III. Doctrine of the Middle Ar/es and the Roman Cath- olic Church. — The ancient Church classified her mem- bers into three sections — the faithful, the catechumens, and the penitent. The power of the keys was exercised upon the last, and in a certain sense also upon the sec- ond class : these two only were in any need of reconcil- iation or absolution by the Church. There is not the slightest evidence or reason to believe that the faithful were obliged to make confession of sins to the priest, even before communion. On the other hand, we find, after the beginning of the Middle Ages, a tendency among the newly-converted Germanic nations to en- large the practice of penance into a general institution in the Church, and to make the power of the keys, which concerned the penitent alone, a general court of appeal and of mercy for all the faithful. This was done first by subjecting also mental sins to the power of the keys, wliile in the earlier Church such a thing had nev- er been dreamed of. The origin of this innovation has been demonstrated with full evidence by Wasserschle- ben {Bvssordmwff d. abendldndischen Kirche, p. 108 sq.). Monachism was the exercise of penance for all life. In the monastery it was early considered an act of asceti- cism to disclose to the brethren the most secret mani- festations of sin. In the old British and Irish Church education was directed especially to the order and in- terests of practical Church life ; morals and discipline were generally regulated by monastic rule, which thus penetrated society at large, and more or less influenced all civil legislation. As early as the penance-canons of Vinniaus, who flourished towards tlio end of the 5th century, the order is given that mental sins, even though prevented from execution, should be atoned for by ab- stinence from meat and wine for the period of twelve months. The Anglo-Saxon Pa-nifentiale, which bears the name of Theodore of Canterbury, prescribes for lusts of fornication twenty to forty days' abstinence. The rules of penance of the Irish monk Columban (died A. D. G15) imported these regulations to the Continent, and ordered that all sinful lusts of the mind should be atoned for by penance with bread and water from forty days to six months (compare Wasserschleben, Bussord- minfi, p. 108, 100, 185,353). In the 5th century the semi- Pelagian John Cassian, of Marseilles, established eight principal or radical sins (vitia principalia), from which spring the actual sins, namely, intemperance, licentious- ness, avaricionsness, anger, sadness, bitterness, vanity, pride (CoW. S. S. Patritm V, " de octo principalibus vi- tiis''). In the instructions of Columban {Biblioth.Patr. maxim, xii, 23) they are mentioned under the name of " crimina capitalia," by which the early Church desig- nated simplj' those actual mortal sins that were subject to public penitence, and under this name they were in- troduced into several Anglo-Saxon and Frankish pen- ance-regulations. The Synod of Chalons, in the j'ear 813, directs the priest, in canon 32, to pay special regard to the principal sins of the confessors, a commendation which Alcuiu already made in his De dicinis officiis, cap. 13. From these eight radical sins the seven death-sins
of scholasticism were developed. In these regulations of penance we find also already penance reflemptions, so important to the historj' of absolution, which originated simply by a transfer of the old Germanic composition system to ecclesiastical life.
The extension of the power to bind and to loose over aU Christians was a necessary consequence of such in- fluences as those just alluded to. In the instructions for penance of the abbot Othman, of St. Gall (died A.D. 761), we have the principle laid down that without con- fession there is no forgiveness of sin. In Columban's book of confession (can. 30), on the borders of the Gth and 7th centuries, it is ordered that before every com- munion there should be confession, especially of mental excitements. According to Regino of Prum (died 915) {De discipl. eccles. ii, 2), every person ought to confess at least once a year. The first provincial synod which makes confession a general obligation is that of Aenham, A.D. 1109 (canon 20, in two very var\'ing recensions). Innocent III is really the originator of the general pen- ance law [see Penance], and thus likewise of the reg- idar periodical exercise of the power of the keys over all Christians. His regulation had no doubt the intention of staying, by ecclesiastical shackles on the conscience, a spreading heresy, as seems evinced by the similarity of canon 29 of the fourth Lateran synod with the twelfth canon of the celebrated Synod of Toulouse in 1229.
Notwithstanding the opposition which manifested itself in the Prankish realm against the penitential books and those of its rules not corresponding to the regulations of the older canons, its principles took effec- tual hold, and caused a decided revolution in the prac- tice of penance and reconciliation. Even though, after the 4th century, by the side of the public penance, pri- vate penance for secret offences had been practiced, rec- onciliation had remained public ; now a distinction was made between public and private penance; the latter was inflicted on voluntary confession, the former for of- fences publicly proved against the perpetrator ; and for great crimes, such as murder, pidjlic penance was fol- lowed by public reconciliation, which was gradually called absolution. But as, moreover, the extension and enlargement of the practice of penance and confession greatly increased the confessional business, the imposi- tion of public penance, and the grant of a corresponding reconciliation, remained the prerogative of the bishop, while private confession and private absolution fell to the presbyter, who, however, exercised the right to for- give sin merely as the bishop's delegate. In the early Church reconciliation was granted only upon the expi- ration of penance ; the penance regulations of Gildas, however, jiermittcd private reconciliation upon comple- tion of half of the penitential period ; the rules of Theo- dore of Canterbury granted it at the expiration of a year, or even after six months. Boniface ordered in his statutes that it should be granted immediately after confession (Gicseler, Ch. Ilint. ii, 1, § 19, note b). All these changes became prevalent in the Carlovingiaii Age.