Adolf Harnack · 20 of 20

3. The Development of the Practice and Theory of the Mass (the Dogma of the Lord’s Supper) and of Penance.

3. The Development of the Practice and Theory of the Mass (the Dogma of the Lord’s Supper) and of Penance.

Three factors co-operated to promote a development of the theory of the Lord’s Supper in the West in the Carlovingian age. Firstly, the influence of Byzantium, where the controversy about images had led their worshippers to disconnect the symbolical conception from the consecrated elements, in order to avoid the necessity of identifying the Sacrament with the images, and of thus robbing the great mystery of its unique character. Secondly, the practice of the Western Church. The divine service of the Mass was the central point of all Christianity, to which everything referred, and from which every saving influence flowed for the baptized Christian. But if the ordinary life of the Christian was connected with miraculous powers and mysteries, if miracles were in the present, and still more in the accounts of the past, every-day events, then the sacred act effected in the Lord’s Supper had to be developed into the wonder of wonders, lest its significance should be impaired by comparison with hundreds of miracles of a common stamp. Thirdly, theology and Christology come before us in this connection. The greater the prominence given in the notion of God to the idea that God, because omnipotent, was a mysterious arbitrary power, and the more vague became the perception of God in Christ and the knowledge measured by moral holiness, the more firmly did men cling to the institutions of the Church as the alone manifest, and seek in them, i.e., in mystery and miracle, to apprehend the hidden God. Further, the more the historical Christ was lost in light which no man can approach, and the more resolutely religious speculation, in order to be truly pious, only saw in him the God, who had added human nature to his fulness (see the Adoptian controversy), the more clearly did men feel themselves constrained to seek Christ not in the historical picture or the Word, but where the mystery of his Incarnation and death was present and palpable.

The active influence of these combined factors undoubtedly received an extremely significant check in the case of Bede, and in the first decades of the Carlovingian age, from the rise of the study of Augustine, whose teaching on the Lord’s Supper had been predominantly spiritual. Charles’s theologians, or Charles himself, frequently used quite Augustinian language, in speaking of the Lord’s Supper. But even in their case variations occur, and towards the end of the period of Louis the Pious, Paschasius Radbertus was able to assert as doctrine, what had long been felt by the majority, that the real (historical) body of Christ was sacrificed in the Mass, and partaken of in the Lord’s Supper.

Paschasius Radbertus was perhaps the most learned and able theologian, after Alcuin, as well versed in Greek theology as he was familiar with Augustinianism, a coinprehensive genius, who felt the liveliest desire to harmonise theory and practice, and at the same time to give due weight to everything that had been taught till then by Church tradition regarding the Lord’s Supper. His great work on the Lord’s Supper was the first Church monograph on the subject. It is a one-sided description of its contents to sum them up in the phrase: “Paschasius taught transubstantiation.” The importance of the book lies rather in the fact that the Lord’s Supper is exhaustively discussed from all possible points of view, and that a certain unity is nevertheless attained. Paschasius did for this dogma what Origen did for the whole of dogmatics; he is the Origen of the Catholic doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, which was placed by him as a theory in the central position that it had long held in practice. We can only appreciate Paschasius’ teaching if we keep it in mind that Greek Christological mysticism, Augustinian spiritualism, and—unconsciously to the author himself—the practice of the Frankish Church, had an equal share in it. But we must also remember that the notion of God as inscrutable omnipotence, i.e., arbitrary power, was dominant. Without this conception of deity the doctrine of transubstantiation would never have been reached.

