At this period of the Church's greatest power there was a noticeable revival of preaching caused by the monastic reformers like the Clugniacs, Cistercians, Dominicans, and Franciscans who earnestly preached repentance, and also by the tremendous crusading enthusiasm. All the heroes of monasticism, scholasticism, and the papal hierarchy were forceful preachers.[591:1] To accommodate these preachers pulpits were built against a pillar or in a corner of a nave. To the masses on popular occasions, and even in the regular services, they spoke in the vernacular, but all stately addresses in synods and councils were delivered in the speech of Rome. Popes and councils urged the importance of rearing a race of learned clergy who could give the Church intelligent leadership. The synod of Treves in 1221 went so far as to forbid uneducated and inexperienced priests to preach, because it caused more harm than good. As a result of this wide-spread preaching the Church was given a unity of doctrine and feeling which it had not enjoyed before.
The number of sacraments was generally recognised by the thirteenth century as seven.[592:1] Peter Lombard's Sentences first outlined them and Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) practically established them, although they were not officially adopted until the Council of Florence in 1439. Theoretically the sacraments were believed to confer grace, "the fulness of divine life," upon the recipients and to make them different persons with new characters. This change was produced by God through the Church and was based upon the idea that this life should be consecrated and sanctified by religion in all its various relations. Hence baptism suggested birth to a new spiritual life free from the sin due to Adam's fall; the Lord's Supper gave nutriment to preserve life and strength; penance indicated a recovery to health after sickness incident to sin; confirmation marked the growth of righteous life to maturity; extreme unction suggested diet and exercise in convalescence and purified and refreshed the spirit of the dying; ordination marked a promotion to a higher consecrated life and to new duties; and marriage meant the assumption of new social relations which could never be severed. The Church held that all these sacraments were instituted by Jesus and used by him personally, although baptism and the Lord's Supper were the most important. Peter Lombard said that if Christ did not employ them, the Apostles at least did. Baptism, confirmation, and ordination, it was held, imparted an indelible character, therefore could not be repeated. All consecrations and blessings were looked upon as different from the sacraments and were called "Sacramentalia." It was asserted also that the
administration of the sacraments in the hands of a bad priest was valid.
The mass continued to be the heart, life blood, and very centre of all worship. It was believed to be a propitiatory sacrifice offered to God for the sins of the world whenever the sacrament was celebrated. Christ was recrucified as on the cross at each mass. The eucharist gave spiritual nourishment to the communicant, averted evils and brought blessings, and, with penance, removed the guilt of sin. Transubstantiation became a fixed dogma in the thirteenth century. Up to the ninth century the Church unanimously believed that the real body and blood of Christ were administered to those who received the sacrament of the eucharist, but Christians differed widely as to the nature and manner of their presence and no Pope or council had settled the question. In 831 Radbert wrote a famous book on the subject in which he held that after consecration only the figure of bread and wine was present and that the rest was literal body and blood and that this body and blood was the same as that born of Mary, crucified, and raised from the dead. This work created a warm discussion which lasted for four centuries and provoked many bitter individual quarrels. Innocent III. in 1215 settled the dispute by making the dogma of transubstantiation a part of the constitutional law of the Church and at the same time ordered all the laity to go to confession and to partake of the eucharist at least once a year. The dogma did not pass unquestioned, although the common people had no difficulty in believing it.[593:1] As a result it led to the deification of the bread and wine, to the use of beautiful golden or silver
urns and cups for them, to the construction of a costly tabernacle in which to keep the sacred elements, to lamps and decorations, to solemn processions, to a pompous ceremony, to bowing the knee before the host in the church and on the streets and to prayer to the host as the most important part of worship, and to the celebration throughout the whole Church of an annual festival of the Holy Sacrament (1264). The cup was withheld from the laity[594:1] and given only to the priests after the eleventh century because it was feared that the wine might be spilled and also because it was believed that the body and blood of Jesus were fully present in both elements.[594:2] Wafers, called the host, were substituted for the broken bread. The mass soon became an object of commerce. Private masses for the living and particularly for the dead, begun in the eighth century, were very common in the thirteenth, so much so, in fact, that certain priests had no other function than that of saying masses for the dead. All over Christendom endowments were given for these masses and an army of priests did nothing else. By refusing mass the clergy could exert strong pressure on individuals and governments. The mass was held to be absolutely necessary to salvation, and the eucharist was even given to little children, although in the thirteenth century it was restricted to children under seven. It also had a marked effect upon church architecture by increasing the number of altars in the church in order to accommodate the increasing number of private masses. All the physical and metaphysical
education of the age turned upon the question of the mass.[595:1]
Penance played a very important part in the Church in the thirteenth century and received its final form in the Council of Florence in 1439. As early as the fifth century a regular criminal code developed in the Church and in the seventh century a Grecian monk who was archbishop enacted a body of severe laws for penitential discipline which remained in authority until the twelfth century. The climax was reached in the thirteenth century when every diocese had its own penitential code and public penance had been replaced by private penance. Penance was simply the punishment prescribed by the priest to remove the guilt of sin, and usually consisted of fasts, prayers, pilgrimages, and acts of charity and mercy. The Church early permitted penance to be paid by substituting money payments for some pious enterprise.[595:2] Furthermore, it was generally held that penance afflicted on one person could be paid by another; for example, a penance of seven years could be accomplished in seven days by a sufficient number of co-workers.[595:3] Even Thomas Aquinas said that as long as the debt was paid it mattered little who paid it. Indulgences and papal pardons paralleled the history of penance. The power to show leniency, or to shorten or to lengthen the character or the time of penance, was early recognised to be in the bishop's hands.[595:4] From this idea there gradually arose a regular system of commutation which reached the highest point during
the crusade movement. The theory was most fully stated by Thomas Aquinas[596:1] and Alexander of Hales.[596:2] They asserted that after the remission of the eternal punishment due for sin there still remained a temporal punishment to be undergone either in this life or in purgatory; that temporal pain might be remitted by the application of the superabundant merits of Christ and the saints out of the treasury of the Church. The hierarchy was the custodian of that prerogative. But indulgence could be granted only to those who were in full communion with the Church and who manifested a contrite heart, made confession, and submitted to penance.[596:3] Penances were either general or local, or plenary or partial. The use of indulgences was very much abused since they were often granted only for money and because they were employed for trivial and secular purposes like building bridges[596:4] and improving roads.[596:5] They were even applied to the dead.[596:6] The doctrine of purgatory had developed by the twelfth century and was generally accepted in the thirteenth.[596:7]
Auricular confession, which seems to have been fully developed by the time of Innocent I.,[596:8] was required by Innocent III. after 1216 of all Church members at least once a year under penalty of exclusion from the Church. It was an essential part of the sacrament
of penance and gave the priests a tremendous power over the people which was used both for good and ill. The synod of Toulouse in 1229 insisted on compulsory confession at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. Any breach of the confessional was visited by the fourth Lateran Council with excommunication, deposition, and imprisonment for life in a monastery. Confession was the bridle by means of which the laity were guided by the priesthood, hence the Church laid more and more importance upon the necessity of the practice as a duty.