4.
sacrificial death of Jesus: *
The Primitive Church (100-312 AD) recognized the idea of sacrifice but paid more attention to the spiritual & subjective side of sacrifice, stressing prayer & thanksgiving in the Eucharistic function. The mature Christian Churches, both East & West, agreed on the celebration of the Eucharist & affirmed its sacrificial nature as identical with the sacrifice of Christ, that the Eucharistic bread & wine become the body & blood of Christ. The Roman Church provided an exact definition of this sacrament & believed that the substances actually become the body & blood of Christ. While aspects of sacraments are recognized as mysteries, the doctrine of transubstantiation gives a clear definition. Eastern churches label the Eucharist as a mystery without describing how this occurs or giving the same detail that the Western Church has.
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The Western Church carefully defined the sacraments in Canon Law. The Council of Trent declared there to be exactly 7 sacraments; in the Eastern Churches, the Mysteries (sacraments) are not defined with such precision. They list 7 sacraments but do not limit them to 7. The Western Church considers the consecrated bread & wine of the Eucharist as 1 Sacrament; the East refers to the Eucharist as "the Mysteries" in the plural & Orthodox Christians receive Holy Communion in both species (bread & wine). Orthodox Christians do not interpret the Words of Consecration (the words echoing those of Jesus at the Last Supper) as the moment the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood but understand the process to be completed at the Epiclesis or the calling-down of the Holy Spirit upon the bread & wine.
5.
Faustian contrition: *
The Early Church recognized confession but its form & practice differed markedly from what become the standard Western confession. Public sins (murder, theft, insults) were often confessed openly in church. This act might include prayerful participation and support from the community to a sinner. The prescribing of penance by a bishop became part of confession as reflected in the Council of Chalon-sur-Saône (644–655). Penance was needed to expiate temporal punishment (punishment due to sins even when the sins are forgiven); the sinner must be purified either in life or after death in Purgatory. In the early Church penance was often arduous; it would have been common for someone to receive a 10-year penance for committing abortion, a mortal sin. Penance was often done before absolution rather than after absolution and councils from the fourth to sixth centuries show that penitents were denied access to the Eucharist until reconciled with the Church.
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Western confession develops in the early 13th century. The practice of individual confession (rather than pubic) emerges at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). This council united individual confession & reconciliation and decreed that every Christian who has reached the age of discretion must confess all their sins at least once a year to their own priest. Along with these changes there was also a move away from the heavy penance of the early Church. Penances began to be mitigated with emphasis on the Church's ability to expiate temporal effects of sin through prayer, indulgences, sacramentals & especially by the sacrifice of the Mass.
6.
impending end of the world (circa 1000) : *
In France we see populist expressions of millenarianism, chiefly in the Peace of God movement, which arose in S France, (Aquitaine), in the late 10th century, partially in response to the growing inability of royal & regional secular authorities to maintain law & order in the face of the uncontrollable castellan revolution. This disruption was casued by the masters of local & regional fortresses who exercised power at the expense of central authorities. The millenarian movement spread throughout France & had 2 peaks. The first was during the decade before the millennium of the Incarnation (1000 AD); the second occurred in the decade prior to the millennium of the Passion, the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross (1033 AD). It was apocalyptic & millennial in character as the dates suggest.
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It began at a church council at Le Puy (975) & was promoted at a number of subsequent councils, at Charroux (989,1028), Narbonne (990), Limoges (994, 1031), Poitiers (1000) & Bourges (1038). Churchmen gathered with regional lay authorities and attempted to make manifest God’s protective power. Mobilizing huge crowds at open-air revivalist gatherings, the clerics urged those attendant to pursue God’s peace on earth. All levels of society were brought together in vast revivalist gatherings, complete with a sense of social covenant. The cult of the saints was of central importance. Local relics were brought to the peace meetings & played an active role. The churchmen aroused the enthusiasm of the masses in attendance & proclaimed the intervention of the saints and the heavenly order would end the violence against church lands & the defenceless. Those in attendance would take oaths on the relics to uphold the Peace of God, to support the effort to reduce the violence of the period. The aim was to bring to earth, through the agency of the saints, the peace of the heavenly order.