To begin with, Paschasius has given most vigorous expression to Augustinian doctrine not as something foreign to him, but as if he had thoroughly assimilated it. The sacrament is a spiritual food for faith; to eat Christ’s flesh means to be and remain in Christ. The rite is given to faith, and faith is to be roused by it. Faith, however, is always related to the invisible; and thus the sacrament in its deepest sense can only be received by the faith that has withdrawn into the invisible world. Christ, the soul, faith, heaven, and the sacrament are most intimately connected—the bodily eye must always look beyond the sensuous to the heavenly behind it. Therefore the meal is a meal for the holy, the elect. Only he who belongs to Christ and is a member in his body enjoys the food worthily, nay, he alone enjoys the food of faith actually. Unbelievers receive the sacrament, but not its virtue (virtus sacramenti). But even Augustine had so distinguished between these two notions that virtus sacramenti sometimes describes its saving efficacy alone, sometimes the miraculous nature of the holy food itself, so that in the former case the sacrament itself signifies the totality of the rite without its corresponding effect, and in the latter merely something objective incapable of further definition. Radbert, like Augustine, prefers the latter version. The believer alone receives the virtus sacramenti as food of faith and incorporation into Christ’s body—there was no eating on the part of unbelievers (manducatio infidelium); Christ’s flesh as contained in the sacrament did not exist apart from faith. The unbeliever, indeed, receives the sacrament—what that is is indefinable—but he does so to his condemnation; for without the virtus sacramenti the sacrament exists ad judicium damnationis.

In addition to this Augustinianism, a Greek element is very strongly marked in the description of the effects of the holy food; for besides incorporation in Christ and forgiveness of venial sins, the chief emphasis is laid on our soul and body being nourished by this food for immortality. The combination contained in the statement that this is effected by baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Holy Scripture (c. 1, 4), is Western; but the intention to which prominence is given in connection with the Lord’s Supper alone, viz. “that even our flesh may be renewed by it to immortality and incorruption,” is Greek. Indeed Radbert even says conversely: “the flesh of Christ spiritually digested is transformed into our flesh.” But he now went still further with the Greeks—Cyril and John of Damascus. He had learned from them that although the rite existed for faith only, yet the reality of Christ’s body was present. This assumption was rendered easy, nay imperative, to the Greeks by their view that Christ’s historical body was itself pneumatic from the moment of the Incarnation. Although they then (John of Damascus) completed the identification, and assumed a real presence of Christ’s body in the Sacrament, they still hesitated secretly, because they did not get over the difficulty caused by the fact that the body once received into heaven did not return. Therefore they assigned the form of the miracle (sacramental transformation and assumption) to the “mystery.” Radbert took up the matter here, at the same time influenced by the popular conception and his certainty that the practice of the Church was justified. For the first time in the Church he declares without hesitancy that the sacramental body is that which had been born of Mary, and that this is due to a transformation which only leaves the sensuous appearance unchanged. This is a miracle against nature (or quasi contra naturam: for nature always depends on the will of God); but it is to be believed for that very reason, for we only think worthily of God, who can do anything, when we acknowledge him to be the power that works miracles. What he does here is a miraculous creative act, effected, as always, through the word, in this case the word of institution, and this is spoken not by the priest, but on each occasion by God through the eternal Word (Christ), so that the priest only issues the appeal to God. This constantly repeated creation by God is exactly parallel to the Incarnation—Christ’s word corresponds to the Holy Spirit, the elements to the virgin’s womb; the effect is the same. The sacramental is the historical body, of course also historically transfigured; for from Cyril’s standpoint the transfiguration of the body in the Resurrection is only the manifestation of the properties which it always possessed. In order to explain the startling fact that the results of the transformation were not capable of being perceived by the senses, Radbert had a number of reasons ready: it was unnecessary and repulsive, and besides it would happen often. The most important of these was that—it was necessary the rite should remain a mystery given to faith alone. We are as far as possible from being prepared for this idea, and yet it was very important to Radbert. The Lord’s Supper always presupposes faith and is meant to rouse faith, where it exists, to advance to the undisguised Christ who is not daily sacrificed. Hence the sacrament cannot be a manifest, but is always a disguised, miracle. Hence, moreover, the elements, in so far as they are not perceptibly transformed (colour, taste, and smell remaining), must be regarded as symbols of Christ’s body, from which faith penetrates to the mysterious but really created source of salvation. The sensuous appearance of the consecrated elements is the symbol of Christ’s body, their essence is the true historical body itself.

