Scotus Academicus, Tomus decimus: De Baptismo, De Poenitentia, De Extrema Unctione

Among theologians it is known and established that there are two kinds of satisfaction: one sacramental, the other canonical. The former is imposed by the Priest at his discretion upon the penitent after the confession of his offenses has been made and before sacramental absolution is granted; the latter is prescribed by the Church and established either in Councils or in penitential canons, for the expiation of graver offenses.

This latter satisfaction, in turn, is twofold: private, namely that which is performed privately and individually by the penitent, with all witnesses removed, and public, that which is performed in the sight of the Church and the faithful, by command of the Church’s ministers and pastors.

Moreover, this too is again twofold: one kind was performed by adults before baptism, to prepare themselves to receive it; the other was undertaken to expiate sins committed after baptism. For that no adult was admitted to baptism without some public penance is gathered from Acts 2, where St. Peter admonishes: “Repent,” he says, “and let each of you be baptized.” The Fathers likewise bear witness to this truth, especially Tertullian, in his book On Penance through chapter 7, where he says: “Penance first ministers to man’s salvation, being appointed to cleanse minds and to prepare the clean house of the heart for the Holy Spirit who is to come.” Hence in chapter 6 he indicates the necessity of this penance, because “the washing is the pledge of faith,” or of Christian life, since “the just man lives by faith”; this faith begins and is commended by the faith of penance, by which hearts are purified. “We are not washed,” he says, “so that we may cease to sin, but because we have ceased, since now we are wholly in heart; for this is the first initiation of one who renounces, an undivided resolve.”

All the Fathers agree with this, especially St. Augustine, Homily 27, chapter 1, where he says: “No one approaches well the baptism of Christ, in which all sins are blotted out, unless he does penance for his former life; for no one takes up a new life unless he repents of the old.” And in Homily 50, chapter 11, he says that this penance “brings forth the new man”: “Until through saving baptism the washing away of all past sins takes place, so that, as at the birth of a child, the pains that pressed the womb in labor pass away and sorrow gives way to joy. For anyone who has already become master of his own will, when he approaches the sacraments of the faithful, cannot begin a new life unless he repents of his former life.” And later: “When people are baptized, only infants are exempt from this penance, for they cannot yet use free choice. No other person passes over to Christ and begins to be what he was not, unless he repents of having been what he was.”

The Council of Trent also teaches this very thing, Session VI, chapter 6, where, among the other dispositions for attaining justification, especially through baptism, it includes penance, saying: “They are moved against their sins by some hatred and detestation, that is, by that penance which must be performed before baptism,” etc.

St. Augustine explains this rite of penance clearly, especially in Homilies 27 and 50, and likewise in book 11, chapter 1, and book 4, also chapter 1, of On the Creed for the Catechumens. There, recounting the various rites of this penance with which a catechumen was initiated on the night immediately preceding baptism, he relates that the catechumen, received into the womb of Mother Church, was brought forth. He mentions the sign of the cross, exorcisms, prayers, spiritual songs, breathings, sackcloth, bowing of the neck, humility of the feet, and the fear with which someone was brought from a hidden place into the sight of the whole Church. There, with his face humbly bowed—he who had earlier been wrongly exalted—he sought, in humility of feet, that is, barefoot, with sackcloth spread beneath him, as one excommunicated: “Prove me, O God, and know my heart.” Thus purified, after the song of salvation had been sung, he received the Creed and professed that he renounced the devil, his pomps, and his angels. The catechumen did not perform this penance to make satisfaction to God for his sins, for he was to receive their full and free remission in baptism; rather, he prepared himself to receive grace and profess a new life by hating and detesting his old one. So Bagotius, Dissertation 1, chapter 2, section 2.

Here, however, the discussion will not concern public penance and satisfaction performed before the reception of baptism, but only that which the faithful who had fallen into grave sins customarily performed after receiving baptism. Three matters about this penance must be examined: first, how many kinds there were; second, how many stages it had; third, for which sins it was customarily performed. We shall discuss all these in the following paragraphs.

§ I. — HOW MANY KINDS OF PUBLIC PENANCE ARE THERE? — I answer: There were three kinds of public penance. One was imposed and commanded by the Church; another was voluntarily sought by penitents and granted to them; and the last was solemn, which was distinct in some way from the other two. Many examples of the first kind of penance are found in Ecclesiastical History. Its existence is established not only by the decrees and enactments of Councils, but also by the most ancient canons and penitential books, in which penalties to be undergone by penitents for expiating certain offenses are decreed and prescribed.

Indeed, this very thing is gathered from Sacred Scripture. For when Christ the Lord conferred on the Apostles and their successors the power to bind sinners and absolve them (Matthew 18:15), he prescribed how one should exercise this judicial power: if the sin is secret, the offender is to be rebuked privately; if, after being admonished, he does not amend, one or two witnesses are to be brought in; and if he does not listen to them, he is finally to be reported to the Church: “If your brother sins against you, go and correct him between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two witnesses, so that every word may be established by the mouth of two or three witnesses. If he does not listen to them, tell the Church.”

From this precept of Christ, St. Augustine, in the last chapter of book On Correction and Grace, infers that Paul’s command that “those who sin be rebuked in the presence of all, so that the rest may have fear” must be understood of sins that are not hidden. And in Sermon 16, On the Words of the Lord, chapters 6 and following, reconciling these two precepts of Christ and the Apostle, he says: “A brother must be rebuked in private when he has sinned against you,” that is, “when you know that he has sinned. For because it was private when he sinned against you, seek privacy when you rebuke him for his sin. For if you alone know that he sinned against you, and you wish to accuse him before everyone, you are not a reprover but a betrayer.” After giving the example of St. Joseph, the spouse of the Blessed Virgin, he continues: “Your brother has therefore sinned against you if you alone know it; then he has truly sinned against you alone. For if he injured you in the hearing of many, he also sinned against those whom he made witnesses of his iniquity.” He gives this reason: “When someone, in my hearing, injures my brother, let me not think that the injury is foreign to me. He has certainly injured me too; indeed, he has injured me more, since he thought that what he did would please me. Therefore the sins committed in private must be rebuked more privately. A bishop knows of some murderer, and no one else knows; Augustine says that he does not expose him or neglect him, but corrects him privately and persuades him to do penance. There are adulterers in their homes who sin in private; sometimes their wives betray them to us, sometimes out of jealousy, sometimes seeking their husbands’ salvation. We do not expose them publicly, but rebuke them in private, so that where the evil occurred, there the evil may die.”

By these words St. Augustine identifies the crimes for which public penance was especially to be performed, namely adultery and homicide. When he calls them secret, he does not mean that they were so hidden as never to have come to anyone’s knowledge: the wife who accused the adulterer knew of the adultery and had some household witnesses to prove it. Nevertheless, St. Augustine wishes that adulterer not be accused publicly, that is, in the assembly of the whole Church, but privately, in the presence of those who knew of the sin—either his wife, who knew of the crime, and the members of the household, or perhaps some priests who could keep a secret.

That this practice was perpetual in the Church, namely compelling certain sinners to undertake public penance, is clear from book 2 of the Apostolic Constitutions. In chapter 38 we read: “If someone is stubborn and obstinate, tell the Church; if he does not listen, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector, and do not admit him to the Church as a Christian,” etc. “But if he wishes to do penance, receive him,” etc. And chapter 41 says: “But if you see someone alienated from penance and hardened, cast him out of the Church with sorrow, as incurable. ‘Remove,’ he says, ‘the wicked person from among yourselves, and you will make the children of Israel reverent.’” Pope Euthychianus, cited by Burchard, book 12, chapter 14, seems to address our point more directly: “If someone, having committed perjury or any criminal sin, refuses to come to confession for fear of a long penance, he is to be driven from the Church, or from the company and communion of the faithful, so that no one may eat or drink with him, pray with him, or receive him into his house.”

St. Cyprian is a witness to this ancient custom. Disputing against the Novatians in Letter 52, he said: “No one can be compelled by us to do penance if the fruit of penance is withheld.” Those whose crimes were known to have been committed were therefore customarily compelled to do penance. Cyprian proves this by a noteworthy argument: since God granted the Church authority to remit sins, he believed that the authority to compel someone to do penance necessarily follows from the authority to absolve. Pacianus, too, referring to the same custom, wrote in Letter 3 against Sympronianus: “Whether we baptize, compel someone to do penance, or grant pardon, we do this with Christ as our author.”

Therefore public sinners convicted in any manner of a crime, if they were unwilling of their own accord to perform public penance, were compelled to do so not only by the Church’s stern threat and sentence of excommunication, but also—if they did not submit to ecclesiastical censures—by the authority of princes and the force of the secular arm. This is clear from Canon 28 of the Council of Mainz under Rabanus, where we read: “We have altogether decreed that bishops diligently investigate incestuous persons.” “If they refuse to do penance,” let them be expelled from the Church. “But if they refuse to heed the admonitions of priests, wishing to persist in their former crimes, they must be restrained from so evil a habit by the discipline of secular power.” A similar canon is found in the Council of Tours under Charles, chapter 41; Burchard, book 2, chapter 43 and book 7, chapter 29; the Council of Worms, chapter 79; the Council of Soissons, chapter 12; and Ivo, part 9, chapter 65: “It was also obtained from the most devout Prince that incestuous persons, and any other reprobates who evade the bishops’ inquiry, be brought before them by public judges, lest the impunity of their vices further nourish the temptation to sin.”

Hence the reason is clear why kings and princes, moved to action, so readily lent the bishops and their ministers the aid of their authority. For kingdoms are purged of vices when ecclesiastical discipline is carefully maintained in them. Thus in chapter 2 of the Second Council of Toul it is decreed concerning those who violate virgins and widows: “The men who have done violence to them are themselves also to be compelled to do penance by ecclesiastical censure. Let princes and judges exercise this diligence among the people of God, so that wherever bishops seek such men who are under their authority, they present them without delay, lest, if they dissemble or scorn the bishop’s command, they be cast out from the Church of God and denied burial among the faithful.”

If counts or their ministers denied assistance to bishops or their delegates, they were punished most severely by princes in proportion to their refusal. This could not be explained more aptly or precisely than in the words of a capitulary of Charles, found in book 7 of the Capitularies, chapter 330, or 335 in another numbering, and incorporated into his canons almost eight hundred years ago by Isaac of Langres, title 4, chapter 13: “If anyone, whether free or slave, cleric or royal serf, proves disobedient or obstinate toward his own bishop, his priest, or his archdeacon, whether in this matter or in any other crime, all his property is to be seized by the count or the bishop’s envoy, until he obeys his bishop or performs canonical penance. If he does not amend himself in this way, and delays going to the bishop and undertaking canonical penance, let the count seize him and keep him shut up in prison under great hardship; let him have no control over his property until the bishop so orders. If the count or his ministers delay carrying this out, let them be excommunicated canonically by the bishop or his minister, and let them always lack communion with Catholics until they have fully carried this out, unless the bishop himself chooses to deal more leniently with him. If, God forbid, the count himself proves disobedient or negligent in the foregoing matters or in the matter of excommunication, let him lose both his county’s dignity and communion until both parties come before us, so that by episcopal authority and imperial fear we may correct him in such a way that the others take warning and dare never again to commit such acts.” These are Morinus’s words, which I thought necessary to quote because they explain the practice of that time with exceptional clarity.

Likewise, in the capitularies of Charles the Bald from the Synod of Pîtres, year 862, chapter 4: “You, bishops, by evangelical, apostolic, and episcopal authority, if a lord or any powerful person in the kingdom, after being admonished according to the Gospel precept, refuses to correct himself and his people,” “and even if he himself does not do such things, yet his own men or those in his service do them, and he neither corrects them, nor succeeds in amending their conduct, nor brings them to penance—let him be excommunicated according to the sacred canons until he brings his men back to amendment and penance.” Then, after explaining the reason for this, he continues: “But if that powerful man or lord has made satisfaction to the bishop and the king’s envoys, because he cannot bring his men to amendment and penance, but wishes either to show that he is not himself guilty of such things or to make adequate satisfaction, and to remove such troubles from his service and pursue the enemies of God, then let him either not be excommunicated or be released from excommunication.” The preceding chapter confirms our contention no less clearly.

Nothing more illustrious and authoritative can be read on this subject than the law of Emperor Arnulf, cited in Canon 3 of the Council of Tribur, held in 895 under Pope Formosus. After weaving a splendid preamble to his law from various passages of Scripture, he finally concludes: “Therefore, showing not power but justice, we command and by our authority enjoin all the counts of our kingdom: after bishops have struck them with the anathema of excommunication, if they still do not bend to penance, let the counts seize them and bring them before us, so that those who do not fear divine judgments may be struck by a human sentence, etc. If they are so rebellious that they try to resist those who seize them, and are killed in such defiance, let no penance be imposed by the judgment of the bishops on those who killed them, and by our command let no weregild be exacted from them as compensation.” The counts themselves, excommunicated by bishops, are compelled by those bishops to do penance and are brought before the Emperor to be punished by him. Weregild is a German word meaning the monetary fine imposed in those times on account of homicide. So Morinus, book 7, On Penance, chapter 11.

From these examples it is clear that some sinners were compelled to undertake public penance not only by the Church’s threat and authority, but also by the authority of princes and secular magistrates.

Public penance was also customarily performed by some who voluntarily and freely submitted themselves to it of their own accord. St. Ambrose mentions this voluntary penance in book 1 of On Penance, where he says: “If someone has secret crimes, yet has diligently done penance for Christ’s sake, how is he received here if communion is not restored to him?” The word diligently signifies penance undertaken voluntarily, especially since St. Ambrose is speaking of a secret crime, for which public penance was never imposed as expiation. That St. Ambrose is speaking of public penance is clear from what he adds: “I wish the guilty person to hope for pardon, to ask with tears, to ask with groans, to ask with the weeping of all the people, to beseech forgiveness; and when his communion has been deferred a second and a third time, let him believe that he has pleaded too mildly, increase his weeping pitiably, then return, clasp the feet with his arms, kiss them with kisses, wash them with tears, etc.”

