The Taxes of the Papal Penitentiary
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424 July The Taxes of the Papal Penitentiary HE genuineness of the so-called ' Taxes of the Penitentiary' was T long a subject of dispute. Protestants eagerly reprinted them in Downloaded from the two recensions which were accessible, and a series of commentators —Du Pinet, Banck, Du Mont, Collin de Plancy, Hendham, Gibbings, Saint-Andro—accompanied them with more or less exasperating elucidations. The Roman Index prohibited them to the faithful in a cautious manner which left their genuineness undetermined.1 http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ Up to within a recent period catholic writers have been accustomed to throw doubts upon their very existence, but the evidence as to this was finally recognised as incontrovertible, and in 1872 Father Green admitted it, shifting the ground of the debate to the nature of the implied transaction, and arguing that the absolutions offered were merely in the forum externum, from ecclesiastical censures, and that the sums set forth in the tax-lists were simply payments for clerical services.9 It is natural that an honourable catholic at University of Connecticut on June 9, 2015 should repel with indignation the assertion that the Holy See for centuries advertised the pardon of the foulest sins for a few gros tuamoia, and this with an inexplicable indifference as to the relation between the degree of guilt and the price of remission.* The ques- tion has thus long been a vexed one, but recent researches of scholars have brought to light many documents elucidating the practice of the Roman chancery and penitentiary, and the subject 1 The earliest prohibition occurs in the appendix to the Antwerp Index of 1670, p. GO—' Praxis et Taxa officinae poenitenliariae Papae.1 This is copied literally in the suppressed Index of Sixtus V. in 1500 (Mendham's edition, p. 51). Clemect Vlii in 1500 added the cautious phrase 'ab haereticls depravata' (Index Clementis VIII, "'bini, 1590, fol. 48 b). Benedict XTV in 1758 adopted the more doubtful formula ' cum ab haereticis sit dfpravato,' and attributed the prohibition to the appendix of the Tridentine Index (Index Benedicts XIV, Romae, 1758, p. 210), which phrase has been retained to the present time (Index Leonis XIII, Taurini, 1890, p. 820). * Green, Indulgence*, Sacramental Absolutions and the Tax-Tables of the- Roman Chancery and Penitentiary, London, 1872, p. 166. * Two or three items from the oldest of the protestant editions of the Taxae will show how little relation the price affixed bears to the sin remitted:— ' Pro laico a lapeu camis super quocunque aotu libidinoso, in foro conscientiae, turon. 6, ducat. 2. 1 Ab incestn pro laico, in foro oonsclentiae tantum, turon. 4. ' Ab adulterio cum Incestu, pro una persona tantum, turon. Q.'—Taxe its Parties casueUts de la Boutique du Pape. Auec annotations, do. par A. D. P. (Antoine da Pinet). A Lyon, 1564, pp. 81, 8a. 1893 TAXES OF THE PAPAL PENITENTIARY 425 can now be understood, if not completely, at all events with an ap- proximation to the truth. In 1888 the learned Father Denifle printed what he regards as the oldest tax-table of the penitentiary, issued by Benedict XII in 1888,4 and in 1892 Herr Tangl gave us the taxes of the chancery of the Avignonese popes, illustrated by an exhaustive investigation of contemporaneous documents, edited and inedited.6 The chancery and the penitentiary were so closely connected, and their functions overlapped in so wide a range of subjects, that the practice of the one can safely be used where it serves to supply deficiencies in our information as to the 8 other. Downloaded from To appreciate the matter properly we must bear in mind that the use of money, in expiation of sin by no means excited in pre- Reformation times the general abhorrence with which we moderns are trained to regard it. The barter of pardon for pence disguised itself in many ways till it became so habitual that only an occasional http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ moralist or publicist ventured to utter an indignant remonstrance. ' Almsgiving' was a convenient euphemism which relieved such transactions of all impropriety. ' Water quencheth a flaming fire and alms resisteth sins,' and ' Redeem thou thy sins with alms,' were texts perpetually quoted and applied.7 As early as the close of the sixth century, Gregory the Great reminds his bishops that they live on the sins of their flocks, that they eat the sins of their people.8 To the end of the middle ages the lesson was sedulously taught at University of Connecticut on June 9, 2015 that of all forms of penance almsgiving was the one universally most efficacious.9 It was habitually prescribed in the confessional and is still retained in the Roman Ritual, with the single restriction that the priest must not keep the money himself.10 In practice, almsgiving