We readily perceive that in this phase the bridge to the Augustinian conception has been recovered. Paschasius intended to unite and did unite two positions in his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper: the Augustinian, that the sacraments are given to faith and everything in them is spiritually handled, and the Greek, which also seemed to him commended by the letter of Scripture, the Fathers, and a few miracles, that we are confronted by a reality existent prior to all faith, since only the true body and the blood actually shed can redeem us, and since we need the corporeal indwelling of Christ. Both considerations seemed to be served by the view, that in the elements we are dealing with a miraculous creation of Christ’s body, which is, however, effected in such a way that faith alone can rise from the still existent semblance of the mere bodily figure (figura corporis) to the apprehension of the heavenly reality.

The voluminous books, afterwards written by Catholics and Lutherans on the Lord’s Supper, prove that Radbert’s theory opened up a perspective to hundreds of questions, which he did not solve, and, indeed, did not even put. His treatment of the part played by the priest at the sacrament seemed unsatisfactory. His brief expositions as to the creation of the body failed to make certain the identity of the heavenly and the sacramental Christ. There was still no definition of the relation of the unconverted to the converted object of sense-perception. When men began to attempt this definition, nothing short of the whole of philosophy necessarily passed before the mind of the cultured theologian. The claim of the symbolical view had to be determined, and thereby the sacrament, symbol, virtue, reality (res) and, again, the graded and yet identical bodies of Christ (the historical on earth, the transfigured in heaven, the sacramental on earth, the body as Church in heaven and on earth) had to be defined, as it were geologically, as intersecting boulders. “One deep called to the others”; and the fact that in after times the most intelligent men leant an ear to this clamour, and yet remained sane in other respects, proved that the most absurd speculations in the sphere of religion do not necessarily make the whole reason sick.

But the most remarkable feature in Radbert’s fundamental theory is that he did not refer primarily to the Mass, or indeed to Christ’s death on the Cross; in other words, he did not draw all the consequences which resulted from it. Radbert is not the theologian of the Catholic Mass. The Incarnation and Lord’s Supper were for him more intimately connected, as it seems, than Christ’s sacrificial death and the dogma of the Lord’s Supper. From this we see that Radbert was a disciple of the Greeks, that he was really a theologian, and his interest did not centre primarily on the Church institution of penance, and the divine service of the Mass connected with it.

