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Bicester to Dorchester. There seems to be some confusion as to the value of the gros tournois (Vol. I, p. 197) in a long note, quoting many authorities: but certainly this handsome French royal coin of the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries was almost the same as the English groat in size and value; indeed, the English groat was derived from it when first struck by Edward I. Three thousand gros tournois, therefore, meant £50, in 1311, neither more nor less. When the gros declined in value during the Hundred Years' War, it would mean a less sum in English money. But in this note the gros tournois seems to be confused with the livre tournois. But it is unnecessary to quibble about small points when we are dealing with a great book-as this solid production of Sir Charles Mallet most undoubtedly is.

C. OMAN

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CASUISTRY

Summa Theologiæ. By ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. C. 1270.

De Obligatione Conscientiæ. By ROBERT SANDERSON. 1647; edited by W. WHEWELL, Cambridge.

1851.

Ductor Dubitantium. By JEREMY TAYLOR. 1660.

4. Cases of Conscience Resolved. By THOMAS BARLOW. 1692.

5. Theologia Moralis. By ST. ALPHONSUS DE LIGORIO.

6. The Priest in Absolution.

1866.

1753-5.

7. Some Principles of Moral Theology. By K. E. KIRK. Longmans,

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8. Moral Theology. By F. J. HALL and F. H. HALLOCK. Longmans, Green & Co. 1924.

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ASUISTRY is a science, or art, or practice that has got a bad name. Casuist," as ordinarily used in argument, implies something underhand or dishonest in the mental process of the person to whom it is applied, and such processes have often been supposed to be preponderantly, if not exclusively, the property of the theologians of the Church of Rome. Yet a very little thought will make it clear that casuistry does and must exist in the systems of all religions which profess any connection with morality, even if the Roman Church has most largely developed it. The following is the result of an examination by one who is not a member of that Church, but sympathetic to it in most of its activities.

Casuistry might perhaps be defined as the process by which particular cases are brought under general rules; it need thus have no especial connection with religion; but it is, by general consent, confined to questions of morals: so that the discussion of a doubtful point in art would not ordinarily be called casuistical. Perhaps this is because art has no general rules. It is probable that nobody ever passes a day of his life without considering and solving a problem in casuistry: such problems occur in every game, every profession, every relation of humanity. Here is an example it is generally agreed, by those who follow all codes of morality, that the eighth commandment is to be observed. Stealing is bad; the distinction between meum and tuum must be observed. Very well; a man finds a shilling: is he justified in

keeping it? Stated in this naked fashion, the case cannot be resolved; with sufficient data as to the time and place, to possible losers, and to the condition of the finder, a result might be reached.

Casuistry is by no means a scholastic or even a Christian invention: there are elaborate books on casuistry from pagan times. As an example may be taken the Controversia of the elder Seneca; he was not an inspiring writer, but the form in which the questions are put is not without interest. Usually the general laws are first stated, and then the question to be solved by their equitable application. Here is a specimen :—

The law. A priest must be whole and sound in mind and body. The case. Metellus, a neophyte, bravely enters the temple of Vesta when it is on fire, and rescues from it the Palladium; in doing so, he loses his eyes in the flames. The priesthood is then denied him. Is this just?

Here is another :

The law. If a father dies intestate, the elder son is to divide the patrimony into two parts, and the younger to choose which he will take. Another law. It is permitted to legitimise a son born of a slave-woman. The case.-A man had two sons, one legitimate, the other by a slave-girl; he legitimised the latter, and died. The elder son divided the patrimony into two parts: in one he included the whole of the property, in the other the slave, the mother of the younger son. The younger chose his mother, and then brought an action against his brother for fraud. Should he in equity succeed?

Here is a case with the arguments :

A Vestal virgin wrote the verse," Felices nupta; moriar, nisi nubere dulce est." She is accused of unchastity.