meant payments or gifts to the church. It was always technically ' the poor ' on whom charity could be most worthily and advantageously bestowed, and the success of its teachings is seen in the immense growth of its possessions, granted, for the most part, 4 Archiv fllr Lileratur- and KirchengachichU da Mittelalters, Band ir. 201. • Mittheilungen da Institute fllr Osterreichisclus Oachichtsfonchung, Band xiii. 1. • See the Formulary of tlie Papal Penitentiary in the Thirteenth Century, Phila- delphia, 1802, in which most of (ho formulas are on subjects equally under the juris- diction of the chancery. Tho same is visible- by a comparison of the tax-tables printed by Denifle and TangL It was not until the reformation of the penitentiary by Pius IV and Pius V in 1662 and 1669, that it was rostrictod to the forum conscientiae except in respect to the religions orders. 1 Ecclus. iii. S3; Daniel, iv. 24. See also Tobias, xii. 9. • * • Oregor. PP. L Homil. XVIII in Evangel, n. 8,18. • • Elimosina completius habet vim satisfaotionis quam oratio, oratio quam ie- iunia. ... Et propter hoc elimosina magis indioitor ut universalis medicine pro peccatis quam alia.'—Joh. Friburgens. Summae confasorum, lib. iii. tit. xxxiv. Q. 128. Of. S. Antonini Summae, p. iii. tit. xiv. c 20, § 8; Summa Syhatrina, B.T. Satitfaetio. '• RUuaU Bomanum, tit. iii. c. L 426 TAXES OF THE PAPAL PENITENTIARY July as the charters bear witness, pro remisrione peccatorum.n Even so high-minded a pontiff as Alexander II, in a case of involuntary fratricide, had no hesitation in imposing as penance the confiscation to ' the poor' of the whole of the penitent's property, allowing him, however, the usufruct of one half of it during life.18 In addition to this, the church, in its efforts to win over its barbarian converts, adapted itself to their customs, and the practice arose of permitting all penances canonically imposed to be redeemed with money. Tables of commutations are given in nearly all the penitentials and in the collections of penitential canonB, regulating the amounts to be paid in lieu of fasts of a day, or a week, or a Downloaded from month, or a year, and a perfect equivalency was recognised between the payment of money and other works of penitence.18 So com- pletely was this syHtem established, that in the eleventh century St. Peter Damiani indignantly complains that no layman would endure a fast of three days in the week, and that the penitential http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ canons must be cast aside as obsolete if the redemptions are not abolished.14 Damiani's prediction was verified, but it was the re- demption system that triumphed. In the thirteenth century, with the introduction of enforced sacramental confession, the canons became practically obsolete. The assignment of penance grew to be wholly at the discretion of the confessor, and its acceptance became voluntary with the penitent, except in the rapidly diminish- ing cases of public penance, which need not detain us here, while at University of Connecticut on June 9, 2015 the alternative of redemption remained in force;ls indeed, as a factor in the theory of indulgences, it took a new and most impor- tant development. Of course, repentance was taught as a condition precedent to absolution, but the schoolmen BO diluted it with their definitions of sufficing servile attrition that in ordinary every-day practice it became scarce more than a formality. While, therefore, absolution was not openly and unblushingly sold, the nice distinctions between this and the current practice were not easily apprehensible by the common mind, and in the existing condition of imperfect moral development among the people, the belief was not unnatural that absolution was purchasable—not merely the pardon in the forum externum, but the absolute forgive- ness of sin in the forum conscientxae, through the power of the keys and the application of the treasure of the merits of Christ and the saints. To the trained scholastic theologian, the distinction was 11 For ample detaila see Maratori, Antiq. ItaL Dissert, lrviii. 11 Alexand. PP. IL Epitt. 100 (Migna's Patrol cxlvL 1886). " Pteudo-Bedae Poenitent. o. 41; Pieudo-Egberti PoenitenL lib. ILL. c 60, 61; Cummtani Potnitent. De modia poenitentiae (Wasserschleben, Butsordnungen, 276, 340, 462).—Beginon. de Eecles. Diseipl. lib. U. c 438-46. Bnrehardi Dtcreti lib. xix. o. 11-45. Ivon. Camotens. Deer. p. xv. o. 206. " S. Petri Damiani EpitU. lib. L epist 15. » 0. 8, Extra, v. 38. Joh. Friburgena. toe. o*. tit. xxxiy. Q. 135* 1898 TAXES OF THE PAPAL PENITENTIARY 427 sufficient to enable John XTTT, -when he wished to discipline hia penitentiaries in Borne for removing the excommunication of Louis of Bavaria and his adherents, to impute it to them as a crime that they claimed to control the keys of heaven and hell, and sold to sinners absolutions a poena et a culpa for the most serious sins.