Rabanus and Ratramnus alone opposed him. The opposition is as obscure, logically, as in the controversy about the virgin birth. As Ratramnus had then taught that the natural had come to pass by a miracle, while Radbert held that the event was contrary to nature; so here again Rabanus and, above all, Ratramnus taught that, while the external miracle (contra naturam)—the communication in the Lord’s Supper of the body that was born, that died and rose again—did not take place, the true body was potentialiter (effectively) created, yet in mysterio, by the consecration of the Holy Spirit. Ratramnus examines elaborately the problem that the king had set him, whether that which is received into his mouth by the believer, is in mystery or reality Christ’s body. From the king’s question he himself formulates other two: whether participation, in the cultus, in the body of Christ was an act in mysterio or in veritate, and whether the sacramental body was identical with the historical which now sits at the right hand of the Father. To the second question he replies that that which lies consecrated on the altar is by no means the historical body, but only the mystery of the body, as also the mystery of the Church. As regards the historical body the consecrated elements are thus only a figure (figura), means of reminiscence for our present earthly life, since we cannot yet see what we believe. But nevertheless believers receive Christ’s body and blood in this rite; for faith does not receive what it sees, but what it believes, Accordingly in the Lord’s Supper Christ’s body exists in an invisbile reality for faith as real food of the soul. The extremely obscure and at least seemingly contradictory statements of Ratramnus make it hard to hit on his meaning correctly. In any case he taught no mere figurative conception. We shall perhaps be most certain to do him justice if we observe what above all he did, and what he did not, intend. He meant above all to emphasise and verify the absolute necessity of faith throughout the rite; the sacrament belonged to faith, existed for it alone, etc. In this he coincides entirely with Radbert, who shared the same interest equally strongly. But in what he would not allow he is distinguished to his advantage from Radbert; since everything is given to faith he would not recognise the common reality, because in view of the latter faith and disbelief are indifferent. To Ratramnus reality (veritas) is concrete being as it presents itself to the senses; for this very reason “sub figura” and “in veritate” he looks on as mutually exclusive opposites. Faith has its own realities, which are real, but only disclose themselves to faith; Ratramnus designates them—mistakenly—as “sub figura,” because they are copied by sensuous realities, or, better, rest behind the latter. Radbert, on the other hand, believed himself compelled, precisely as an Augustinian, to conceive veritas as reality in general; hence to him “sub figura” and in veritate are not opposites, since heavenly realities when they appeared as earthly had in his view to manifest themselves sub figura. But Ratramnus was superior to Radbert as a Christian, in that he did not conceive the presence of the heavenly in the earthly to be a miracle against nature, i.e., he followed a different notion of God from the latter. The mysteries of faith are not brought to pass by a continual interruption of the natural order, but they rest as a world administered by the Holy Spirit behind the phenomenal world, and what takes place in the Lord’s Supper is not a departure, by means of a special miracle, from operations such as are carried out, e.g., in Baptism (c. 17, 25, 26.) In a word, Ratramnus would have the mystery of the Lord’s Supper recognised as in harmony with the method by which God bestows salvation through Baptism and the Word, because as an Augustinian and Christian he shrank from the brutal miracle (the idea of God is here involved), and because he was afraid that otherwise nothing would be left to faith.

It is in this that the importance of Ratramnus consists. But it is questionable whether the learned king for whom he wrote was any the wiser for his book; for not only is Ratramnus confused in his terminology, but also in his matter, because he would not give up the idea that the efficacy of the sacrament was objective, whence it always follows that the miraculous efficacy depends not on the recipients, but on the means. Hence we find numerous expositions in which he talks like Radbert: by the ministry of the priest the bread becomes Christ’s body, nay, it is transformed. He does not venture to pursue consistently the parallel he seeks to establish with baptismal water; for the words “body and blood of Christ” are too strong for him. It is sinful to deny that the consecrated elements are Christ’s body. Thus the difference between Radbert and Ratramnus can be reduced to the following formula. The former openly and deliberately transferred the spiritual teaching of Augustinianism into the realistic conception, and gave clear expression to the belief of the Church. The latter attempted to maintain complete spiritualism in the interests of a loftier notion of God and of faith, but he was not in a position to carry this out absolutely, because he himself was far too much under the influence of the formula. Therefore he only speaks clearly where he is disowning the miracle. The future belonged to Radbert; nay, Ratramnus’ book, it would seem, did not even excite attention, but afterwards met with the most curious history down to the present day.

The doctrine expressed by Radbert, a Pandora’s casket of problems to future scholars, was extremely intelligible to the simple. Nothing can guarantee the success of a dogma more fully than the possession of these two qualities. It received its application, above all, in the Mass. The thought of the repeated sacrificial death of Christ, long since conceived, was now as firmly established as that of the repeated assumption of the flesh. What could now approach the Mass? There was no need to alter the ancient wording of missal prayers, which still, when they dealt with the sacrifice, emphasised the sacrifice of praise; for who attended to words? The Mass as a sacrificial rite, in which the holiest thing conceivable was presented to God, had, however, ceased long ago to end in participation, but found its climax in the act that expiated sin and removed evil. It was received into the great institution that conferred atonement. On this a few further remarks are necessary, although no dogmatic conflicts arose.