The same point is also clearly gathered from these words of St. Augustine, Homily 50, chapter 4: “Let no one, brothers, think that he ought to scorn the counsel of this saving penance for this reason: that he may perhaps notice many people approaching the sacred altars, whose such crimes he knows about. For many are corrected, like Peter; many are tolerated, like Judas; many are unknown, because they are not reported to the Church’s bishops. But we cannot forbid anyone from communion, even though this prohibition is not yet deadly but medicinal, unless he has either confessed of his own accord or been named and convicted in some tribunal, secular or ecclesiastical.” By these words he indicates that some sinners who have not been convicted freely and voluntarily confess their sins, are barred from communion, and embrace the counsel of that saving penance.

To this also pertains what St. Leo says in Letter 80. Discussing the public confession of sins that had not been divulged, which certain ignorant priests demanded of voluntary penitents of this kind because they saw it practiced in other cases, he praises “the fullness of faith of some, who, for fear of God, are not afraid to blush before men,” but forbids that custom, or rather abuse, “lest many be kept from the remedies of penance while they either blush or fear that their deeds will be disclosed to their enemies, who could then strike them by the force of the law.” Since he praises the fullness of faith of those who did something more of their own accord than the law required of them, and Leo says that many are kept from the remedies of penance by that indiscriminate rigor of public confession, it is very probable that they embraced this penance not under compulsion but from spontaneous devotion.

The holy Fathers offer various examples of this voluntary penance. Among them Jerome relates a distinguished case in Letter 30, the epitaph of Fabiola, where he tells how Fabiola did penance for an unlawful marriage contracted while her husband was still alive, though she had sincerely believed it lawful for her: “Fabiola,” he says, “had persuaded herself and believed that she had rightly dismissed her husband; she did not know the force of the Gospel, in which every pretext for marrying while one’s husband is alive is cut off, and while avoiding many wounds of the devil, she incautiously received one wound.” Later he says that “she grieved as if she had committed adultery,” or as if she were guilty of it and had not deserved pardon on account of her ignorance. Accordingly, for as long as she was joined in good faith to her second husband, she doubtless received the Eucharist, as was then customary, and was not forbidden to do so by a bishop’s command. But “after her second husband’s death, coming to her senses,” she sought penance, put on sackcloth, and publicly confessed her error, when, “having learned the force of the Gospel, she recognized her sin, put on sackcloth, and stood in the order of penitents before Easter. She laid open her wound to all, and Rome saw her weeping over the discolored scar on her body. Her sides were torn, her head bare, her mouth closed. She did not enter the Lord’s church, but sat apart outside with Mary, Moses’ sister, so that the priest might call her back, after himself having cast her out.” Therefore Fabiola did not undergo this penance under compulsion, but sought it willingly for a crime known throughout Rome, not a secret one.

Solemn penance is that which the penitent undertook to observe perpetually, binding himself to a way of life more austere, either in a monastery or under the care and discipline of monks. That state therefore involved not only certain duties of public penance, whether imposed or granted, but also introduced perseverance in them and a certain permanence. In this it differed from the condition of penitents that was merely a path and preparation for obtaining reconciliation: once reconciliation had been obtained, the obligation to continue public penance ceased. It was otherwise for those who had professed a more austere life, for Church prelates could indeed compel them to observe it, and if they departed from that way of life, they had to be brought back to it by ecclesiastical censures. Such penitents were called converts, not because all who undertook this kind and way of penance were guilty of graver crimes—indeed, most assumed it voluntarily from piety—but because they were distinct from the monks with whom they lived, although they could not depart from that way of life. Hence Canon 53 of the Fourth Council of Toledo places such penitents and monks in, as it were, the same class, and strikes those who fall away with anathema as apostates: “Whoever among the laity, upon undertaking penance, has had himself tonsured and then, turning back, has become a layman again, shall, when apprehended by the bishop, return to the penance from which he withdrew. But if any are bound by penance never to return, and do not return even when admonished, they are truly to be condemned before the Church by the sentence of anathema as apostates.” And decreeing the same concerning apostate monks, it adds: “The same rule shall also be observed for widows, consecrated virgins, and women penitents who have assumed the religious habit and later either changed their dress or entered into marriage.”

The Eighth Council of Toledo agrees with this in Canon 7, where, renewing the aforementioned decree, it says: “Since human perversity is so great that those whom the profession of penance, in a religious habit, brings to the priest’s hand for the forgiveness of sins—or brings there at all—are once again recalled by renewed malice to the filth of their former life, for this reason the Synod decrees that if any free persons of either sex have lived as converts in a religious habit under the name of penance, but thereafter grow their hair or put on secular garments and return, or shall return, to what they had abandoned, they are to be apprehended by the bishops of the city in whose territory they became converts and again subjected unwillingly to the laws of penance in monasteries. If this proves difficult because of some exercise of power, then, as the decrees of the earlier canons established, they are to be held excommunicated until they return to the order they abandoned.”

From these things it is clear that such penitents were very different from other public penitents. Far from being excluded from communion and participation in the Church’s sacraments while in that state, they were threatened by the Church with excommunication unless they returned to the state they had abandoned.

The Twelfth Council of Toledo, chapter 1, gives a striking and distinguished example of this solemn penance in the person of Wamba, king of Spain. When he had recovered from a very grave illness and learned that a vow had been made on his behalf that, if his health were restored, he would perform perpetual penance, he renounced every royal insignia and right, took up the due religious habit and the sacred sign of the venerable tonsure, and embraced the way of life of penance. What sort of satisfaction some such converts or penitents performed, and how bitter and austere it was, is vividly recounted by St. John Climacus in The Ladder of Perfection, especially in Step V.

“When I, a weak man, learned that there was a certain rare, unusual, and most abject way of life followed by some who lived in a private and secluded place called the Prison, though it was subordinate to that other monastery I praised above, the monastery of the star of stars, and while I was still there, I asked that holy Superior whether I might inspect that place in person. That illustrious head of the monastery yielded to my request, not wishing me to be offended in any way. So when I came to that place of penitents—or rather, to that region of mourners (the Prison, I mean)—I truly saw, if it is lawful to say so, what, as is usually the case, the eye of a slothful man has not seen, nor the ears of the sluggish heard, nor has entered the heart of the indolent: deeds and words, I say, that could somehow prevail upon God, practices and habits that might at once bend his clemency. I saw some of those innocent guilty ones standing under the open sky all night until morning, their feet unmoving, pitifully struggling with sleep and nature, and almost broken by the effort, since they allowed themselves absolutely no rest; indeed, they severely rebuked themselves and roused themselves further with insults and reproaches. I saw others gazing at the sky and imploring its aid with a lamentable voice and groaning. Others, persevering in prayer, had their hands bound behind their backs like criminals and, their faces clouded with deep grief, fixed their eyes on the ground, judging themselves unworthy to look at the sky. They dared not speak, utter any sound, pray, or call upon God amid the throng of their thoughts, their trembling conscience, and their shame; they did not know what to say, how to say it, or where to begin their prayers. Instead, with their reason bewildered, their minds turned toward God, and filled with darkness and a subtle kind of despair, they presented themselves to him. Others sat on the ground, on the floor, on ashes and sackcloth, covering their faces with their knees and striking their foreheads against the earth. Others beat their breasts continually, recalling the former state of their souls and their past life, which they had spent in virtue. Some of them flooded the floor with tears; others, deprived of the fountain of tears, beat themselves. Some lamented their souls as at a funeral and could not contain the greatness of their grief in their hearts. Others roared inwardly like lions and groaned in spirit, but meanwhile suppressed the clamor of their lamentations, although at times they could not endure the force of their grief and burst suddenly into loud cries. I saw some there whose bodily appearance was as if they had gone out of themselves, fixed in deep sorrow and reduced to a kind of mental stupor and eternal silence; for they were enveloped in deepest darkness and seemed stunned in all the functions of life. Yet in their souls they had descended to the lowest degree of humility and melted tears in the fire of grief. I saw others sitting pensively with their heads bent to the ground, constantly shaking their necks and roaring and groaning like lions from the depths of their breasts and inmost being. Some of them, full of hope, asked and begged forgiveness for all their offenses; others, in their profound humility, judged themselves unworthy of pardon and cried aloud that they could not answer God for their offenses. Some begged to suffer punishment here and obtain grace and mercy there. Others, at once weighed down by the burden of conscience, begged to be spared eternal punishments, yet sincerely declared themselves unworthy of heaven, saying, ‘If only this may be granted, it is enough for us.’ I saw there humble, contrite souls, crushed under the weight of their burden, who could move even stones to compassion by their words, their cries, and the prayers they poured out to God. With their heads nodding and bowed to the earth, they wondered aloud: ‘Indeed, we know well that from now on we deserve every punishment and torment, and rightly so; for, given the number and multitude of our sins, we cannot make satisfaction even if the whole world were summoned to mourn with us. We ask this, we beg this, this alone we implore: “Do not rebuke us in your wrath hereafter, nor chastise us in your anger, but correct us in mercy.” For it is enough for us if we are freed from your most grievous threat and your unspeakable and hidden punishments. We do not dare ask that every punishment be entirely remitted and pardon granted; for with what face could we dare ask this, when we have violated a holy vow and so foully defiled ourselves after the first grace for all our sins had been granted through your singular clemency?’ There, my friends, you could truly and plainly see David’s words fulfilled: I mean, you could behold those ‘afflicted and bowed down to the end,’ who ‘went about mourning all the day,’ their bodily wounds already foul, corrupted, and festering, for they took no care of their bodies. They ‘forgot to eat their bread, mixed their drink with tears and weeping, ate dust and ashes for bread. Their bones clung to their skin, and they themselves had become parched like an oven.’ Nothing else was heard from them but words such as these: ‘Woe, woe to us wretches—rightly, rightly! Spare us, spare us, Lord!’ Some cried, ‘Have mercy, have mercy!’ Others, more piteously still, said, ‘Forgive us, Lord, forgive us, if there is any place for pardon,’ etc.”

“One could see their tongues burning and hanging out of their mouths like those of dogs. Some tormented themselves in the fierce heat of the sun; others tortured themselves with cold. Some, after tasting a little water, stopped so as not to burden themselves with thirst; others, after merely tasting bread, threw it far away again, declaring themselves unworthy to eat human food, since they had done the deeds of beasts. Where among them was any sign of laughter? Where idle stories? Where sudden rage or anger? Among them one no longer knew whether there was any place for anger among human beings: so completely had unceasing mourning extinguished every movement of anger in them! Where was contention in words? Where holidays? Where excessive freedom of speech? Where care of the body? Where any trace of vainglory? Where, henceforth, any hope of pleasures? Where any thought of wine? Even a taste of fruit? Where the comfort of the kitchen and the pot? Where the allurements of gluttony? The hope of all these things had been utterly removed and destroyed for them throughout the rest of their present life. Where among them was any concern for human affairs? Where the desire to judge anyone else? Nowhere. Instead, these things were constantly repeated among them; these were the cries they raised to the Lord. Some, indeed, beating their breasts heavily as if they stood at heaven’s threshold, cried out to the Lord: ‘Open to us, Judge, open to us, since by our sins we ourselves have closed heaven’s gates to us. Open to us.’ Others said: ‘Show us your face alone, and we shall be saved…’ One could see their knees, calloused from the constant habit of kneeling; their eyes wasted and weak, deeply sunken into their sockets; their cheeks wounded and burned by the heat of their fervent tears; their faces pallid and emaciated, no different from the dead, if you compared them; their chests shining with blows from lashes and bloodied by the frequent blows of fists, with blood-spattered sputum cast from their chests. Where was a bed placed there for rest? Where cleanliness, or clothing to protect them against the cold? Everything was torn, ripped, and soiled, teeming with the filth of worms. The torments of those possessed by demons, the mourning of the dead, the misery of those living in exile, the punishment of parricides—none of these was anything beside the endurance of these afflicted people; none of their punishments and inflicted tortures compared with the voluntary discipline and torment of these penitents. I beg you, brothers, do not think that I am telling you fables… But when the final hour of life was near for someone, what a sight you would see, how dreadful and pitiable! For whenever the companions of a penitent realized that one of their number was about to die, they all stood around him in a circle while he was still present and conscious. Parched with thirst, grieving in sorrow, and burning with a piteous longing, they shook their heads and addressed the one now failing with utmost compassion, thinking: ‘What is it, brother and fellow soldier? How are you? What do you say? What hope remains for you? What do you feel? Have you attained what you sought with such great labor, or not yet? Have you entered the gate of salvation, or are you still wavering in mind? Have you reached the goal or gone astray? Have you been granted freedom, or do your thoughts still rage and torment you? Has your mind been illumined by heavenly light, or is it still confused by darkness and shame and caught in night? Have you received some voice answering you in your heart: “Behold, you have been made well; your sins are forgiven you,” or, “Your faith has saved you”? Or perhaps do you still hear that terrible sentence: “Let sinners be turned into hell,” and, “Bind his hands and feet,” and, “Let the wicked be taken away, lest he see the glory of the Lord”? What do you answer us? Brother, tell us, we beg you, so that we too may know what fate awaits us. For your lifetime has now run its course, and it will not return throughout all eternity.’ To this some of the dying replied: ‘Blessed be the Lord, because he has not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me.’ Others again said: ‘Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth.’ Others answered with great sorrow: ‘Perhaps our soul has passed through the aerial power, that intolerable water?’ They were still uncertain of salvation and anxiously pondering what would happen at that fearsome tribunal of judgment. Others answered much more sadly: ‘Woe,’ they said, ‘to the soul that did not keep inviolate the profession of its vow! Only at this hour will it learn what has been prepared for it.’ When I had seen and heard these things among them, I came close to despairing as I compared my own negligence with their endurance and affliction. What was the appearance of the place itself, its habitation? The whole house was dark and shadowy, foul-smelling and fetid, filthy and squalid. It was rightly called a prison and a dungeon of the condemned, so much so that the mere sight of the place urged the onlooker to penance and mourning. Indeed, what seems heavy and unbearable to others is easy and readily undertaken by those who have lost virtue and heavenly graces, etc.” Thus St. John, the Abbot called Climacus after the ladder of perfection that he composed.

