§ 119. EXTREME UNCTION, ORDINATION, MARRIAGE. 745
The tonsure, a requirement for admittance to orders, is a sign of rule and perfection, for it is made in a circle. It also indicates that the mind is withdrawn from temporal things and fixed upon the contemplation of divine things.1
According to Thomas Aquinas, there is more reason for re garding ordination a sacrament than for ascribing a sacramen tal character to the other six sacred ordinances, for ordination confers the power of administering the others. Its efficacious potency resides chiefly with the person dispensing the sacra ment.2 From him grace is transmitted. The form or the symbols, used in the ceremony, are of subordinate or little importance. In fact, the symbols are scarcely referred to by councils or Schoolmen in this period.3
Ordination confers an indelible character upon those ad mitted to any of the orders. Its virtue is not affected by the character of the person ordained.4
As for the validity of the sacramental acts of heretic and schismatic clergymen, great difference of opinion existed. The problem was so difficult as to appear to Gratian and Peter the Lombard insoluble or almost so. The difficulty was increased by the acts of councils, condemning as in valid the ordinations of anti-popes and the ordinations per formed by bishops whom anti-popes had appointed.5 The statements of Thomas Aquinas are difficult to understand.
!Th. Aq., Supplem., XL. 1, Migne, 1071; Bonaventura, Brevil, VI. 12, Peltier's ed., 327. The synods of London 1102, Soissons 1078, Rouen 1190, Fourth Lateran 1215, etc., decreed the tonsure must not be concealed.
2Th. Aq., Supplem., XXXIV. 4, 5, Migne, 1045 sq., efficacia principaliter residet penes eum qui sacramentum dispensat.
3 Schwane, p. 681, says there was no development in the ritual of ordina tion during the Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas refers to the imposition of hands only incidentally in his chapters on penance. Summa, III. 84, 3, Migne, IV. 850. The council of Florence, 1438, enjoined that the chalice and paten should be given at the consecration to some of the orders.
4 Th. Aq., Supplem., XXXVI. I, Migne, IV. 1051, si malus ordinatur nihilominus ordinationem habet.
5 For example the 9th (Hefele, V. 380) and llth oecumenical councils pronounced such judgment, naming the anti-popes. So also the synod of Piacenza, 1095, which declared invalid the ordinations of Wibert and other bishops.
746 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
He made a distinction between the power — potestas — of ordination and the jurisdiction to perform the sacrament. Schismatic or heretic bishops retain the power; otherwise when such a bishop is reconciled to the Church, he would be ordained over again, which is not the case.1 But they have not the jurisdiction. As the bishop by his promotion to the episcopate receives no sacramental grace, so, as bishop, he possesses no indelible character. He is ordained not directly for God but for the mystical body of Christ. And those whom a schismatic bishop ordains do not in reality receive ordination, for they are ordained in the face of the prohibition of the Church.
As far as we can understand the Angelic doctor's position it is: the Church may withdraw from a bishop his right to confer orders while at the same time he retains the episco pal power to confer them. He insisted most strenuously on the permanence of the " bishop's power" received at conse cration. The solution of the problem is of far-reaching impor tance, for it has a bearing on the sacramental efficacy of the acts of many priests who have been cut off from the Latin Church and the ecclesiastical titles of schismatic bodies, such as the Old-Catholics and the Jansenist Church of Holland.
MARRIAGE has the last place among the sacraments because it has the least of spirituality connected with it.2 At first, the bed was undefiled, conception was without passion, and parturition without pain. Since the fall, marriage has become a remedy against lust and a medicine for unholy desire.3 At first it signified the union of the soul with God.
1 Th. Aq., Supplem., XXXIX. 2, Migne, 1065. Episcopus in hceresim lap sus . . . non amisit protestatem quam habebat ordines conferendi. Thomas is most emphatic on this question and goes on: Omnis protestas quce datur cum aliqua consecratione, nulla casu contingente tolli protest, etc. . . . Unde cum episcopalis protestas cum quadam consecratione detur, oportet quod perpetuo maneat quantumcumque aliquis peccet, vel ab ecclesia prcecidatur.
" Th. Aq., Summa, III. 65, 2, Migne, IV. 598, quia minimum habet de spiritual itate.
3 Abselard, Theol Christ., 31, conjugium non confert aliquod donum sicuf cetera sacramenta faciunt sed tamen mali remedium est . . . datur propter incontinentiam refrcenendam. Hugo of St. Viet.. De sacr., II. 11, 3, Migne,