The frequent repetition of the Mass (in one and the same Church), and its simple celebration (without communion), show that this rite was not intended so much for the congregation as for God: God was to be appeased. The ancient element of commemoration on the part of the celebrants had, especially since the days of Gregory I., been made an independent service, and the communion had been, as it were, changed into a second celebration. The practice, according to which the laity looked on while the priests partook, the laity taking merely a passive part—the rite being consummated on their behalf—while the priests performed the ceremony, corresponded to the prevailing view, especially among German peoples, that laymen were second-class Christians, and that partaking in the Lord’s Supper was for them associated with grave dangers. The holy rite belonged to the laity, so far as it represented a form of the Church’s intercession peculiarly effective for the mitigation of sin’s penalties.

The Mass was thereby included in the Church’s atoning institute; but for laymen the Church had long been essentially a baptismal institution, and an establishment for the reconciliation necessary after baptism. In order to understand this, and the immense extent and value acquired by the practice of Confession in the West, we have to observe the following points.

1. The prevailing notion of God was that of omnipotent absolutism, requital and remission. It was in these conceptions that God was a present and really living God, and they directed the thought and practice of trained theologians and laymen. The hidden God was manifest in the fact that he suffered no sin to be unatoned; but he was merciful because he granted remissions (through the mediation of heavenly persons and the Church) a fact which, indeed, did not contravene the general rule that everything must be expiated or punished. This notion of God was already complete when the Church entered into the national life of Germany. It is accordingly not to be regarded as a German modification, but as a conception in harmony with and rising from the unrefined religious consciousness, and especially the Latin spirit. Cyprian and Gregory I. attest this. But as this conception of God could easily combine with German ideas of justice, it was also well adapted to train uncivilised peoples. It had long been settled on purely Latin soil that no sin committed after Baptism could be simply forgiven, but that due penitence (pænitentia legitima), or fitting satisfaction (satisfactio congrua) formed the necessary condition of remission. In keeping with the strict regard for law and sense of duty, which distinguished the Latin Church more than the Greek, ecclesiastical methods paid more heed to the sins of Church members in general. And in accordance with the conviction that sins represented breaches of contract or outrages, of greater or less gravity, the Church had been working at the codification of pænitentia legitima, or the definition of the measure of satisfaction, since the second half of the third century. All this took place without German influence.

2. This system had originally been elaborated with a view to public penance, in presence of the congregation, for the sake of reconciliation, and thus referred to open and gross sins, for which as a rule only a single act of penance was possible. It therefore suffered a severe blow when all society became Christian, and magistrates, being themselves Christians, punished these gross offences of different kinds, even such as the State had not formerly dealt with. The whole ancient institution of penance collapsed in the East. It came almost entirely to an end in the West also in its old form, in so far as the list of public sins, punished by the Church alone, was always growing smaller. But in the German kingdoms, where the Church had not sunk to the level of an institution for worship in the State, and had not entirely abandoned higher religion to the monks, where, on the contrary, it long went hand in hand with the State as a Latin institution with its old Roman law, and trained the nations as a universal power, it did not renounce its penance regulations, which besides suited the German spirit. But a change was necessary in this case also, a change in which German dislike to public humiliations had perhaps as great a share as fear of purgatory and the tendency of the Church to establish throughout the regulations of its monkish castes, in other words, to monachise the secular clergy, and finally also the laity. From this there sprang a deepening of the notion of sin, since new sins, namely, the “roots of sin” themselves were put in the place of the old mortal sins, but there also resulted an externalising of the notion, as “satisfactions,” which are more tolerable in the case of great overt offences, were now also applied to these “roots” (intemperance, fornication, greed, anger, ill-temper, secret fear and dislike, presumption and pride).

