overpass humanity's
normal limits begun to be realized after the Middle Ages were over by
clear-sighted thinkers. "Qui veut faire l'ange," said Pascal, pungently
summing up this view of the matter, "fait la bete." That had often been
illustrated in the history of the Church.

The Penitentials began to come into use in the seventh century,
and became of wide prevalence and authority during the ninth and
tenth centuries. They were bodies of law, partly spiritual and
partly secular, and were thrown into the form of catalogues of
offences with the exact measure of penance prescribed for each
offence. They represented the introduction of social order among
untamed barbarians, and were codes of criminal law much more than
part of a system of sacramental confession and penance. In France
and Spain, where order on a Christian basis already existed, they
were little needed. They had their origin in Ireland and England,
and especially flourished in Germany; Charlemagne supported them
(see, e.g., Lea, _History of Auricular Confession_, vol. ii, p.
96, also Ch. XVII; Hugh Williams, edition of Gildas, Part II,
Appendix 3; the chief Penitentials are reproduced in
Wasserschleben's _Bussordnungen_).

In 1216 the Lateran Council, under Innocent III, made confession
obligatory. The priestly prerogative of regulating the amount of
penance according to circumstances, with greater flexibility than
the rigid Penitentials admitted, was first absolutely asserted by
Peter of Poitiers. Then Alain de Lille threw aside the
Penitentials as obsolete, and declared that the priest himself
must inquire into the circumstances of each sin and weigh
precisely its guilt (Lea, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 171).

Long before this period, however, the ideals of chastity, so far
as they involved any considerable degree of continence, although
they had become firmly hardened into the conventional traditions
and ideals of the Christian Church, had ceased to have any great
charm or force for the people living in Christendom. Among the
Northern barbarians, with different traditions of a more vigorous
and natural order behind them, the demands of sex were often
frankly exhibited. The monk Ordericus Vitalis, in the eleventh
century, notes what he calls the "lasciviousness" of the wives of
the Norman conquerors of England who, when left alo