frees from eternal damnation, but not from temporal punishment, which culminates in death or in
purgatory. Penance is described as a "laborious kind of baptism," and is declared by the Council
of Trent to be necessary to salvation for those who have fallen after baptism, as baptism is necessary
for those who have not yet been regenerated.^407
The sacrament of penance and priestly, absolution includes three elements: contrition of
the heart, confession by the mouth, satisfaction by good works.^408 On these conditions the priest
grants absolution, not simply by a declaratory but by a judicial act. The good works required are
especially fasting and almsgiving. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, Tours, Compostella, and other
sacred places were likewise favorite satisfactions. Peter Damiani recommended voluntary
self-flagellation as a means to propitiate God. These pious exercises covered in the popular mind
the whole idea of penance. Piety was measured by the quantity of good works rather than by quality
of character.
Another mediaeval institution must here be mentioned which is closely connected with
penance. The church in the West, in her zeal to prevent violence and bloodshed, rightly favored
the custom of the barbarians to substitute pecuniary compensation for punishment of an offence,
but wrongly applied this custom to the sphere of religion. Thus money, might be substituted for
fasting and other satisfactions, and was clothed with an atoning efficacy. This custom seems to
have proceeded from the church of England, and soon spread over the continent.^409 It degenerated
into a regular traffic, and became a rich source for the increase of ecclesiastical and monastic
property.
Here is the origin of the indulgences so called, that is the remission of venial sins by the
payment of money and on condition of contrition and prayer. The practice was justified by the
scholastic theory that the works of supererogation of the saints constitute a treasury of extra-merit
and extra-reward which is under the control of the pope. Hence indulgence assumed the special
meaning of papal dispensation or remission of sin from the treasury of the overflowing merits of
saints, and this power was extended even to the benefit of the dead in purgatory.^410
(^407) Conc. Trid. Sess. XIV. cap.2 (Schaff’s Creeds I. 143). The Council went so far in Canon VI. (II. 165) as to anathematize
any one "who denies that sacramental confession was instituted or is necessary to salvation, of divine right; or who says that
the manner of confessing secretly to a priest alone, which the church has ever observed from the beginning (?), and doth observe,
is alien from the institution and command of Christ, and is a human invention."
(^408) Contritio cordis, confessio oris, satisfactio operis. See Conc. Trid. Sess. XIV. cap. 3-6 (Creeds, II. 143-153). The
usual Roman Catholic definition of this sacrament is: "Sacramentum poenitentiae est sacramentum a Christo institutum, quo
homini contrito, confesso et satisfacturo (satisfacere volenti) per juridicam sacerdotis absolutionem peccata post baptismum
commissa remittuntur." Oswald,Die dogmat. Lehre von den heil. Sacramenten der katholischen Kirche,II. 17 (3rd ed. Münster
1870).
(^409) Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury is the reputed author of this commutation of penance for a money-payment. See
his Penitential I. 3 and 4, and the seventh penitential canon ascribed to him, in Haddan and Stubbs III. 179, 180, 211. "Si
quis"says Theodore, "pro ultione propinqui hominem occiderit, peniteat sicut homicida, VII. vel X. annos. Si tamen reddere
vult propinquis petuniam aestimationis, levior erit penitentia, id est, dimidio spatii."The Synod of Clove-ho (probably Abingdon),
held under his successor, Cuthbert, for the reformation of abuses, in September 747, decreed in the 26th canon that alms were
no longer to be given for diminishing or commuting the fastings and other works of satisfaction. See Haddan and Stubbs, III.
371 sq.
(^410) This theory was fully developed by Thomas Aquinas and other schoolmen (see Gieseler II. 521 sq.), and sanctioned
by the Council of Trent in the 25th Session, held Dec. 4, 1563 (Creeds II. 205 sq.), although the Council forbids "all evil gains"
and other abuses which have caused "the honorable name of indulgences to be blasphemed by heretics." The popes still exercise
from time to time the right of granting plenary indulgences, though with greater caution than their mediaeval predecessors.