But, above all, this was followed by the intrusion of the Church into all affairs of private life. What had been the rule in primitive times, namely, the subjection of the private life of the individual to the control of the Church, returned in an entirely new form. But then it was a congregation of brethren which lived together like a family, and in which each was the conscience of the other; now one institution and one class ruled the irresponsible community; and while the latter was restrained, indeed, from extremes, yet, since no one was really capable of properly controlling the life of the individual, consciences were sophisticated by incentives and sedatives, by a frequently over-refined morality (legislation as to fasting and marriage), and by extremely external directions as to satisfaction. The transition to the new practice resulted in the laity themselves demanding the intercession of the Church, the reading of the Mass, invocations of the saints, etc., to an increasing extent, since preachers had always been telling them that they were a sinful people, incapable of coming near God, that the priests held the keys, and that the Church’s intercession was the most effective. But the gradual settlement of monachist practice in the world-Church alone explains the facts that actual confession of all sins to the priest, and the imposition of all sorts of satisfactions, for the hundred and one offences in life and conduct, in a word, that private penance in the presence of the priest, became the rule. This state of matters began in the Iro-Scottish Church, which was in an eminent degree monachist. There penitential regulations—meaning private penance—were, so far as we know, first drawn up for the laity, who were directed to confess their sins to the priest, as the monks had long been enjoined to do in their cloisters. From Ireland, books dealing with penance came to the Anglo-Saxons (Theodore of Canterbury), to the Franks and Rome; they did not establish this footing without opposition, and after they had become a settled institution, they very soon gave offence again, since their directions became more and more external and questionable. To the practice of private penance which thus arose is to be ascribed the new conception of sin, and the new attitude to it, which now became the ruling one in the West, namely, the facile and deadening readiness with which every one confessed himself to be a mortal sinner. What was more tolerable in the ranks of the monks, nay, was in many cases the expression of a really sensitive conscience—I mean the readiness at once to confess oneself a sinner, and to make a less and less distinction between sins and sins—threatened when transferred to the masses to become a worthless practice, because one that blunted the moral sense. Men sinned, and coolly confessed wholesale to a host of sins, lest they might miss the miraculous help of the Church, for some one or other actually committed. If the men of those days had not been so simple, this system would even then have made them thorough hypocrites. But as it was, it worked more like an external system of law—a police institution, which punished wantonness and barbarianism, outbreaks of wild energy and passion. This was not the intention, but it was its actual import, so far as a certain salutary effect cannot be denied it.

3. The institution was already certain in its operations, and made great strides especially in the later Carlovingian period, since the complete separation of the clergy and laity, which had been obliterated in the Merovingian age, was only then made once more complete, and measures began at the same time to be taken to make monks of the former. Nevertheless the dogmatic theory was still entirely awanting. It was not settled that the priest alone could forgive sins—it was still conceded that trifling sins could be expiated without the priest, by means of prayer and alms. Nor were the value and result of priestly forgiveness fixed: was it declaratory or deprecatory? Nor had it been stated to be absolutely necessary to confess all sins to the priest. And finally no fixed definitions had been deduced from the matter itself of mortal and venial sins, or of the treatment of public and private offences. It was only long afterwards that all these points were decided. We see clearly here that ecclesiastical practice does not wait for dogmatic, indeed, that it does not really need it, as long as it goes with the great stream. The Church possessed a sacrament of penance with all its subtleties for many centuries, during which dogmatic knew of no such thing, but span a finer thread.

