THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
which later developed into the seven deadly sins of scholasticism. The first provincial synod which made confession a general duty was that of Aenham (1109), and Innocent III. (1198-1216) finally introduced confession, and the consequent extension of the " power of the keys " over all Christians, throughout the Church in spite of the opposition which the penitentials produced in France, his evident object being to check the growth of heresy. The result was a radical change in the treatment of penance and reconciliation; for whereas since the fourth century reconciliation had invariably been public, while private penance had been prescribed for secret sins, private penance was now restricted to cases of voluntary private confession; and pubhe penance (foUowed by public reconciliation, gradually termed absolution) was reserved for open sins attested by witnesses, or for such heinous crimes as murder (Councils of Aries [813], canon 26; Chalon-sur-Saone [813], canon 25; Mainz [847], canon 31; Pavia [850], canon 6; Mainz [852], canon 10 sqq.; Capitularia Regum Francorum, ed. S. Baluze, Paris, 1677, v. 112). Public penance and reconciliation still remained the prerogative of the bishop, while private confession and absolution were delegated to the priests, though only as the delegates of the bishop (cf. Ratramnus, contra Grcecorum opposite., iv. 7; Capitularia Regum Francorum, vi. 206) . Whereas, moreover, reconciliation primarily followed immediately after the completion of penance, the penitential of Gildas (§ 1) permitted private reconciliation on the expiration of half the period of penance, and that of Theodore of Canterbury after a year or six months (i. 12, § 4), while in the so-called Statutes of Boniface (cap. 31) reconciliation must immediately follow confession. In the course of the Middle Ages, however, public penance and public reconciliation — the latter performed in the Roman Church on Maundy Thursday as early as the fifth century, and on Good Friday in the Milanese and Spanish churches — were steadily superseded by private confession and private absolution, so that since the Reformation they have become entirely antiquated.
With regard to the theological definition of absolution, and the share of the priest in its administration, two opposing views, inherited from the patristic period, run almost parallel with each other during the first part of the Middle Ages. According to the one, the priest is simply judge in foro ecclesice; he declares that forgiveness has taken 2. The place by the act of divine grace in the Priest penitent soul, but takes no part him-
as Judge self in the act of forgiving. The divine or as forgiveness takes place before the ab-
Mediator. solution by the priest, and even before confession, in the very moment the heart repents; so that the Church's absolution is but the declaration of what God has already done. How prominent this view was, even in the thirteenth century, may be seen from the manner in which Gratian treats the subject. He raises the question whether a sinner can satisfy God by repentance and secret penance without confession, then states the arguments and authorities on both sides, and finally leaves the reader to decide the question for himself.
Peter the Lombard, the contemporary of Gratian defines (iv. 17) the priest's power to bind and to loose merely as a power of declaration, signifying simply he loosed before the Church him who was loosed in the sight of God. Similar but still more explicit were the views of Cardinal Robert Pulleyn (Sent. vi. 52, 61, vii. 1) and Peter of Poitiers, chancellor of the University of Paris (d. about 1204). According to the other view, represented by Leo the Great and Alcuin, the priest is not simply a judge in foro ecclesios, but is a mediator, intercessor and reconciler between God and the penitent. This position, taken by the priests throughout the penitentials, and exercising a profound influence on the development of the doctrine of the " power of the keys," attained increased importance in the De vera et falsa pcenitentia, a work belonging to the eleventh or twelfth century, but ascribed to Augustine. Here the priest appears as the representative of God in confession, and his forgiveness is the forgiveness of God; while the view of Gregory the Great, that sins in themselves beyond forgiveness become forgivable through penance (but not through absolution), is here modified so that the sinner in his confession does not become clean in the sight of God, but has his mortal sin changed to venial. This residue of venial sins no longer involves eternal punishment, but must be atoned for either by penance on earth or purgatory after death (chaps. 25, 35). These concepts were now evolved into a formal system by the Victorines. To Hugo of St. Victor the priest represents the humanity of Christ, is the visible medium needed by sin-bound man to draw near to God, and is used by God to pour his grace into the human heart. Thus the priestly absolution not only declares forgiveness, but effects it (De sacramentis, ii. 1 sqq., 8). Hugo regards the sinner as bound by the inner bondage of hardness of heart and the outer chain of merited damnation, the former loosed by God alone through contrition, and the latter by the priest as the divine instrument. Going still further, Hugo's pupil, Richard of St. Victor, in his De potestate ligandi et solvendi held that God himself released from sin either immediately or through the mediation of men who were not necessarily priests, this being done by contrition even before confession. He also held that through the priest, who possessed the " power of the keys," God transformed eternal punishment into a transitory one, and that the priest transformed transitory punishment into penance.
In the case of two views so divergent, yet running parallel, further progress could be possible only in their dialectic reconciliation and combination. This was attained by the great scholastics of the thirteenth century, especially by Thomas Aquinas, although Richard of St. Victor had plainly sought to effect such a result. In his 3. Combi- Summa theologim (pars iv., qua?stio 20. nation of membrum iii., art. 2; queestio 21, the Two membrum i.; membrum ii., arts. 1-3) Views. Alexander of Hales, closely followed by Bonaventura and Albertus Magnus, held that, while the power to bind and to loose belonged to God alone, the priest merely praying for and obtaining absolution, but not imparting it,