§ II. — HOW MANY AND WHAT WERE THE STAGES OF PUBLIC PENANCE? — Although the Church always remains the same and unchanged, and with the same divinely kindled fire of love and zeal urges her children to holiness and purity of life, and with all the care and concern she can muster exhorts them to fight and purge vices and sins, nevertheless her external discipline toward penitents has not always been the same. At times she dealt more leniently with sinners, at other times more harshly. Therefore, different periods in the discipline of performing public penance must be distinguished: first, from the Apostles until the rise of the heresy of Montanus; second, from Montanus until Novatus; third, from Novatus until the seventh or eighth century; finally, from the seventh century to the present time. In these periods the Church’s treatment of sinners varies, not only according to different crimes, but also according to periods, conditions, ages, sexes, health or illness, and the penitents’ differing contrition of heart, fervor, and length of penance.

I say, then, first, that from the very beginnings of the Church until Montanus, the Church’s clemency toward sinners was far greater and more lenient than it later appeared to be. This can be gathered from the case of the Apostle, who recounts in 1 Corinthians 5 the horrendous crime of that Corinthian: “It is reported among you,” he says, “that there is fornication, and such fornication as is not even found among the Gentiles, so that someone has his brother’s¹ wife.” Let us consider both the duration and the kind of punishment. In 2 Corinthians 2, St. Paul commands the Corinthians to spare this penitent: “This rebuke by the many is sufficient for such a person, so that, on the contrary, you should rather forgive and console him.” The reason for this indulgence must be weighed: “lest such a person be swallowed up by excessive sorrow.” Therefore, intense contrition of heart is a proper reason for hastening indulgence and the remission of sins. Hence he immediately adds: “For this reason I beg you to confirm your love for him.”

Second, the same is clear from St. Clement, a disciple of the Apostles, who, instructing a bishop in book 2, chapter 16 of the Constitutions about the discipline to be observed toward a penitent, says: “When you see that he has transgressed, order him to be put outside. Let even the deacons, who watch over him and keep him outside the church, enter the church grieving over him and beseech you on his behalf. Afterwards you shall order him to enter, and, after examining whether he repents and is worthy to be fully admitted into the church, chastise him with a fast of two, three, five, or seven weeks, as the kind and circumstances of the offense require. Then dismiss him after saying what is fitting, for it is proper to instruct and admonish the one who rebukes him in order to correct him concerning a committed sin,” etc. As is clear, St. Clement assigns a much shorter time for performing penance and receiving reconciliation than St. Paul had prescribed for the Corinthian.

Another argument for this same truth is supplied to us by Clement of Alexandria, in Eusebius, bk. 2, ch. 17, concerning a certain young man whom St. John the Apostle had entrusted to a bishop to be instructed and educated. But when that young man had become a man, fleeing the sight of his Preceptor and Master, he defiled himself with every kind of vice and for many years was a leader of robbers, until St. John, returning from exile, sought him and, having found him, recalled him to penance. He did not wish that penance to be prolonged, but after a short penitential period had passed, reconciled him to the Church. Clement of Alexandria recounts the matter thus: The penitent robber embraces the old man as he approaches; he made satisfaction for his guilt with weeping and sorrow as far as he could; and the Apostle, judging him baptized a second time by the flood of tears, with only his right hand concealed, and affirming it firmly, promised him that by his prayers he would obtain pardon and remission of sins for him from the Savior; then, approaching his knees, he kissed that very right hand as though washed and cleansed by the water of Penance, led him back to the Church, and with frequent prayers invoked God for him, afflicting himself with continual fasts along with him. By various sayings of divine Wisdom he soothed and calmed his spirit, as by certain charms, and, as the story goes, did not depart before restoring him to the Church. — From these things it is clear that this penance was observed not for a long time, but for a short one, since St. John had left Ephesus only to visit that Church.

Fourth, the same is clear from bk. 2 of The Shepherd, where Hermas, a disciple of St. Paul, recounts the manner in which Penance is to be performed, but does not prescribe distinctly the time in which it is to be completed. And in bk. 3 he infers that punishments are proportioned to pleasures, although in the punishment for a year-long pleasure a penalty of one day is imposed: “Sweetness,” he says, “and pleasure retain no memory because of the folly inherent in them. But when a man’s torment and punishment have come upon him for one day, he is tormented for an entire year,” etc.

Finally, this is evident from Tertullian, who, although he set forth clearly and fully the whole discipline of Penance practiced in his time, nevertheless makes no mention of a prescribed period during which it was to be performed; he surely would not have been silent about this if, as happened later, penitential satisfactions had been prescribed for ten, fifteen, and twenty years. All who wrote on this discipline after the Church had assigned a period for performing Penance made mention of it. Indeed, in the same place, ch. 10, Tertullian seems to indicate that Penance should not be drawn out for long; for in ch. 10 he says: When you stretch yourself out at the knees of the brethren, you take hold of Christ, you implore Christ; they too, as they weep over you, suffer with you. Christ suffers, Christ entreats the Father: what the Son asks is always easily obtained. But he would not have said that pardon for sins is easily obtained if seven or ten years had to be spent in imploring and obtaining it.

This is no objection: that Canon 11 of the Apostles extends to three years the Penance of a layman who had mutilated himself, because he had plotted against his own life. — For I say, first, that a fixed period of Penance was prescribed for this sin alone, because that case was altogether exceptional. — I say, second, that it is probable the words (three years) were added to the Apostolic Canon; for Canon 1 of the Council of Nicaea, where the same law is laid down, makes no mention of such a penalty, but only prohibits those who had committed such a crime from being promoted to the clergy.

If you object with Clement of Alexandria, bk. 6 of the Stromata, where he reports that St. Peter, preaching, pronounced this judgment from the Lord’s words: If anyone from Israel wishes to be led to penance and has believed in God on account of my name, his sins are remitted after twelve years. I will answer that Clement drew this from certain apocryphal books, as he did many other things contrary to the practice of the universal Church, and especially here this period of twelve years for performing Penance; for it is clear from the examples cited that even in the time of the Apostles the reconciliation of penitents was not delayed so long.

The reason why in earlier times the Church dealt more mildly with penitents must be sought in the intensity of contrition that affected the children of the nascent Church when they had fallen into some sin; for the Church always established and held it as settled that penalties should be reduced in proportion to the intensity of contrition. But in the later period, when charity had grown cold and contrition was less intense, penitents had to be treated more severely, and consequently a longer and graver satisfaction was required.

This is especially clear from the time of the heretic Montanus, who denied that the Church could grant pardon to adulterers, murderers, and idolaters, contrary to what Catholics maintained. From this the Church’s discipline toward penitents became somewhat more severe, especially toward those guilty of adultery, murder, and idolatry, as is clear from Ep. 55 of St. Cyprian to Cornelius, where, among the various crimes of priests, he lists their being too lenient toward penitents: “And first,” he says, “on the appointed day of persecution, while the recent crimes of the offenders were still seething, and not only the altars of the devil but the very hands and mouths of the lapsed were still smoking with their impious sacrifices, they did not cease to communicate with the lapsed and to intercede that they might perform Penance,” etc. And in On the Lapsed he is found to speak of men guilty of such crimes being reconciled without a longer Penance, in these words: “Returning from the altars of the devil, they received them into the holy house of the Lord with hands soiled and stained by the odor; while still almost belching up the deadly food of idols, with their throats yet exhaling their crime and reeking of its fatal contagion, they assail the body of the Lord.” Yet these words are not to be understood as if at that time absolution were indiscriminately granted to the guilty without prior severe satisfaction and public Penance, as can be seen in Tertullian, especially in On Modesty. Although he wrote it when already a Montanist, he nevertheless indicates what the discipline was not only among the Montanists but also among Catholics toward those guilty of graver crimes, namely, that they were admitted to public Penance. For he writes in ch. 5: “The idolater stands there, the murderer stands there, and in their midst the adulterer also stands. They sit together in the exercise of Penance, bristle in sackcloth and ashes, groan in the same posture, entreat with the same prayers and the same knees, and invoke the same mother. What are you doing, most tender and most humane discipline? You condemn the idolater and murderer once, but exclude the adulterer from their midst,” etc. He plainly declares in the final words why he said what preceded, and what these guilty persons so earnestly sought in sackcloth and ashes with their prayers: namely, that the door of Penance be opened to them. The Roman clergy examined the case of the lapsed with the same diligence, as we learn from Ep. 31 in St. Cyprian, which explains what the lapsed should do in the meantime, until the opportunity to perform public Penance was granted them: “Let them indeed knock at the doors, but not break them down. Let them approach the threshold of the Church, but not leap across it. They have gone out through the gates of the heavenly camp, yet armed with modesty, by which they understand that they were deserters. Let them sound again the trumpet of their prayers, but not sound a warlike blast,” etc. “Their modest petition, reverent entreaty, fitting humility, and active patience will benefit them greatly. Let them send tears as envoys for their griefs; let sighs poured forth from the depths of the heart serve as their advocate, proving sorrow for the crime committed and shame.” In this way they are urged to ask for Penance and peace until the persecutions have subsided and an opportunity for a council to be held arises, at which the manner of Penance they must perform may be determined.

St. Cyprian supports this with many other passages, as at the end of his little book On the Lapsed, where he teaches the lapsed how they ought to prepare themselves to undertake Penance: “When we think they lament from the whole heart and beseech the Lord with fasts, tears, and mourning, how can one who daily celebrates banquets from the first day of his crime, who is fed on sumptuous feasts and gorged with abundant food, belch forth his indigestion the next day, and does not share his food and drink with the need of the poor? How can one who goes about cheerful and happy mourn his own death?” etc. And a little before the middle of the treatise he had described the plea for Penance of Castus and Aemilius, who had lapsed after being tormented: “They pleaded, not with the appeal of tears, but of wounds; not with their lamentable voice, but with the laceration and pain of their bodies. Blood flowed in place of weeping, and gore streamed from their half-burned entrails in place of tears.” For this reason, after Penance had been performed very briefly, reconciliation was granted them: “Such a case,” he says, “can quickly make progress toward pardon; such an excuse can be worthy of pity.”

But from the rise and spread of the Novatian heresy until the seventh century, the Church’s discipline concerning penitents was far more austere and exacting. For then the labor of Penance was divided into four grades, classes, or stations: the first was called weeping, the second instruction, the third prostration, and the fourth standing with the faithful. The place of the first two, namely, the mourners, was outside the gate of the oratory or place where the faithful customarily gathered for prayer and the celebration of the sacred assembly. These penitents therefore remained in the open air, barred from the Church’s roof, and asked the faithful entering to offer prayers for them.

The hearers stood inside the gate, in the place the Greeks called the ferula. Zonaras, however, in Canon 30 of St. Basil, places them in the vestibule of the Church with the catechumens, so that they could hear the reading of Scripture and the sermons preached to the catechumens; thereafter they were expelled from the company of the catechumens. For we read in Canon 11 of St. Gregory: “The hearer,” he says, “after the Scriptures and instruction is to be expelled and is not held worthy of prayer”; that is, they did not approach the imposition of hands as the catechumens did, who were called competentes and were prepared for baptism by exorcisms and other rites, which St. Augustine calls the sacraments of the catechumens.

In the third grade were the prostrators, so called because, after hearing the Scriptures and the Mass of the catechumens, they prostrated themselves at the feet of the presbyters to receive the imposition of hands. They never stood, but always prayed on their knees, even on the days of remission, in the left part of the church, barefoot, with their hair let down and their faces unkempt, as is understood from Canon 19 of the Synod of Laodicea, Canon 92 of the Fourth Council of Carthage, and Hom. 34 of St. Caesarius of Arles. Their hair is said to have been let down because they wore it long—not, I think, everywhere, but in those places where mourners did not cut their hair. For in Africa and Spain the penitents’ hair was cut, as is understood from Serm. 58, On Time, of St. Augustine.

The fourth grade is called standing with the faithful. In it, after they had been cleansed through laborious works, impositions of hands by the bishop and clergy were granted to them. They were no longer expelled from the Church, but remained in it and were allowed to attend the Mass of the faithful and all that pertained to the sacrifice, though they were not permitted either to make an offering or to communicate in the body of Christ the Lord. Moreover, the place where these penitents stood was near the ambo, or in the middle, between the ambo and the faithful who participated in the body of Christ.

These grades are expressly mentioned in the final canon of the canonical letter of St. Gregory of Neocaesarea, where we read: “Weeping is outside the gate of the oratory, where the sinner must stand and ask the faithful entering to pray for him. Hearing is inside the gate, in the narthex, where the sinner must stand as far as the catechumens and then depart; for the hearer,” he says, “after the Scriptures and instruction is to be expelled and considered unworthy of prayer. Prostration is when one stands inside the gate of the church and goes out with the catechumens. Standing with the faithful is when one remains with the faithful and does not go out with the catechumens. Finally comes participation in the sacraments.” This canon, however, does not seem to have been composed by St. Gregory, but collected by others from the canons of St. Basil and appended to Gregory’s canons; for the most ancient collection of Greek canons, compiled by Gregory more than eight hundred years ago and held in the Royal Library, contains the rest of Gregory’s canons but not this one.

Harmenopulus agrees in his Epitome of the Canons, sect. 5, title 3, where, abbreviating Canon 58 of St. Basil, he says: “He who committed adultery shall do penance for fifteen years: four years weeping, five years studying, four years prostrating himself, and one year standing with the faithful.” Then, explaining all these grades one by one and very briefly, he says: “The first grade is that of standing outside the Church and asking those entering to offer prayers for oneself. The second is that of those standing outside in the narthex. The third is that of those standing inside the church beyond the ambo and entering with the catechumens. The fourth is that of praying with the faithful, though they are not yet considered worthy of the sacraments.”

Matthew Blastares explains these four grades most clearly of all in his Nomocanon, where he writes: “Penitents are divided into four orders: weepers, hearers, prostrators, and those standing with the faithful. The weepers are those who stand outside the gate of the oratory and ask the faithful entering and leaving for the aid of their prayers and forgiveness of their sin. The hearers are those who stand inside the gate in the place called the narthex, hear the divine Scriptures and the explanation of the common teaching, and then go out with the catechumens. The prostrators are those who stand inside the church, but beyond the ambo, and go out with the catechumens when that solemn proclamation, ‘All catechumens,’ is announced by the deacon. Finally, those standing with the faithful are those who pray and sing psalms with the faithful, but abstain from participation in the holy things until, when the appointed time has elapsed, the fullness of divine Communion receives them.”