4. This is not the place to give the interesting history of the growth of satisfactions. Let us, however, notice four points. (1) The old, more or less arbitrary, definitions dealing with the selection (prayers, alms, lamentations, temporary exclusion), and duration of compensatory punishments were supplemented to an increasing extent by new ones (pilgrimages), as well as by definitions taken from the Old Testament law and German legal ordinances. Charlemagne took a great stride in advance with reference to dependence on the Old Testament. But this led to the computation of compensatory penalties being itself looked at in the light of a divine dispensation, and definitions not taken from the Old Testament were also regarded from the same standpoint. (2) The performance of penance was a means of compensation, so far as—if no sin had preceded it—it would have established merit in the sight of God, or would have bestowed something upon him. (It was accordingly not merely a substitution for punishment, but also a positive property in the sight of God, and therefore a compensation for injury.) Accordingly the whole institution was included under the conception of merit, from of old connected with works and alms (operibus et eleemosynis). But if the performance of penance was after all the presentation of something valuable (sacrifice) to God, something which gave him pleasure, and that for its own sake, it became more effective if as many and as good persons as possible took part in it. If a saint helped by his intercession, then God could not really resist; for there was nothing to be made good by the saint, and therefore his offering was a pure present to God. This dreadful idea that the mighty Judge in Heaven could demand nothing more of the saints, while they were able to bestow much upon him, makes it evident that the system of intercessions necessarily played the most important rôle in the system of penance. The conception of Christ taken by faith, that he represents men in the Father’s presence, was perverted in the saddest way, and he was dragged into this system; and since nothing was too lofty or precious to be included as investments in this petty calculation, the repeated sacrificial death of Christ was itself the most important instalment. Masses were the surest protection against sins’ penalties in purgatory, because in them Christ himself was presented to the Father, and the infinite value of his Passion was anew brought before him, in other words, the merit of that Passion was multiplied. Hence the accumulation of a treasury of masses was the best “palliative” against the fire, or the most reliable means of abridging it.

(3) Since performances of penance—the penitent disposition was always presupposed in theory—had an objective value to God, and were at the same time in part equivalents, they could be bartered. Not only, however, could like be bartered for like, but a less valuable act could be taken as full payment, if circumstances rendered a complete discharge difficult, or if it was supplemented by the intercession of others, or if the slighter performance sufficiently displayed the penitent mood. It had been the custom in earlier times to shorten the duration and diminish the number of penances imposed by the Church after the penitent had proved his sincerity. This was appropriate enough, for the purpose was to effect reconciliation with the community; but it was now applied to the penitent’s relation to God. It was at the same time remembered that the strict Judge was also merciful, i.e., indulgent. Thus arose the system of remissions, i.e., of commutations and redemptions, or of substitutions. The latter originated in German conceptions, but they had a latent root even in ancient times. Commutations and redemptions are first met with in any number in the eighth and ninth centuries. “Weregeld” or blood-money is found sanctioned then; but they already follow from the ancient system, and had certainly been practised in the cloisters long before the Carlovingian age. Therewith, however, indulgences were created, as soon, namely, as the possibility of commutation was admitted and legally fixed, independently of the special circumstances of the individual case. These commutations, which were only established against opposition, completely externalised the whole system. Above all, they interested the Church financially, and made it, already the great landed proprietor, into a banking establishment. How poor was the Greek Church, with its scanty trade in relics, pictures, and lights, compared with her rich sister, who drew bills on every soul!

(4) The whole system of merits and satisfactions had really no reference to sins, but only to their punishment. But since everything ultimately served this system, men were trained to evade sins’ penalties as well, securely, and cheaply as possible. The element which seemingly mitigated the dangers of this whole view—namely, that sin itself was left out of sight, since it must be forgiven by God who excites penitence and faith—necessarily resulted in the case of the multitude in their paying little or no attention to sin, and in their thinking only of punishment. Even if they finally entered the cloister, or gave their goods to the poor, they did so, not because they loved God, but because they wished to escape his punishments. Punishment ruled the world and the consciences for whose possession good and evil angels contend.

It would not have been necessary to discuss this practice within the limits of the history of dogma if it had not had a very active influence on dogma in the succeeding period. It had wound itself round Augustinianism from the beginning, and had prevented it from obtaining complete sway in the Church; it influenced Christology even in the time of Gregory I., and then in the classic period of the Middle Ages it acted decisively upon and remodelled all the dogmas that had come down from antiquity.