Against." Happy the wed," did she say? It is the cry of one who desires wedding. "May I die "; 'tis the assertion of one who believes and knows. "To wed is sweet"; Vestal, you either swear this after experience, or if not, you are a perjurer: neither suits the holy life. To you the magistrates lower the emblems of their state, before you the consul and the praetors step out of the road: your virginity has its reward. A priestess should seldom swear, and then only by her patroness, Vesta. If you must talk of marriages, talk of Lucretia's write about her death before you swear by your own. You are worthy of all punishment if anything is more sweet to you, more happy, than your priesthood. "Sweet," did you say? That is a carefully thought-out word, a word drawn from your inmost being; a word of one who has not merely made trial, but taken delight in the thought. She who desires unchastity is unchaste, even without

Your

physical unchastity taking place. For.-God save us all! accusation is founded on one line alone, and that without its context. It were better, perhaps, that she had never tried her hand at poetry; but there is a difference between rebuking her and inflicting severe punishment on her. No Vestal can be condemned for unchastity, unless she has been bodily unchaste. Do you think that poets write what they feel, or feel what they write? She lived modestly, almost ascetically-no luxurious dress, no free conversation with men; her only fault is that she has talent. Why should she not envy Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, or her who bore Cato? She might even envy those who brought forth priestesses like herself.

The arguments in these cases of Seneca are stated more rhetorically and legally than in the later writers who will be mentioned below; but the florid style will be excused when remembrance is had of the prevailing fashion of rhetoric which coloured the whole literature of the early Roman Empire. Such cases were of course also discussed by the Greek moralists and philosophers, as well as by other Romans than the elder Seneca ; these are however convenient specimens of the way the questions were put and argued, because their presentment is here more formal than elsewhere.

With the advent of the new religion, these moral questions appeared again with increasing importance. It is not necessary to recount all the points debated by the early Fathers, but one may be stated, as of some moment. The Christians could not receive back into the Church, after a persecution, those who had apostatized and formally worshipped idols; or at any rate they could not receive them without years of the severest and most humiliating penance. But some Christians, rather ingeniously, it must be admitted, obtained from venal magistrates documents which falsely certified that they had so fulfilled the law of sacrificing, when they had in fact done nothing of the kind: what was the position of these libellatici, as they were called? The dispute nearly rent the infant Church in twain.

All through the patristic age these questions were acutely debated, but only, so to say, incidentally: they occur often enough, but in general disquisitions on conduct and dogmatics, and were not reduced to a formal system of moral theology. The beginning of works devoted to this study alone is found, as might be expected, in the great thirteenth century revival; and it is perhaps not without significance that St. Bernard of Clairvaux,

the last of the Fathers, was immediately succeeded by St. Raymond of Pennafort, the first of the casuists. His book, the Summa de casibus penitentialibus, may be dated somewhere about 1228. He showed the truly scientific spirit of the Dominicans in his careful division of subjects and heads; his work is divided into four books-i. sins against God; ii. sins against one's neighbour; iii. ecclesiastical offences, offices, and rights; iv. marriage. St. Raymond was soon followed by a countryman of our own, Alexander of Hales, a Franciscan, and by the encyclopædic Vincent of Beauvais, in his Speculum Morale. Then the works on moral theology become too frequent even to enumerate. Mention may be made of the Pupilla Oculi of John de Burgo, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, the Opusculum Tripartitum of Gerson, the famous Chancellor of Paris, and the Summa of St. Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence.

Here, on the brink of the Reformation, we may pause for an obvious consideration: that the obligatory character of auricular confession naturally made these books the more widely needed and used. The confessor had to decide whether a given action or thought confessed was sinful and, if so, what measure of penance its gravity necessitated, as well as remedies against its recurrence. This is no place for argument for or against sacramental confession, but only for a description of some of its results. One of these was to bring about an important stage in casuistry, the division of sin into two categories, the one mortal, the other venial. The distinction has scriptural authority, for St. John tells us that “there is a sin unto death. . . . All unrighteousness is sin and there is a sin not unto death." This appears to be justifiable and useful, and in accordance with nature. There are two kinds of wrong-doing: one which, because of its gravity in matter and formal guilt, is fatal to the life of grace; and the other, proceeding largely from weakness rather than from deliberate wilfulness, which is not immediately fatal in its results.

Mr. Pepys wrote in his Diary :

"Up; and I did by a little note, which I flung to Deb, advise her that I did continue to deny that ever I kissed her, and so she might govern herself. The truth is that I did adventure upon God's pardoning me this lie, knowing how heavy a thing it would be for me to be the ruin of the poor girle, and next knowing that if my wife should know all it were impossible ever for her to be at peace with me again,

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