celebration of the Agape and Supper at the grave was still frequent. In their place afterwards we find mourning feasts, but these, on account of their being abused, were disallowed by the church.
§ 61.4.Purgatory and Masses for Souls.—The connection of the custom already referred to by Tertullian of not only praying in family worship for members of the family that had fallen asleep, but also by oblations of sacramental elements on the memorial days of the dead (Oblationes pro defunctis) of giving to the intercessions at the Supper in public worship a special direction to them, with the doctrine ofPurgatory(Ignis purgatorius) which had developed itself in the West since the 5th century, gave rise to the institution of masses for souls (§58, 3). The idea of a place of punishment between death and the resurrection, in which the venial sins (peccata venialia) of believers must be atoned for, was quite unknown to the whole ancient church down to the age of Augustine and to the Greek church till even after his day (§67, 6). Mention is made indeed even by Origen of a future πῦρ καθάρσιον or καθαρτικόν; but he means by it a mere spiritual burning, from which even a Paul and a Peter were not exempted. In the West it was first Augustine who deduced from Matt. xii. 32, that even in the hereafter forgiveness of sins is possible, holding in accordance with 1 Cor. iii. 13-15 that it is not incredible, but yet always questionable, that many believers who took over with them into the hereafter a sinful connection with their earthly past life, might there he purified by an “ignis purgatorius” of longer or shorter duration as the continuation and completion of the earthly “ignis tribulationis,” fiery trial, from the earthly dross still adhering to them, and so might be saved. With greater confidenceCæsarius of Arlesteaches that believers who during their earthly life had neglected to atone for their minor offences by almsgiving and other good works, must be purified by a lingering fire in the next world, in order to win admission into eternal blessedness. Finally, Gregory the Great raised this idea into an established dogma of the Western church, while he, at the same time, taught that by the intercession of the living for the dead, and especially by the sacrifices of the mass offered for them their purgatorial pains would be moderated and curtailed. He too referred to Matt. xii. and 1 Cor. iii. The reference to 2 Maccabees xii. 41-46 belongs to a later period.—Continuation, § 106, 2, 3.