372 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
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.1 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 au thorities 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 absolu tion on certain conditions.
The discipline of the Latin church in the middle ages is laid down in the so-called " Penitential Books." 2 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 writ ings of the fathers, and from the synodical canons of Ancyra (314), Neocsesarea (314), Nksea (325), Gangra (362), and of the
1 See the passages in Gieseler II. 55 (Harpers' ed.) The Synodical courts were called Sendgerichte (a corruption from Synod}.
3 Liber Pcenitentialis, Pceniteniiale, Confessionale, Leges Pcenitentium, Judiria Peccantium.
2 85. THE PENITENTIAL BOOKS. 373
North African, Prankish, 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 exer cises and by the payment of a sum of money.
There were many such books, British, Irish, Prankish, 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 dis ciplinary 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 dis cipline. The genuine text has recently been brought to light from early MSS. by the combined labors of German and English scholarship.1 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 Peni tentials under the name of the venerable Bede (d. T35), and of Egbert, archbishop of York (d. 767).2
1 By Prof. Wasserschleben of Halle, 1851 (from several Continental MSS.), and Canon Hatldan and Prof. Stubbs, Oxford, 1871, (III. 173-203) from a Cam bridge MS. of the 8th century. The texts of the earlier editions of Thcodori Pcenitentiale 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 ex tracts in the Notes.
2 Both are given in Haddan and Stubb/, Councils, etc. III. 326 sqq. and 413 sqq.