To make clearer in which places the penitents stayed in these four grades, one should know that the ancient Greeks and Latins first divided the church into two parts: the aula, or atrium of the laity, and the sanctuary, in which only bishops, presbyters, and deacons were permitted to stand. Later they divided it into three parts: the sacred area, where the altar stood and the liturgy was celebrated, in which only bishops, presbyters, and deacons stood; the church, or that part which the Greeks call the naos or temple, for the other clerics and monks, where the monks sat and sang and celebrated the principal offices, for some were performed in the narthex. The narthex was the whole part of the church extending as far as the outer doors, which it also included. For this reason some distinguished a twofold ναθήκη, inner and outer. The inner area was for monks, ordinary clerics, and lay faithful; in the lower part as far as the outer narthex was the place of the catechumens and prostrating penitents. Just as the sanctuary was separated from the church by a screen or even a wall, in which there were doors called holy doors, so the church was separated from the narthex, where there were likewise doors called beautiful doors, through which the church communicated with the narthex. Precisely the same division is seen in all our larger churches, except that rarely is the sanctuary, or the part pertaining to the altar and celebration of Mass, separated by screens from the choir of singers and canons. On account of this threefold division, which was not in use among the ancients, the Greek commentators on the canons sometimes seem to confuse the places of penitents with those of the faithful, says Morinus, bk. 6, ch. 1, n. 10.

Therefore, only the first grade of Penance was performed in the open air and before the doors of the Church, especially in some Churches, as is inferred from St. Basil’s letter to Amphilochius, ch. 96, where he says of a voluntary murderer: “He must mourn for four years outside the doors of the oratory and ask the faithful entering to pray for him.” And in Canon 75 he decrees concerning one who had relations with his own sister: “For three years he shall mourn, standing outside the doors of the oratory and asking the people entering for prayer to pour out fervent prayers to the Lord for him, each with compassion.”

This may perhaps explain the sense of Canon 17 of the Council of Ancyra, where it decrees: “The holy Synod ordered those who kill irrational animals, and those who are or have been lepers, to pray among the winter-dwellers.” For to pray among the winter-dwellers, as Albaspinaeus observes in his notes on that same canon, means to pray and do Penance among those who, because of graver sins, were assigned to Penance and required to pray in the open air, and were therefore called winter-dwellers because they lived under the open sky, exposed to every kind of weather; or because, as Martin of Braga interprets it, winter-dwellers means those driven by unclean spirits, who were compelled to live outside the Church, separated, that is, from the place of the faithful, catechumens, and penitents.

YOU WILL ASK 1. Whether those four grades of Penance necessarily had to be completed before sinners obtained the grace of absolution? —

I answer, it sometimes happened that sinners passed from the grade of weepers to prostration without passing through hearing, as is inferred from Canon 12 of the Council of Nicaea, where we read: “Whoever shows conversion in deed and habit through fear, tears, endurance, and good works shall, when the prescribed time of hearing has been completed, rightly have a share in the prayers, with this further provision, that bishops may also determine something more lenient concerning him.” Likewise, from Canon 7 of the Council of Ancyra: “It was decided that after they have been prostrators for two years, they are to be received.” Indeed, penitents did not always begin Penance at the first grade; rather, according to various circumstances and the contrition and sorrow of their souls, they sometimes began the labor of Penance at hearing, sometimes at standing with the faithful. This is especially inferred from St. Gregory of Neocaesarea, ch. 12, where he says: “Those who found something in a field, or in their own houses something left by the barbarians, if indeed they have been accused and convicted, shall be placed with those who prostrate themselves”—that is, they shall be placed in the third grade of Penance; but if “they denounce themselves and make restitution, they shall also be considered worthy of prayers”—that is, they shall be placed in the fourth grade. Likewise, bigamists were sometimes placed in the second grade of Penance and reached the fourth without completing the third, as St. Basil indicates in Canon 1, where, speaking of bigamists, he says: “They ought not to be wholly excluded from the Church, but be deemed worthy of hearing for two or three years; afterward they may indeed be allowed to stand, that is, to be in the assembly of the faithful, while still abstaining from communion in the good things; and thus, after they have shown some fruit of Penance, to stand in the place of communion.”

YOU WILL ASK 2. Whether it was permitted, on account of repeated crimes, to pass through the grades of public Penance more than once, and to be advanced to absolution and holy Communion during public Penance? — I answer that it is more probable that, when such public Penance had once been performed for the gravest crimes, the Church did not prescribe it again when those crimes were repeated. This is especially inferred from Origen, hom. 15 on Leviticus ch. 29, where, explaining the verse that recounts the difference between the redemption of houses in villages and those in cities—that houses sold in villages could be redeemed when the Jubilee returned, while for those in cities the right of redemption ended after a year—he allegorically applies this to the remission of lesser and graver offenses. He says that the redemption of lesser offenses may be repeated: “If,” he says, “some moral fault (or, in another reading, mortal fault) befalls us—not a mortal crime, nor blasphemy against the faith, which is enclosed by the wall of ecclesiastical and apostolic doctrine, but a fault consisting either in words or in a defect of conduct, that is, selling a house in the country or in a village without a wall—this sale, this sort of fault, can always be repaired, nor are you ever forbidden to do penance for such things as you have committed. For in graver crimes the opportunity for Penance is granted only once, or rarely. But these common offenses, into which we often fall, always admit Penance and are redeemed without interruption.” St. Ambrose agrees with Origen, bk. 2 of On Penance, ch. 10, where he says explicitly: “Those who think Penance should be performed more often are rightly reproved, because they luxuriate in Christ; for if they truly did Penance, they would not think it should be repeated afterward. For just as there is one baptism, so there is one Penance—which, however, is performed publicly. For we ought to repent daily of sin, but the former concerns lesser offenses and the latter graver ones.” By these words St. Ambrose teaches that the maxim “there is one Penance” is to be understood of public Penance, which is performed on account of graver sins, since it was granted only once; but not of Penance imposed for lesser sins, which can be performed daily. The same is taught by Siricius, Supreme Pontiff, ch. 4 of Ep. 1 to Himerius, bishop of Tarragona, who had put this question to him: “Your Charity rightly believed that the Apostolic See should be consulted about those who, after having performed Penance, return like dogs to their former vomit and wallowing, and again seek military service, theatrical pleasures, new marriages, and forbidden sexual relations. Their avowed lack of restraint has been exposed by the children born after their absolution.” The Pontiff replies: “Since these people no longer have recourse to Penance, divine judgment decrees that they be joined to the faithful within the Church only in prayer. They may attend the sacred celebration of the mysteries, though they do not merit it; but let them be separated from the banquet of the Lord’s table, so that, corrected at least by this distinction, they may both chastise their own errors and set an example to others, and thus be turned away from shameful desires. Yet since they have fallen through carnal weakness, when they begin their journey to the Lord, we wish them to be aided by the grace of Communion as viaticum. We judge that this rule is also to be observed regarding women who, after Penance, have given themselves to such pollutions.” To this is added St. Augustine, Ep. 54 to Macedonius, where he teaches most clearly that the humble Penance for graver sins is not repeated: “Sometimes the wickedness of men advances so far that, even after performing Penance and reconciliation at the altar, they commit the same or graver sins. Yet God makes his sun rise even upon such people, and bestows no less abundantly the generous gifts of life and salvation than he did before. And although the place of the lowliest Penance is not granted to them in the Church, God nevertheless does not forget his own patience toward them,” etc. A little later, treating the same point, he writes that “it was wisely and beneficially provided that the place of that lowliest Penance be granted only once in the Church, lest a remedy that is cheap become less useful to the sick; for it is more healthful the less easily it is borne.”

So public was this discipline that Macedonius, a praeses or proconsul in Africa, argued from this custom against the bishops of Africa, who interceded for those facing punishment of any kind: “I greatly doubt,” he says, “whether this proceeds from religion. For if sins are so forbidden by the Lord that even after a first Penance no opportunity to repent is granted, how can we contend on religious grounds that whatever crime there may be should be forgiven by us?”

From these and similar declarations of the holy Fathers, the ancient theologians consistently taught that in former times no further public Penance was provided for those who repeated crimes after having performed public Penance, but only private Penance. Thus Alensis interprets some of these authorities in part 4, q. 14, memb. 6, a. 2, where, replying to the second objection, he says: “The solemnity itself signifies a kind of confirmation and excellence; therefore it is incompatible with solemn Penance that what is done solemnly be repeated, since what is done solemnly implies permanence; consequently, repetition is incompatible with it. But it is not incompatible that the person be punished again if he relapses; for he ought to be punished with a penalty so great that its severity and magnitude compensate for the disgrace of solemn Penance.” By these words he clearly indicates two things: first, that the opportunity to perform public Penance would be granted and prescribed only once; second, that repeated crimes after that public Penance had been completed ought to be punished by private Penance.

§ III. — WHAT SINS WERE SUBJECT TO PUBLIC PENANCE? — NOTE first that the holy Fathers and the ancient Doctors of the Church divided sins into three classes, and by the ordinary law assigned to each class its own manner and rule of correction and remedies. The first class consisted of the gravest crimes, which were called capital and sometimes simply mortal; among these, three crimes above all were counted: idolatry, adultery, and murder, together with their obvious forms and branches, which were sometimes also called canonical because the canons prescribed censures for them. The second class consisted of those crimes that were considered mortal but were less grave than the foregoing. The third class, finally, consisted of venial and lesser sins, which the holy Fathers often also call daily sins, although among those daily sins there were in fact some that were truly mortal, as can be inferred from St. Augustine, bk. 83 of the Questions, q. 26, where he calls all sins of ignorance and weakness venial and daily: “There are,” he says, “some sins of weakness, others of inexperience, and others of malice. Weakness is contrary to virtue; inexperience is contrary to wisdom; malice is contrary to goodness. Therefore, whoever knows what the virtue and wisdom of God are can assess which sins are venial; and whoever knows what the goodness of God is can assess for which sins a definite punishment is due both here and in the world to come. When these have been well considered, one can reasonably judge who must be compelled to a sorrowful and lamentable Penance, even though they confess sins from which no salvation at all is to be hoped unless they offer to God a spirit broken through Penance.”

It is certain, however, that some sins of weakness or ignorance are mortal in themselves and exclude the sinner from the kingdom of God unless they are expiated through sacramental confession and Penance. Hence they are called venial, not insofar as venial sin is distinguished from mortal sin, but insofar as the sinner more easily obtained pardon for them and did not have to perform so severe a Penance for them as for the expiation of sins of the first class. The first kind of sins was corrected by public Penance according to the penalties prescribed by the canons. The second kind was formerly treated in the same way as it is usually treated now, namely, by sacramental confession, absolution, and private satisfaction; although sometimes some such sins were also punished with a canonical penalty, but not with humble and sorrowful Penance. The third kind of sins, namely, those that were not truly mortal, were not treated by any burden prescribed by the Church, but by reciting prayers, giving alms, striking the breast, or by some of those remedies by which, as we have said several times, purely venial sins are expiated.

St. Augustine teaches all this most plainly in the penultimate chapter of On Faith and Works, where he says: “If there were not some sins so grave that they must even be punished by excommunication, the Apostle would not say: ‘When you are assembled, and my spirit is present, hand such a man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus.’ Hence he also says: ‘Lest I mourn for many of those who sinned before and did not do Penance for the uncleanness and fornication they had practiced.’ Again, if there were not some things to be healed not by the degree of humility in Penance given in the Church to those properly called penitents, but by certain remedies of correction, he himself would not say: ‘Reprove him between you and him alone, and if he hears you, you have won your brother.’ Finally, if there were not some things without which this life is not lived, he would not have placed a daily remedy in the prayer he taught us, so that we say, ‘Forgive us,’ etc.”

I say, then, that only three kinds of mortal sins were corrected by public, that is, sorrowful and humble Penance: idolatry, murder, and adultery. This is taught especially clearly, among others, by St. Pacian, who, in his paraenesis, following his subject, speaks of the matter of sorrowful Penance in these words: “In explaining the degrees of crimes, lest anyone think that the highest penalty is imposed on all sins, and diligently inquiring which are sins and which are crimes, I do not mean to bind every kind of person under an indiscriminate law of penance on account of the countless offenses by whose deceptions no one is untouched.” He teaches that under the Mosaic Law even those guilty of the slightest sin were severely punished, whereas Christians, redeemed through Christ’s Blood, were called from the slavery of the Law into freedom; and he explains this freedom thus: “This is that freedom: we are not all bound by the things that bound the ancients, but, as I might say, the forest of debts having been cleared and indulgence in remedies having been granted, we have been confined to a few necessary things.” Then, at Acts ch. 15, where Christians are forbidden by decree of the Council of Jerusalem to eat food sacrificed to idols, blood, and fornication (for St. Pacian, with other Fathers of that time, reads “fornication” for “what is strangled”), he adds: “This is the whole conclusion of the New Testament. The Holy Spirit, disregarded in many things, bequeathed these to us under the condition of capital danger. The remaining sins are cured by compensation through better works. But these three crimes are to be feared like the breath of a basilisk, a cup of poison, or a deadly arrow; for they know how to destroy, not merely to taint, the soul. Thus greed will be redeemed by generosity, feasting repaid by satisfaction, sadness by joy, harshness by gentleness, heaviness by lightness, perversity by honesty, and whatever else is made better by its contrary. But what will the contemner of God do? What will the bloodshedder do? What remedy will the fornicator receive? Can the deserter of God appease the Lord, or can he preserve his own blood who shed another’s, or restore the temple of God who violated it by fornication? These are capital, brothers; these are mortal sins.”

