Public reconciliation of the penitents was practiced in the Romish Church as early as the 5th century on Green-Thursday {Epist. Innocentii 1, ad Decentium, c. 7) ; in the Milanese and Spanish on Char-Friday {Mo- rin. lib. ix, cap. 29). After the penitents on Ash- Wednesday had received ashes upon their head, and had been solenmly expelled from the Church, they were, according to the Pontificale Romarmm, again solemnly led, on Green-Thursday, to the cathedral, where they were relieved of their excommunication and blessed by the bishop after the mercy-seat had been implored and the person sprinkled with holy water and incense. I'ub- lic reconciliation and public penance naturally, in the course of the Middle Ages, graduallj' gave place to pri- vate confession and private absolution. Since the Ref- ormation it has become obsolete, and the formulas for the same find a resting-place in the Episcopal ritual (comp. Daniel, Codex Uturf/icus, i, 279-288).
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Upon the theological importance of absolution, and the relation v'hich the priest in the administering of it sustains to it, the same opposite opinions which we found in the patristic period were entertained in the first half of the Middle Ages. According to the view of which Jerome and tJregory the Great must be especially des- ignated as representatives, the priest is judge in foro eccleske, and may by his judgment simply determine and certify for the Church the manifestation of divine mer- cy in the penitent's heart. Thus, in the JlomUics of Eligius of Noyon, which, in all pmbabilit}-, belong to the Carlovingian period, we read that the priests, who are in Christ's stead, must by their office, in a visible manner (externally or ecclesiastically), absolve those whom Christ, by an invisible (inwardly effected) abso- hition, declares worthy of his reconciliation (atonement). Thus says Haymo of Hallterstadt (died 853), in a ser- mon (7/o;». in Octav. Pnsch.), after alluding to the prac- tices of the O.-T. priests towards lepers : " Those whom he recognises by repentance and worthy improvement as inwardly loosed, the shepherd of souls may absolve by his declaration." According to this view, divine for- giveness not only precedes priestly absolution, but also confession ; it is the portion of the sinner from the mo- ment when he repents in his heart and turns to God. Absolution of the Church in this instance is simply the confirmation of what God has already done. A proof that this was the stand-point in the 12th century is fur- nished in (Jratian's treatment of the Decretals (cans, xxxiii, qu. iii). lie there proposes the question wheth- er anybody can give satisfaction to God by simple re- pentance without confession (and consequently, also, without absolution). He first adduces the reasons and authorities that must compel an affirmative answer to this question, then those that would answer it in the negative ; at the close he leaves it to the reader to de- cide for himself in favor of the one or the other, as both opinions have the favor and disapproval of wise and pious men. Peter the Lombard, Gratian's contempo- rary, says {Sent. lib. iv, dist. 17) that the sense of for- giveness is felt before the confession of the lips, indeed, from the moment when the holy desire fills the heart. The priest has therefore the power to bind and to loose only in the sense that he declares men bound or loosed, just as the disciples declared Lazarus free from his bonds only after Christ had restored him to life. The declaration of the priest has therefore simply the effect of releasing before the Church the person already loosed by God. According to cardinal Kobert Pulleyn (died 1115), the death-sinner enjoys divine forgiveness as soon as he repents ; absolution is a sacrament, i. e. the sym- bol of a sacred cause, for it externally represents forgive- ness already secured in the heart by repentance, not as if the priest actually forgave, hut hy the external symbol, for the sake of greater consolation, he makes the penitent doubly sure of forgiveness, although it has already become manifest (Sentoit. lib. vii, 1). If, at the same time, the anxiety still remaining in the heart is lessened or re- lieved, this is the effect of absolution, not depending so much ui)on the activity of the priest as upon God, from whom it springs. By the exercise of divine forgive- ness the sinner is simply relieved of the ultimate conse- quences of his guilt, i. e. eternal damnation; yet earhcr or more immediate punishment can ouly be prevented by his future efforts to atone for the act. Hence the priest imposes a certain measure of satisfaction, a com- pUance with which can alone free the transgressor from punishment corresponding to the greatness of his guilt; if the satisfaction is too moderate, the penitent must not fancy himself absolved before (iod; he will have to atone to the fulness of the measure cither in this world or in purgatory. The direct bestowal of complete abso- lution before God we evidently do not find here con- ceded to be the prerogative of the Church; her judg- ment is competent only to free the sinner after compli- ance with her imposition of punishment; on divine punishments she has no judgment.
Nearest in view to Robert Pidleyn comes Peter of Poicticrs, chancellor of the University of Paris (he died about 1204), who (in his five Libri Sententiurum') lays down the ductrine that forgiveness of sin precedes con- fession, and that it is secured by repentance. He ear- nestly contends that the priest cannot relieve the con- fessing one of his guilt or of eternal punishment; both he asserts to be the prerogative of (Jod alone. The jiriest has simjily the authority to indicate or. to declare that God has forgiven the penitent his sin. God, how- ever, relieves of eternal punishment only on condition of definite satisfactions, which the priest has to deter- mine as to measure, and to impose according to the greatness of the crime; and on this account the priest must possess not simply the power to loose, but also the power of discretion (clavis discretionis), which is not granted to everybody. The penitent is therefore ad- vised in all cases to go, if possible, beyond the measure of satisfaction imposed by the priest, lest in piu-gatory the offender may be obliged to make satisfaction for his neglect here. It is quite characteristic that this scho- lastic regards confession as a sacrament of the O. T., for the whole process of penance he bases upon the personal activity of the penitent {Sent, iii, cap. 13 and IG ).