From this it is clear that Pacian recognizes no crimes, nor capital and mortal sins, other than those three: idolatry, murder, and adultery. This is not because charity toward God and justice are lost through these alone, but because at that time these alone were corrected by the penalty of public Penance. The other sinners did indeed abstain from the Church until they were cleansed by other remedies and the sacrament of Penance, but they excommunicated themselves; it was otherwise for those convicted of idolatry, murder, and adultery, who were excommunicated by the Church and restored to Communion only after reconciliation through public satisfaction and Penance.

Tertullian taught this very thing before St. Pacian. Although he was already a heretic when he wrote On Modesty, he deserves credence on this point, because his error arose from excessive rigor and severity toward sinners, and he reports not so much his own view as the sense of the Church and Christians of his time.

✱ “When he mentions only three capital crimes, to which the Catholic Church assigned public Penance, while the Montanists contended that they were unforgivable, he says in ch. 12: ‘When the Gospel first became known, the apostles issued this first rule on the authority of the Holy Spirit to those who had begun to come over from the nations: It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay no further burden on you than these things from which you must abstain: things sacrificed to idols, fornication, and blood.’ That is, as he himself explains, idolatry, adultery, and murder. ‘Moreover, what sort of crimes do the apostles wish these to be considered, when they prescribe that these alone must necessarily be avoided? Not that they permit the others, but that they set forth these alone as surely unforgivable.’ And in ch. 5: ‘The idolaters stand there, the murderer stands there, and in their midst the adulterer also stands. They sit together in the duty of Penance, bristle in sackcloth and ashes, groan with the same weeping, entreat on the same knees, and invoke the same mother. What are you doing, most soft-hearted and humane discipline, etc.?’” For it is probable that the Montanists, the forerunners of the Novatians, at that time denied adulterers not sacramental Penance or this absolution, but Communion alone, and peace, which were two quite different things. But whatever one may say on this matter, it is evident that Tertullian called no sins mortal, as he puts it, except those pertaining to those three capital crimes.

This is made clear by the following words, with which he tries to dissolve the argument the Catholics had brought against him: that adulterers too must be received just like the sheep and the drachma, of which the one, having strayed, and the other, having been hidden, were both sought and found with joy and restored to the flock and treasury—or, as he puts it, the storeroom. For in ch. 7 he says: “Although it is said to have perished, one must consider again the kind of loss: the sheep perished not by dying but by straying, and the drachma not by being destroyed but by being hidden. Thus what is safe may rightly be called lost. A believer, then, has also perished: he has slipped into the spectacle of chariot-driving frenzy, gladiatorial bloodshed, theatrical obscenity, mystical vanity, into games, into the feasts of secular celebration; he has applied certain arts of curiosity in the service and ministry of another’s idolatry; he has attacked the word with an ambiguous denial²; for something of this sort he has been placed outside the flock, or perhaps he himself has often been torn away through anger, pride, or envy, or whatever else. He must be sought and recalled. What can be recovered has not perished unless it has remained outside. You will interpret the parable well if you recall a sinner who is still alive. But who would not immediately pronounce the adulterer and fornicator dead upon committing the offense?”

St. Gregory of Nyssa also teaches this excellently and learnedly throughout his letter to Letoius, bishop of Mytilene. There he seeks the reason why Penance was imposed only for the three crimes mentioned above, not from an apostolic decree but from the three principal faculties or affections of the human soul, namely reason, desire, and anger. He says that idolatry and heresy proceed from reason; adultery and fornication from desire; and murder and killing from anger; and that these three must necessarily be punished by public and humble Penance. “These things having thus been distinguished,” he says, “the Fathers judged all sins that affect the rational part of the soul to be graver and worthy of a greater, more sufficient, and more laborious conversion. For example, one who denied faith in Christ, or seemed to have defected to Judaism, the worship of idols, Manichaeism, or some other kind of impiety, and who voluntarily turned himself to that evil and afterward condemned himself, has the whole span of his life as a time for Penance. For he will never be considered worthy, when the mystical prayer is being performed, to worship God together with the people, but will pray separately; and he will be entirely excluded from Communion in the sacraments,” etc. He says the same about adultery and killing, or murder.

— Although there are many sins that are usually added to the three mentioned above, such as avarice, which is called the service of idols, and a species of idolatry, nevertheless, he says, this kind of disease was overlooked and left without any treatment. As a result, this disease spreads through the Church, and no one among those brought into the clergy investigates whether any of them have been stained by this kind of idolatry.

— He teaches the same concerning lending at interest and usury, which were subject to no canonical penalties, especially when practiced by laymen. For Canon 17 of Nicaea threatens deposition for clerics who lend at interest; nevertheless, he mentions three other kinds of sin—namely, theft, rifling of tombs, and sacrilege—for which penance was customarily imposed. But he teaches that it was imposed for these only insofar as they clearly belonged to one of the three aforesaid capital sins. He divides theft into violent theft, when a robber is ready to seize by force of arms what he covets and kill anyone who resists, and clandestine theft, when someone secretly steals and takes away another’s property. The former he punishes as homicide; the latter he does not punish with public penance. He likewise distinguishes two kinds of rifling of tombs. The first occurs when only the stones are moved and taken for another use, while the body is left untouched and the indecency of the place is not exposed: Custom, he says, has made this, though not commendable, nevertheless worthy of pardon. He describes the second, to which penance is attached, as follows: But to search through the dust of flesh returned to earth and move the bones, in the hope of gaining some ornament from the buried, is condemned by the same judgment as simple fornication. They condemned this kind of act to penance because it is, as it were, fornication. Finally, he writes that sacrilege is punished less severely than adultery or homicide; perhaps he omitted the reason for this because of brevity, since the letter was drawing to its close.

The same point is further proved by the general agreement of all the Canons composed before and during Gregory of Nyssa’s lifetime. For they impose penance for no sins other than these three, their branches, and their various forms. St. Basil set out these Canons in his letters to Amphilochius, and none explicitly concerns anything beyond them. For the theft addressed in Canon 61 must be understood as the kind explained by St. Gregory of Nyssa; the perjury in ch. 64 is readily reduced to denial of religion, as are sorcerers and enchanters, a conclusion also drawn from the severity of the penalty. Finally, the ruling in ch. 66 concerning those who exhume tombs must be understood with the distinction we have already recounted from St. Gregory. So Morinus, bk. 5, ch. 2.

Morinus draws the same conclusion in the same place, n. 15, from the Council of Elvira. Although it has many Canons, nowhere does it prescribe penance except for these three sins. Canons 17, 71, and 75 command penance for informers and false witnesses; but, as the Fathers themselves attest, those denunciations concern crimes that bring death upon the accused. The same must be said of Canon 11 of the First Council of Arles, as is evident from the penance imposed, which is prolonged until the end of life. The same thing can be seen as if in a mirror from the Council of Ancyra, where penance is imposed for these three crimes and is sometimes increased. Such penance, it says, is fitting for that person according to ancient custom. At the Council of Neocaesarea no crime other than one of these three is subjected to it. Nothing different is found in St. Cyprian. He often speaks of the penance to be performed, but always of the lapsed, that is, those who had sacrificed to idols or eaten food offered to idols. He speaks of nothing else, except for two passages in which he treats of sexual immorality, or adultery. There is no doubt that he would have pronounced the same about homicide as he did about adultery, had the occasion arisen. This is Morinus.

As time went on, however, not only were these three aforesaid crimes, together with their appendages, healed and punished by public penance, but also whatever sins were considered most grave, as may be gathered from ch. 2 of the First Council of Toledo, which defines a penitent as follows: We call a person a penitent who, after Baptism, has been reconciled to the divine altar under sackcloth by performing public penance, whether for homicide or for diverse and most grave sins. From this it is clear that not only three sins, but all the gravest sins were liable to public penance. St. Augustine teaches the same in many places, especially Serm. 41, entitled On the Saints. After listing various grave sins—sacrilege, homicide, adultery, false witness, theft, robbery, pride, envy, avarice, perjury, habitual drunkenness, and distinguishing them from lesser sins readily atoned for, especially by visiting the sick and giving alms, etc.—he adds: For capital crimes this alone does not suffice; tears, cries, and groans must be added, along with fasts continued and prolonged for a long time, more abundant almsgiving, voluntarily withdrawing ourselves from Communion with the Church, and remaining in mourning and sorrow for a long time, while also performing public penance. For it is just that one who has ruined himself along with the ruin of many should redeem himself through the edification of many.

Hence the maxim commonly found among the holy Fathers: Crimes that the laws avenge with blood are to be punished among laymen by public penance, and among clerics by deposition. St. Prosper noted this admirably in bk. 2 of The Contemplative Life, ch. 7, where he writes: Those established in some ecclesiastical rank who secretly commit a crime deceive themselves with an empty persuasion if they think that they ought therefore to communicate and perform their office because, by concealing their crime, they deceive men. Apart from sins so small that they cannot be avoided, for which we cry out daily to God for cleansing, saying, “Forgive us our debts,” etc., they must beware of those crimes which, once made public, cause their perpetrators to be condemned by human judgment. Those who have committed such crimes and prefer to betray them rather than suffer the sentence of just excommunication communicate without cause. Indeed, they make the anger of divine indignation against themselves greater in two ways, etc.

Caesarius of Arles prescribes the same rule for everyone in Hom. 12: Let no one deceive himself, brothers. Every person who after Baptism commits mortal crimes—that is, homicide, adultery, theft, false witness, or other crimes for which he could be put to death under secular law—will never have eternal life unless he performs penance and gives fitting alms. He seems to understand this more strictly, since he asserts that those crimes are punished by death under civil laws; nevertheless, he does not deny that those crimes punished by a grave, though not capital, penalty are also to be punished by public penance. The First Council of Toledo, ch. 46, requires that a cleric who commits a crime punishable by bloodshed under the laws not only be deposed but also assigned to penance: If a cleric is caught in the violation of tombs, he must, according to the Canons, be removed from clerical rank for such a crime and assigned three years of penance. Hence St. Augustine writes in bk. 5 on Deuteronomy, ch. 39: What excommunication now does in the Church, killing did then. Since the Church was never permitted to shed blood, excommunication and mournful penance took the place of bloodshed. For although in ancient times many crimes were punished by death or some other grave corporal penalty and were not chastised by humble penance, nevertheless no one was punished with that grave penance unless the Mosaic or civil law avenged the crime with a very severe penalty.

§ IV. — WHETHER PUBLIC PENANCE WAS PRESCRIBED ONLY FOR PUBLIC SINS? — I answer that this seems more probable, and it is inferred from various Canons, especially Canon 4 of the Council of Neocaesarea, which decrees: If anyone, desiring a woman, resolves to lie with her, but his desire does not reach its effect, it is clear that he has been delivered by grace. By deliverance it does not mean exemption from mortal guilt, which no doubt was contracted by the one who committed adultery in his heart, nor consequently exemption from sacramental satisfaction, which he must certainly make for the internal offense he committed. Rather, it means exemption from public, canonical penance, the rules of which that Synod was concerned to establish and complete.

That this was the institution of the ancient Doctors and Fathers of the Church is inferred from the council reported to have been held at the village of Inquilheinem under Louis the Pious in the year 826, in vol. 2 of the Councils of Gaul. Its Canon, found in Burchard, bk. 11, ch. 57, and Ivo of Chartres, Decree, part 13, ch. 43, attributed to the Council of Orléans, decrees according to the sanctions of the holy Canons that, if anyone commits public robbery or theft, he is to perform public penance; but if he does so secretly, he is to do penance on the advice of priests. Burchard, bk. 19, ch. 28, and Ivo, Decree, part 150, ch. 46, likewise say that according to the institution of the ancient Canons, the authority of sacred Scripture, and ecclesiastical custom, priests must observe a distinction between those doing public penance and those doing it secretly. For one who sins publicly ought to be publicly punished with penance. This Canon is found in ch. 25 of the Second Council of Chalon and ch. 26 of the Sixth Council of Arles, which decrees that those convicted of a public crime be publicly judged as guilty and perform public penance according to the Canons, as reported in the same second volume of the Councils of Gaul. There would be no point in mentioning public crimes if the same public penance had been imposed for every mortal sin, including secret sins. Thus the distinction between public and secret penitents was always this: the former were corrected by public penance, the latter only by secret satisfaction and penance; and this was, as just said, according to the institution of the ancient Canons, the authority of sacred Scripture, and ecclesiastical custom. These three authorities are so weighty that even one of them would suffice to establish this point.

Ivo confirms this very point with various testimonies gathered from certain Canons, especially in Decree, part 15, ch. 53, which states: If anyone secretly commits incest and secretly confesses it to a priest, let him be told the canonical remedy he would have had to undergo if his crime had been made public. But because the offense is hidden, let the priest give him advice to care for the salvation of his soul by secret penance: that is, let him truly confess from his heart that he has grievously sinned, and strive to cleanse himself through fasts, almsgiving, vigils, and holy prayers with tears, and thus trust that by God’s mercy he will attain the hope of pardon. In these words Ivo reveals not so much his own judgment as the sense of the ancient Church, since he admits that he is merely using it.

To these may be added the Council of Trent, sess. XIV, ch. 5. Having said that penitents must confess all mortal sins of which they are conscious after a diligent examination of themselves, even if those sins are most secret and were committed only against the last two precepts of the Decalogue, which sometimes wound more gravely and are more dangerous than those committed openly, and having spoken expressly of mortal sins, it adds shortly afterward: Although Christ did not forbid anyone, in punishment for his crimes and for his own humiliation, both for the example of others and for the edification of the Church he has offended, to confess his sins publicly, nevertheless this is not a divine precept, nor would it be prudent for any human law to prescribe that sins, especially secret ones, be disclosed by public confession. The argument may therefore be made as follows: Public penance and confession were not prescribed by Christ, and the Church could not prudently command them, lest the penitent be disgraced. But public satisfaction for secret sins would bring the same disgrace. For if someone were compelled to undergo public penance for secret sins, he would rightly be thought guilty of some mortal sin, since it is known that the Church imposes it only for such sins. Therefore, just as the Church could not prescribe public confession of secret sins, it could not prescribe satisfaction, or public penance, for secret sins.

This is confirmed by the authority of St. Augustine, Hom. 50, ch. 4. Having distinguished two kinds of excommunication by which someone is removed from participation in the Eucharist, namely voluntary and compelled, or imposed by the Church’s prelates, and having said: A person entangled in such deadly bonds of sins refuses, delays, or hesitates to flee to the very keys of the Church, by which he may be loosed on earth so as to be loosed in heaven; and he dares to promise himself some salvation after this life merely because he is called a Christian, he shortly afterward adds: Therefore let a person judge himself in these matters, while he can by his own will … and when he has pronounced within himself the sentence of the severest medicine, yet still a medicine, let him come to the prelates, through whom the keys are ministered to him in the Church; and, as one already beginning to be a good son, observing the order of maternal members, let him receive from the ministers of the sacraments the measure of his satisfaction. By these words he signifies that before the penitent comes to the prelates and ministers of the keys, he has already firmly resolved and judged himself, conscious of his sin, unworthy of Communion. He does not approach the Church’s ministers to receive this sentence of excommunication, but to receive the measure by which he should satisfy God and the Church, if he has offended it by some scandal. For Augustine adds: So that, in offering the sacrifice of a contrite heart, devout and suppliant, he may do what benefits not only himself in receiving salvation but also others by way of example; so that, if his sin is not only a grave harm to himself but also a great scandal to others, and the prelate judges it expedient for the Church’s welfare, he may not refuse or resist performing penance in the knowledge of many, or even of the whole congregation, nor add swelling through shame to a lethal and deadly wound. By these words St. Augustine makes it sufficiently clear that only public sins are to be corrected by public penance. For he warns prelates to act with great caution in imposing penance, so that what would be not only a grave evil for the sinner might also become a scandal to others if, by the prelates’ judgment, penance for that sin were performed in the knowledge of many or even of the whole congregation. That he is speaking of a public sin, and not indiscriminately of every mortal sin, as Morinus claims in bk. 5, ch. 9, is made clear by the following words: What is more wretched, he says, what more perverse, than not to blush at the wound itself, which cannot be hidden, yet to blush at its bandage?

The holy Doctor teaches the same in Serm. 41, On the Saints. Having explained the remedy for lighter sins, he describes the cure for graver ones as follows: For capital crimes, he says, this alone does not suffice; tears, cries, and groans must be added, along with fasts continued and prolonged for a long time, more abundant almsgiving, voluntarily withdrawing ourselves from Communion with the Church, remaining in mourning and sorrow for a long time, and also performing public penance; for it is just that one who has ruined himself along with the ruin of many should redeem himself through the edification of many. (By these final words he clearly indicates that only those who had offended many through their scandalous sin were obliged to perform public penance. Accordingly, St. Augustine does not consider public penance something to be performed for secret sins. — That St. Augustine truly considers public penance not to be performed to cleanse every mortal sin, whether secret or public, is clear from Ep. 34. Speaking of those who have stolen another’s goods and refuse to restore them, he says: We act as far as episcopal authority allows, sometimes threatening human judgment, but always and especially divine judgment. Those whom we know to have taken what was not theirs and to have the means to restore it, but are unwilling to do so, we accuse, rebuke, and detest, some secretly and some openly, as the difference between persons seems to require different medicine, without being driven to madness to the harm of others. Sometimes also, if a more urgent matter does not prevent us, we deprive them of Communion at the holy altar. Therefore St. Augustine does not consider every mortal sin necessarily to be publicly rebuked.

St. Leo agrees in Ep. 12 to Rusticus, ch. 12. When Rusticus asked what penance should be imposed on those who had participated in the banquets of the pagans and eaten sacrificial foods, Leo replied: Those who have taken part only in pagan banquets and sacrificial foods can be cleansed by fasts and the imposition of hands, so that thereafter, abstaining from food offered to idols, they may be able to participate in the sacraments of Christ. But if they have worshiped idols or been stained by homicides or fornications, they must not be admitted to Communion except through public penance. As is evident, St. Leo speaks of mortal sins that may have been public and involved some sacrilege. Hence he warns that they must be cleansed by fasts and the imposition of hands, which certainly does not apply only to venial sins; nevertheless, he exempts these people from public penance, to which he obliges those guilty of idolatry, homicide, and adultery. Thus he does not consider that all mortal sins, even secret ones, must be cured by public penance.

St. Caesarius of Arles likewise agrees in Hom. 1. Distinguishing sins into lesser faults, which must be wiped away by private contrition, and crimes, or capital offenses, which must be expiated by tears, cries, groans, and fasts prolonged over a long period, he says that one must abstain from Communion to cleanse the latter: Voluntarily withdrawing ourselves from Communion with the Church, remaining in mourning and sorrow for a long time, and also performing public penance; for it is just that one who has ruined himself along with the ruin of many should redeem himself through the edification of many. By these last words, by capital crimes that he says must be expiated by public penance, he undoubtedly means public sins committed to the scandal of the Church and along with the ruin of many. Therefore he does not consider that absolutely every mortal sin must necessarily be expiated by public penance.

St. Eligius supports them in Hom. 13. After warning public penitents to lament with groans and sighs, for as long as they live, the grave crimes they had committed through the devil’s deception, he turns this prayer on the day of the Lord’s Supper to sinners who should perform penance not publicly, but of the same kind as that now in use: You too, brothers, after the exhortation we have given the penitents on this day, I urge with myself: let each of us return to the secrets of his conscience and ask himself how he has conducted himself throughout the year, especially during these holy days. If he finds thorns and thistles of sins in his heart, let him, with God’s help, strive to uproot them as soon as possible, and, once they have been uprooted, let the saving plow dig the soil and let him put in manure—that is, good works—so that he may bear fruit. If he confesses equally today, may he be worthy to take part in the solemnity of this present day, which is called the Supper because the Lord supped with his Apostles. Therefore, with the greatest care, let him worthily receive the sacraments of the Body and Blood of the Lord, so that he may obtain salvation rather than condemnation. He then adds: Let us not, therefore, abhor these penitents because of the greatness of their crimes, since it may be that many among you have committed worse things. By these words do you hear that public penitents were brought to that rank only for graver crimes, or because of the greatness of their offenses? Do you hear that others, who may have committed worse things, are free from that penance because they are not known to the whole Church and have not been convicted? Do you hear that besides those penitents there are other sinners in the Church whose consciences are overgrown with thorns and thistles, which they ought to uproot and eradicate so as to become worthy participants in the Body of Christ? If they confess together on that very day of the Lord’s Supper and consequently are absolved before completing the satisfaction imposed by the priest, they can worthily receive the sacraments of the Body and Blood of the Lord—this is our present discipline, which our opponents vainly babble was unheard-of during the first twelve centuries of the Church?

What he had said in Hom. 13 he later repeats at much greater length in Hom. 15. Addressing those who perform penance in our manner and distinguishing them from public penitents, he exhorts them to do penance as follows: While I consider and search in my heart for the words with which to urge you to flee the coming wrath, none have seemed better than those with which the Lord strove to persuade everyone at the beginning of his preaching, saying: “Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near.” Therefore, whoever among you recalls having performed penance and discharged the debt of his confession during these forty days of observance should give thanks to God; and whatever he has destroyed in himself by violating God’s temple, let him not despair, but quickly rise from the evil of his iniquity. For it is not the one who sins, but the one who perseveres in sin, who is hateful. So, to use the words of the Lord according to Mark, where he says, “What I say to you, I say to all: watch”; likewise, what I say, I say to all of you—clerics, laymen, and religious women: whoever recalls being affected by the contagion of envy, detraction, hatred, fornication, incest, perjury, or other such vices, should at least today strive to purify himself, insofar as he can, through the medicine of divine salvation. Let him confess his injustice against himself to the Lord, so that he may remit the impiety of his heart and the rest of his thoughts may keep festival for the Lord. For the rest of his thoughts keep festival for the Lord when any sinner, after making his confession, promises to restrain himself from his iniquity, and pours himself out in tears and in anguish of heart, since God does not despise a contrite and humbled heart; such a festival is celebrated by the rejoicing angels. The Truth bears witness, saying: “There is joy in heaven before the angels of God over one sinner.” Therefore, since greater remedies must be applied to those who commit greater crimes, I shall turn to you whom the Church customarily calls penitents, etc. By these words St. Eligius does not count clerics, laymen, or religious women guilty of fornication, incest, perjury, and other such vices, however grave, but not public, among the public penitents; nor does he compel them to that long public penance to expiate their crimes. He merely urges them, if at the beginning or during Lent they have not discharged the duty of confession, at least on that very day of the Lord’s Supper to confess their injustice and sins, so that, cleansed of them by sacramental absolution, they may keep the feast and receive the sacred Supper with the others.

✳ YOU WILL SAY 1: There is no mortal sin that is not committed in the flesh or spirit, by deed or by will; yet all sins committed in these ways are subject to public penance, as may be gathered from Tertullian, On Penance, ch. 1, who says: Therefore, for all offenses committed in the flesh or in the spirit, by deed or by will, the same one who appointed punishment through judgment also promised pardon through penance. It is proved that this penance is public: Tertullian speaks there of the penance he discusses throughout the whole book; but throughout the book he discusses public penance, which commands one, even in dress and food, to lie in sackcloth and ashes, nourish prayers with fasts, prostrate oneself before the priests, and charge all the brothers with the embassy of one’s supplication, from which many flee as though from their own exposure, as stated in chs. 8, 9, 10, etc. of the same book. Therefore, in Tertullian’s time all mortal sins in the African Church were subject to public penance. — I answer: I deny the minor premise, and say that in the first passage cited Tertullian discusses penance in general, insofar as it is a virtue necessary for all offenses and absolutely all sinners. This is clear from the following words: Therefore penance is life, since it is preferred to death. You, sinner like me (indeed, less than me, for I acknowledge my superiority in sins), seize it, embrace it, as a shipwrecked person clings to the promise of some plank, etc. For by these words he exhorts all sinners, among whose number he confesses himself to be, to do penance. Who could suppose that he wished to consign all of them, indeed himself as well, to public penance? You will certainly find Tertullian nowhere among the public penitents; and public penance was a very great mark of disgrace for a presbyter. As for the proof, I deny that Tertullian discussed only public penance performed after Baptism throughout that whole book on penance. For although from ch. 7 onward he treats primarily of it, from the beginning of the book through ch. 7 he speaks only either of penance in general or of penance before Baptism, by which catechumens openly showed their detestation of all the sins of their former life, whether carnal or spiritual, committed by deed or by will, and prepared themselves by pious works for their cleansing through Baptism. This is clear from ch. 6, where he says: Whatever my modest ability has tried to suggest about undertaking penance once and retaining it forever concerns all those devoted to the Lord, but it especially applies to these beginners, who are just beginning to moisten their ears with divine words and, like puppies of still-recent infancy, crawl uncertainly, not yet seeing clearly. They say that they renounce their former ways and take up penance, but they neglect to enclose it, etc. Chapter 7 begins as follows: Thus far, Christ the Lord, may your servants have the opportunity to learn or hear about the discipline of penance, those who ought not even to sin while listening—or who may have known nothing of penance and sought none of it. I shrink from adding a mention of the second, indeed the final, hope, lest, in treating the remaining aid of penance, we seem to point out room still to sin. Thus, up to that point Tertullian had not treated penance after Baptism, but either penance before Baptism or penance taken in general, which all Christians ought to undertake and retain until the end of life, as Tertullian himself says.

YOU WILL SAY 2: Whoever asserts that lesser mortal sins were subject to public penance, and argues that greater ones should all the more be subject to it, subjects all mortal sins to public penance. But St. Cyprian testifies that lesser sins were subject to public penance and argues that greater ones should all the more be subject to it. This is clear from Ep. 10: For when sinners perform penance for lesser sins at the proper time, and according to the order of discipline come to public confession, and receive the right of Communion through the imposition of hands by the bishop and clergy, etc. Moreover, St. Cyprian did not mean venial sins by lesser sins, since these were not subject to this kind of penance. Therefore, he meant that all mortal sins were to be expiated by such penance. — I deny the minor premise, and say that by lesser sins St. Cyprian understood neither merely venial sins nor all mortal sins, but the lesser canonical sins. For he compares the crime of idolatry with homicide and adultery, judging idolatry more grave because it directly offends the divine Majesty; he considers the others lesser because they injure not God directly but human beings. Hence he concludes that if adulterers and homicides perform penance at the proper time according to the form prescribed by the Canons, all the more must those guilty of idolatry observe the discipline of the Church, however severe it may be, for that crime is the greatest of all. ✳

YOU WILL SAY 3: In former times mournful penance was prescribed and imposed for every crime; yet according to the holy Fathers every mortal sin is a crime. Therefore, that penance was imposed for every mortal sin, whether secret or public. ✳ “The minor premise is proved from St. Augustine, Enchiridion, ch. 61, who says: For although every crime is a sin, it does not follow that every sin is also a crime. Thus we say that the life of holy men, as long as we live in this mortal life, can be found without crime; but if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. There he distinguishes only two kinds of sin: some without which not even the holiest men can live, which are undoubtedly not mortal, since we can live without mortal sins; and others which he calls crimes, and these are all mortal sins.” — I distinguish the major premise: public penance was imposed for every most grave and canonical crime, I grant; for every crime without qualification, I deny. I also distinguish the minor premise: every mortal sin is a crime when compared with a venial sin, I grant; when compared with graver sins that bring disgrace upon the sinner, scandal to the Church, and harm to one’s neighbor, whose perpetrators are kept from sacred orders and can be accused before the Church’s tribunal, I deny. For only sins possessing these characteristics are called crimes absolutely by the Fathers. Thus, St. Augustine defines a crime in Tract. 41 on John as a grave sin most worthy of accusation and condemnation. In the same place, on Paul’s words, If anyone is without crime, he says, as in homicide, adultery, sacrilege, and other such things. In keeping with St. Augustine’s mind, St. Thomas says on the same words of the Epistle to Titus, lecture 2 of his commentary on that Epistle: It must be said that crime is one thing and sin another. Sin is what is called either small or great, or secret; a crime, however, is grave and infamous. — Concerning the passage cited from the Enchiridion, I say that St. Augustine did not intend here to make an exact division of sins, but only to prove that not every sin is a crime. He demonstrates this from Paul’s requirement that presbyters be without crime, although they cannot be without sin. Moreover, it is clear from what has already been said ✳ that not every sin we call mortal was called a crime by the holy Fathers; indeed, many truly mortal sins were called light and daily sins by certain Fathers, as is clear from both St. Augustine and St. Pacian. In bk. 84 of Questions, q. 16, Augustine calls all sins of ignorance and weakness venial, among which it is certain that many are mortal. Pacian, in his Exhortation, recognizes no crimes or capital sins other than idolatry, homicide, and adultery. Yet it is clear that many other sins are truly mortal; consequently, public penance was not imposed for every mortal sin.

YOU WILL PRESS: The Canons impose the same penance for adultery committed by anyone, whether publicly or secretly, and Gennadius, On Ecclesiastical Dogmas, bk. 1, ch. 53, asserts that anyone who commits mortal sins must make satisfaction by public penance. Likewise, Fulbert of Chartres, Serm. 2 to the people, teaches that sinners are separated from the Church for any mortal sins—that is, excommunicated and enrolled among the public penitents when they ask for pardon. Therefore, every mortal sin must be subjected to public penance. — I deny the consequence; and concerning Gennadius I say that he speaks only of the graver crimes. For he recognized other mortal sins that could be expiated by private penance, since he says in the same place: I neither praise nor blame receiving Communion daily; nevertheless, I advise and urge Communion on every Lord’s Day, provided one has no disposition to sin. For I say that one who still has the will to sin is burdened more than purified by receiving the Eucharist. Therefore, although someone is gnawed by sin and no longer has the will to sin, let him make satisfaction with tears and prayers before receiving Communion, trusting in the Lord’s mercy, who is accustomed to forgive sins in a pious confession; let him approach the Eucharist without fear and in confidence. By the general expression “sin that gnaws at the sinner’s conscience,” he meant nothing other than mortal sin, which must be cleansed not by the Lord’s Prayer alone but by tears, prayer, and sacramental confession itself. Therefore he did not mean every mortal sin, but only certain graver crimes, since he adds: But I speak of one who is not burdened by capital and mortal crimes. For one weighed down by mortal crimes committed after Baptism, I urge first to make satisfaction by public penance, and then, reconciled by the judgment of the priest, to be joined to Communion, if he does not wish to receive the Eucharist to his own judgment and condemnation. By these words he understands not so much sacramental reconciliation and absolution as canonical reconciliation and absolution. — Concerning Fulbert, I say that he recognizes two kinds of sin, some mortal and others crimes, by all of which the purity of Baptism is stained. For he says: If we had remained in that purity given us through Baptism, we would indeed be happy; but we did not remain in it, for through our own fault we fell not only into sins but also into crimes, on account of which sinners are separated from the Church, such as homicides, adulteries, fornications, sacrileges, robberies, thefts, false testimonies, pride, envy, avarice, lasting anger, and habitual drunkenness. By these words Fulbert recognized two kinds of offenses that stain the purity of Baptism: some are merely sins, by which the innocence of Baptism is stained and lost; others are crimes, on account of which sinners are excommunicated by the Church. Nor is it an objection that he lists various mortal sins. For one cannot infer from this that every mortal sin must be punished by excommunication. Although he includes avarice, envy, and pride in that list, one cannot therefore infer that he considers every sin of this kind subject to excommunication; for some acts of this sort may be venial. Just as, although every fully deliberate and voluntary drunkenness is mortal, Fulbert does not consider it punishable by excommunication unless it is habitual, and likewise does not consider anger deserving the same penalty unless it is persistent, so he did not think every act of avarice, envy, or pride should be punished by excommunication. He thought that Church prelates should inflict this penalty on such sinners only when, on account of certain circumstances, especially scandal, they judged it necessary—just as some prelates customarily forbid people to dance during Lent under penalty of excommunication, and clerics to enter taverns under penalty of interdict, namely, on account of scandal.

✳ “YOU WILL SAY 4: All sins that had to be expiated by the humility of greater penance, according to St. Augustine’s words and meaning, were subjected to public penance; yet every mortal sin had to be expiated by the humility of greater penance according to St. Augustine’s mind. Proof: Whoever asserts that sins are forgiven in the Church in only three ways—first, by Baptism, second, by prayer, and third, by the humility of greater penance—considers that sins which cannot be healed by the first two must be reduced to the third. But St. Augustine asserts that sins are forgiven in only three ways, in bk. 1 of On the Creed for Catechumens, chs. 7 and 8, where he says: Baptism was instituted on account of all sins; prayer was instituted on account of lesser ones, without which we cannot be. What does prayer say? “Forgive us our debts.” We are washed once by Baptism, and washed daily by prayer. But do not commit those sins for which it is necessary that you be separated from the body of Christ—God forbid this of you. For those whom you see doing penance have committed crimes, either adulteries or some monstrous deeds; for these they do penance. For if their sins were light, this daily prayer would suffice to wipe them away. Therefore sins are forgiven in the Church in three ways: in Baptism, in prayer, and in the humility of greater penance. Therefore, sins that cannot be forgiven by Baptism and prayer must be cured by the humility of greater penance. But no mortal sins committed after Baptism can be wiped away by Baptism, because we are washed once in Baptism; nor by prayer, because no deadly sins can be considered so light that prayer suffices to wipe them away. It remains, then, that they must be expiated by the humility of public penance; for St. Augustine’s words above especially demonstrate that he recognized no other remedy: For those whom you see doing penance have committed crimes … for if their sins were light, this daily prayer would suffice to wipe them away. Here no middle ground is left between public penance and the Lord’s Prayer; therefore sins that cannot be wiped away by the latter are considered subject to the former.” — I distinguish the major premise and the minor premise of the second argument: St. Augustine recognized only three ways of public penance in the Church, I grant; of penance, whether public or secret, I deny. For it must be observed that this sermon is addressed to catechumens, to whom not all the Church’s sacraments were immediately explained, but only those they were preparing to receive. The rest were kept among the faithful as secret mysteries. Therefore St. Augustine lists not all the forms of penance but only the better-known ones. These were Baptism, which they were soon to receive; the Lord’s Prayer, which they recited; and public penance, whose mournful ceremony was before their eyes. For penitents heard the word of God with them and were dismissed from the Church with them so that they would not be present at the sacrifices. Private penance, however, was unknown to them; that is why St. Augustine does not mention it here. — That St. Augustine recognized some remedy for sins between public penance and the Lord’s Prayer is found in bk. On Faith and Works, ch. 26, where he says: Some sins are so grave that they must be punished according to the common rule. These are canonical sins, which were assigned to public penance. Some are not to be healed by the humility of the penance administered in the Church to those who are properly called penitents, but by certain medicines of correction. These are indeed mortal sins, but not so grave that the Canons imposed public penalties for them; nevertheless, they are such that private penance is suitable, with a priest secretly correcting the sinner and afterward absolving him. Finally, there are some sins without which this life is not lived, and for which Christ placed the daily remedy in the prayer he taught. These are venial sins, for the forgiveness of which the keys of the Church are not necessary. — Finally, that not all mortal sins are subject to public penance, but only the graver ones, is clear from the very words of the passage cited against us: For those whom you see doing penance have committed crimes, either adulteries or some monstrous deeds. For there are many mortal sins committed through culpable ignorance or weakness, by the mind alone or by the will, which neither St. Augustine nor anyone else ever called crimes or monstrous deeds.

YOU WILL INSIST: St. Augustine distinguishes only three kinds of penance in bk. 50 of the Homilies, Hom. 27: I have set forth three considerations of it in sacred Scripture. The first is for those who long to come to Baptism. There is another, daily, and where have we shown it? In the daily prayer, where the Lord taught us to pray: “Forgive us our debts” … There remains a third kind of penance. It is a graver and more mournful penance, in which those properly called penitents in the Church are also removed from participation in the Sacrament of the Altar, lest by receiving it unworthily they eat and drink judgment upon themselves. Likewise, in Hom. 50 of the same book, chs. 2, 3, and 4, he says: There are three acts of penance, which your learning recognizes along with me; for they are customary in the Church of God and known to those who pay close attention. Surely, if private penance had been in use, he would not have omitted it here; it would have been as well known as the other kinds of penance. Indeed, public penance would have been more common, because it happened less often that canonical sins were committed publicly than that these or other lesser sins were committed secretly. Yet he does not mention private penance at all. One, he says, is that which gives birth to a person through Baptism. The action of another must be undertaken throughout this whole life in continual humble supplication. ✳ The third action is penance, which must be undertaken for those sins contained in the Law of the Decalogue, of which the Apostle says: “Those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God.” He then lists such sins with the Apostle in Ephesians 5 and Galatians 5, and finally concludes: In this penance, therefore, each person must exercise greater severity toward himself, so that, judged by himself, he may not be judged by God, as the same Apostle says: “If we judged ourselves, we would not be judged by the Lord.” Let a person therefore set up the tribunal of his mind against himself, if he fears that tribunal before Christ, so that each may receive what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. Let him set himself before his own face, lest this be done to him later. For God threatens the sinner with this, saying: “I will accuse you and set you before your own face.” When judgment has thus been established in the heart, let accusatory thought be present, conscience as witness, and fear as executioner. From there let some blood of the soul of the one confessing flow through tears. Finally, let such a sentence be pronounced by the mind itself that a person judges himself unworthy to participate in the Body and Blood of the Lord, so that one who fears separation from the kingdom of heaven by the final sentence of the supreme Judge may meanwhile be separated from the Sacrament of the heavenly bread through ecclesiastical discipline. Let the image of the future judgment be before his eyes, so that when others approach the altar of God, to which he does not approach, he may consider how fearsome is that penalty by which, while others receive eternal life, others are plunged into eternal death. For many wicked people can approach this altar, now placed on earth in the Church and exposed to earthly eyes for the celebration of the signs of the divine mysteries, because God commends his patience in this age in order to exercise his severity in the future. But no one can approach that altar into which Jesus, our forerunner, has entered for us, where the head of the Church has gone before and the other members are to follow, if he is among those of whom, as I have already recalled, the Apostle said: “Those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God.” For only the Priest will be there, but he will be there in his entirety, joined to his body, whose head has already ascended into heaven. This is the one to whom the Apostle Peter said: “A holy people, a royal priesthood.” How, then, will anyone dare or be able to enter within the veil, into that invisible holy place, if he has scorned the medicine of heavenly discipline and refused to be separated for a little while from visible things? For whoever was unwilling to be humbled so as to be exalted will be cast down when he wishes to be exalted, and will thereafter be separated from the eternal saints, if in this time he has not secured a place for himself in the body of the Priest through the merits of obedience and the satisfaction of penance. But private penance cannot be reduced to any of these three kinds praised by St. Augustine. Therefore it was not in use in the African Church. — I answer again that St. Augustine discusses only public penance, which truly was threefold: namely, that ✳ customarily performed before Baptism; that performed for graver offenses committed after Baptism; and that customarily performed for lesser and daily sins, which was also public, as is clear even from present practice. For the Confession and Penance performed at the beginning of Mass and before receiving the Eucharist, when all Catholics beat their breasts and profess themselves sinners, is truly public penance through which venial and daily sins are washed away. It is false that he recognized no other than this threefold public penance, as is clear both from the solution of the previous argument and from the words immediately following those quoted from Hom. 27: That penance, he says, is mournful; it is a grave wound. Perhaps adultery has been committed, perhaps homicide, perhaps some sacrilege: a grave matter, a grave wound, etc. By this he signifies that only graver sins—namely, those for which the Canons prescribe penalties—were subject to public penance. But there were other mortal sins that could not be cleansed by prayer alone, but by the Sacrament of Penance and private satisfaction. St. Augustine therefore does not exclude or deny this. — In response to the second passage, I say that these words, The third action of penance must be undertaken for those sins contained in the Law of the Decalogue, signify the penance of the keys, whether public or private. For he is arguing against certain people who refused penance and trusted that they would be saved by faith in Christ alone, without the keys of the Church. He rebukes them as follows: A person entangled in such deadly bonds of sins refuses, delays, or hesitates to flee to the very keys of the Church, by which he may be loosed on earth so as to be loosed in heaven; and he dares to promise himself some salvation after this life merely because he is called a Christian, and does not heed that truthful thunder of the Lord’s voice: “Not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter the kingdom of heaven.” What does the Apostle say to the Galatians? Does he not list such things and conclude in the same way: “The works of the flesh are manifest: fornication, uncleanness, lust, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, dissensions, heresies, envy, drunkenness, revelry, and things like these, which I proclaim to you, as I have already proclaimed, that those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God”? Therefore let a person judge himself in these matters of his own will while he can, and change his ways for the better, lest when he can no longer do so, he be judged by the Lord against his will. And when he has pronounced within himself the sentence of the severest medicine, yet still a medicine, let him come to the prelates, through whom the keys are ministered to him in the Church; and, as one already beginning to be a good son, observing the order of maternal members, let him receive from the ministers of the sacraments the measure of his satisfaction. So that, in offering the sacrifice of a contrite heart, devout and suppliant, he may do what benefits not only himself in receiving salvation but also others by way of example; so that, if his sin is not only a grave harm to himself but also a great scandal to others, and the prelate judges it expedient for the Church’s welfare, he may not refuse or resist performing penance in the knowledge of many, or even of the whole congregation, nor add swelling through shame to a lethal and deadly wound. — From these words it is evident that public penance was performed only when the sins were not only a grave harm to those committing them but also a great scandal to others, and when the prelate judged it expedient. But if all sins had been subject to public penance by ecclesiastical law or custom, it would not have depended on the prelates’ decision and prudence to subject some sins to public penance and to remit others through the keys of the Church.

YOU WILL PRESS: St. Augustine subjected all the sins contained in the Law of the Decalogue, of which the Apostle said, those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God, to that penance in which the sinner is separated from the Sacrament of the heavenly bread by ecclesiastical discipline. But this penance is public; therefore, etc. — I distinguish the minor premise: penance in which a person is separated from the Eucharist according to the prescriptions of the Canons and by sentence of the prelates, I grant; penance in which a person is separated from the Eucharist voluntarily and from awareness of his own unworthiness, or even by humbly obeying the private counsel or command of a priest, I deny. The words of St. Augustine cited above—In this penance, therefore, each person must exercise greater severity toward himself, so that, judged by himself, he may not be judged by the Lord. Let a person set up the tribunal of his mind against himself … finally, let such a sentence be pronounced by the mind itself that a person judges himself unworthy to participate in the Body and Blood of the Lord, etc.—I say, these words sufficiently show that St. Augustine is speaking not of public penance and separation from participation in the Eucharist imposed through the censure and sentence of the Church’s prelates on public penitents, but only of that penance by which each believer, judging himself unworthy of so great a benefit on account of his sins, withdrew himself from the altar by his own private judgment, out of humility and devotion. There is, then, one kind of a sinner’s excommunication that the Church does not impose but the penitent himself; and another by which a penitent is publicly excommunicated by the prelates of the Church on account of a crime. St. Augustine notes both kinds of excommunication in bk. 2 of The City of God, ch. 9, when he says: A Christian hastens to reconciliation if perhaps he has been separated from the Body of Christ through penance or an evil conscience. For unless he believed that someone could be separated from the Body of Christ without being excommunicated by that penance through ecclesiastical judgment and the priest’s sentence, he would not distinguish those two forms of separation, one through penance and the other through an evil conscience. — ✳ This separation from the Eucharist was also sometimes made on the secret advice or command of the priest to whom the sins had been confessed. For this discipline has prevailed and still prevails in the Church, and its experienced and conscientious confessors are very careful to observe it: those stained by mortal sins, and who sometimes relapse into them, are kept for a time from Communion of the Lord’s Body until they have shown worthy fruits of penance and been cleansed by salutary satisfaction; nevertheless, public penance is not imposed on them.

YOU WILL INSIST: St. Augustine judged that every sin should be avenged not only by that secret or voluntary excommunication, but also by solemn and canonical excommunication; therefore there is no answer. The antecedent is proved: the excommunication imposed on those properly called penitents in the Church was public, but it was attached to all mortal sins committed after Baptism. It is proved from St. Augustine, Ep. 108, written to Seleuciana, where he distinguishes three kinds of penance. The first is that which people perform before Baptism for their former sins. The third is that of good and humble faithful people, for those sins which, though small, frequently creep in through human frailty. Concerning the second he says: People also do penance if after Baptism they have sinned in such a way as to deserve excommunication and afterward reconciliation, as those properly called penitents do in all the Churches. Therefore, whoever committed after Baptism sins that could not be erased by the Lord’s Prayer alone and had to be assigned to the third kind of penance was publicly enrolled among the penitents, first publicly excommunicated and then publicly reconciled. — I answer that all mortal sins are indeed reducible to the third kind of penance, because they entail excommunication in the sense in which St. Augustine uses the term here, namely, simply separation from the Eucharist. For it is not permissible for someone guilty of mortal sin to approach the sacred assembly unless he has first been reconciled. Thus a person may be called excommunicated by his own sin. But it is false that, according to the ancient discipline of the Church, public excommunication threatened every person guilty of mortal sin. Nor does that passage of St. Augustine prove it. His purpose and aim is to refute a certain Novatian, about whom Seleuciana had written to him, because the man denied that there was an opportunity for penance after Baptism. To prove this, St. Augustine adduces the practice and discipline of all the Churches: those who sinned in such a way as to deserve excommunication and reconciliation—such as all those guilty of mortal sin—performed penance. As an example of this he sets out what was done with public penitents. This example was better known and suited to break the stubbornness of the Novatian, who especially contended that graver sins were unforgivable. But one who takes one case as an example does not deny another. Secret penance was less familiar to that heretic; therefore Augustine did not touch on it specifically, but he did not exclude it either. — That St. Augustine did not consider every mortal sin to require expiation by excommunication is shown by these words from the Enchiridion, ch. 65: Even for crimes themselves, however great, the mercy of God in his holy Church must not be despaired of by those doing penance according to the measure of each person’s sin. But in performing penance, when a crime has been committed such that the one who committed it is separated even from the body of Christ, it is not so much the length of time as the depth of sorrow that must be considered. There St. Augustine establishes that penance must be performed according to the measure of each crime, that is, of each graver sin. That the penance performed for every kind of crime is not such as must consist of excommunication is clear from the restrictive phrase, when such a crime has been committed, etc. Therefore public excommunication was not imposed indiscriminately for every crime.

Moreover, that public penance was in fact joined not to every mortal sin, but only to graver and public sins, is taught as a most certain matter and as a doctrine widely accepted in his own time by Hugh of St. Victor, who lived in the twelfth century. For in treatise 6, ch. 12 of the Summa of Sentences, he says: Solemn penance is that which is performed openly outside the Church, namely, that imposed only for grave sins and for those by which they have openly injured the Church. Formerly that penance was not repeated, and even now it is observed in certain Churches out of reverence for the Sacrament. That solemn penance is not imposed on someone who sins criminally a second time; rather, some counsel is given. When Hugh says that it was not repeated out of reverence for the Sacrament, he does not thereby think it was sacramental in the sense in which sacramental penance is now understood, as though sacramental Penance had not been repeated at that time. Rather, he calls that solemn penance a sacrament because it was a sign of the expulsion by which Adam was cast out of Paradise. For just as Adam was cast out of that garden of delights so that he would not eat the fruit of the tree of life, so the public penitent was cast out of the Church so that he would not be nourished by the Body and Blood of Christ the Lord. — Hincmar of Reims teaches the same most plainly in his treatise On the Divorce of Lothair and Theutberga, question 5, where he says: Priests cut off from life-giving Communion, that is, the Eucharist, those who publicly sin in grave crimes condemned publicly by the laws, using a medicinal instrument; after satisfaction, as they judge fitting, they undertake to restore them with salutary nourishment. For the spiritual physicians of the Church, namely, the priests of the Lord, can give medicinal and healthful counsel concerning the infirmities of sins secretly confessed to them. But by ecclesiastical judgment—that is, separation from Communion with the Church, from rank, or from the marriage bond—they cannot reasonably separate anyone unless the person has either confessed the crimes publicly of his own accord or been openly convicted. Confession or conviction among ecclesiastical ranks has its own manner and order, which need not be set out here; public confession or conviction among secular people likewise has its own manner and order, by which they must be publicly judged. This is not because grave crimes are not also absolved through secret confession and penance, lest the weak in the Church be scandalized when they see punishments whose causes they are entirely ignorant of; rather, it is so that what is known by many to have been committed may become known to have been healed, and that one who sinned in the Church may strive to offer the satisfaction owed to it with sincerity; and that one who, so far as he could, destroyed many by his example may heal many with the antidote of humility, as Paul says of himself: “I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an abuser.” And they saw, he says, “that the one who formerly persecuted this faith now preaches it,” and they glorified God in me. It is also so that one who offended many may obtain a remedy more quickly when many are praying to the Lord for him. He proves this from Gregory’s Ep. 32, bk. 13, to Felix, bishop of Sicily.

From these things (says Bagotius, Dissert. 1, On Penance, ch. 10) one understands the custom and discipline of that time. In particular, Hincmar recognizes a twofold excommunication, one deadly and the other medicinal; for he would not call the sacrament medicinal unless he knew that there was another by which a rotten member is cut off entirely, not healed. Second, he says that this kind of penalty is inflicted only on those who publicly sin in grave crimes condemned publicly by the laws. Third, he requires that this be done in such a way that no one may reasonably be separated, removed from rank, or deposed if a cleric, or punished by excommunication if a layman, unless he has either confessed the crimes publicly of his own accord or been openly convicted. Fourth, he says that public penance was always joined to public confession of the crime when imposed by ecclesiastical judgment, yet the manner of judgment, confession, and conviction was not the same for clerics and laymen. Fifth, he distinguishes this public penance for grave and public crimes from secret confession and penance, namely, sacramental penance, through which those grave crimes were absolved; thus that public penance was not instituted for their absolution or remission before God, but for the other benefits he lists. Sixth and finally, he gives three reasons and purposes for performing penance. The first is that the Church’s scandal be removed, so that what is known by many to have been committed may become known to have been healed. The second is the edification of that same Church, and that those whom the sinner had destroyed by his example, insofar as he could, along with many others, might be healed by the antidote of his humility, or might be deterred from a similar sin. The third is that through the Church’s prayers the penitent might more quickly receive a remedy and remission of the penalty that remained to be discharged. Finally, Hincmar implies that priests can give salutary advice concerning sins secretly confessed to them, or counsel those guilty of them to perform that penance voluntarily. It is therefore probable that here he understands the public penance we explained above to be of two kinds: one voluntary and granted to a petitioner, the other imposed. But whether these points are probable or altogether doubtful, the one matter asserted in the question is established as certain and clear: no one can reasonably be separated or subjected to public penance by ecclesiastical judgment unless, having sinned publicly in grave crimes condemned publicly by the laws, he has either confessed publicly of his own accord or been openly convicted. So says Bagotius.

✳ “YOU WILL SAY 5: The ancient Canons impose public penance on those guilty of graver crimes and nowhere distinguish between public and secret crimes. But they would have distinguished between them if secret crimes had not been subject to the laws of public penance. Therefore secret crimes, too, were subject to the laws of public penance. — I ANSWER: Several of the ancient Canons designate public sins for public penance in order to exclude secret ones. For Canon 32 of the Third Council of Carthage says: If any penitent has a very notorious crime known to the whole Church, let hands be imposed on him before the apse. For it was the custom of the ancient Church that public penitents be reconciled by the imposition of hands before the apse, that is, before the bishop’s seat. But this rite is commanded only for those whose crime is very notorious; therefore those whose crimes are secret did not perform public penance. If many Canons did not make that distinction between public and secret sins, they deliberately omitted it, first, because it was unnecessary: everyone knew that the Church does not judge secret matters, nor can a secret crime, through public penance against the seal of confession, be brought to everyone’s knowledge, or at least suspicion. Second, they omitted the distinction so that penitents would understand that even if their sins were secret and most grave, the penalties to be imposed on them were to be measured by the Canons, omitting only the fact that they were not public.”

YOU WILL SAY 6: To stand apart from Communion is to perform public penance; but those guilty of secret sins were ordered to stand apart from Communion. Proof from Canon 34 of St. Basil’s canonical Epistle to Amphilochius, whose words are: Our Fathers forbade women stained by adultery, whether confessing from devotion or convicted in any other way, to be made public, lest we give those convicted a reason for death; but they ordered them to stand apart from Communion until the period of penance had been fulfilled. — I ANSWER: I deny the major premise. For since each person approached the sacred assembly according to his conscience, and also according to the secret advice of his spiritual director, not all who stood apart from Communion were considered public penitents. Only those were so considered who were separated from the Eucharist by the judgment of a prelate, or were compelled by order of the superiors of penance to perform the solemn rites of public penance. St. Chrysostom indicates this in many places, rebuking Christians who strive to live in such a way that they cannot be excluded from the celebration of the sacred mysteries among public penitents, yet do not strive to acquire and preserve the purity of soul by which they might deserve admission to receive those same mysteries. Therefore women secretly stained by adultery could stand apart from Communion without being counted among the public penitents. Add that according to the genuine meaning of the Canon, the crime of those women was not entirely secret. For something is not called secret if a person can be convicted of it. But the Canon refers to adulteries of which the women could be convicted; therefore these were not entirely secret. Nor were those things secret that women confessed voluntarily out of devotion. For what is meant there is not secret, auricular confession, but public confession made before the prelate and his council, or before the assembly of presbyters. This is shown by the fact that the Canon speaks disjunctively, in the same sense, of the confession and conviction of adulteresses. But conviction took place before the assembly of presbyters; therefore confession did too. The words confessing out of devotion also indicate this. For that public confession was made to achieve greater humility and to embrace more firmly the resolve to practice piety. Secret confession, however, was not only a matter of devotion but of necessity, since public confession was not chosen. As for the Canon’s ruling that such crimes not be made public, this must be understood with respect to the whole people, to whom it was thought prudent not to disclose what had been proved or voluntarily declared in a meeting of priests. Thus it is decreed that such adulteries, being partly public and partly secret, are also to be subjected partly to public penance and partly to secret penance.

YOU WILL OBJECT 7. From St. Ambrose, bk. 2 of On Penance, ch. 16: If anyone, then, having secret crimes, has nevertheless diligently performed penance for Christ’s sake … I wish the guilty person to hope for pardon, ask for it with tears, ask with the weeping of the whole people, and beseech forgiveness; and when his Communion has been postponed a second and third time, let him believe that he has supplicated with less earnestness. — I ANSWER: The Fathers did indeed sometimes exhort even sinners with secret sins to undertake a more humble and mournful penance voluntarily, but they never compelled them. Hence many people who were not stained by graver crimes nevertheless spent several days or months among the public penitents, on the advice of their spiritual director, out of humility and a desire for more severe penance. Others who were guilty of graver but secret crimes also stood among them for a time; this was done with such prudence that no one could infer whether they had undertaken this burden from a mere spirit of devotion or on account of a lesser or graver crime. That this custom prevailed in the Church is clear from the case of Wamba, king of the Goths in Spain. Although he was distinguished by holiness and free of graver crimes, when ill he asked to be assigned public penance, and after recovering from his illness he completed it, transferring the kingdom to Ervig, as reported by the Twelfth Council of Toledo, Canon 1, and Lucas of Tuy. The same custom of the Church is proved by the Thirteenth Council of Toledo, Canon 10, where the Fathers answer concerning Gaudentius, bishop of Valencia. He had undertaken penance while ill, and, having completed it, after recovering his former health he doubted whether he was permitted to perform the duties of priesthood and episcopacy. When he submitted this doubt to the bishops gathered at Toledo, they judged that, after reconciliation had first been performed, he should retain the office of his customary rank. For if, they say, the rules of the earlier Fathers (namely, Canon 53 of the Fourth Council of Toledo) permit those who receive penance when in danger of death and confess no manifest crimes against themselves—provided that they are nevertheless upright in conduct—to attain ecclesiastical ranks, how much more should those who receive penance while already in the priesthood not be removed from the duties of their order? Only if they have not branded themselves by their own confession of mortal crimes.”