IMMACtJLATE
679
IMMACULATE
made to a feast which had been established to com-
memorate an insupportable tradition. It maintained
that the flesh of Mary needed no purification; that it
was sanctified before the conception. Some writers
of those times entertained the fantastic idea that
before Adam fell, a portion of his flesh had been
reserved by GotI and transmitted from generation to
generation, and that out of this flesh the body of
Mary was formed (Scheeben, op. cit.. Ill, 551), and
this formation they commemorated by a feast. The
letter of St. Bernard did not prevent the extension of
the feast, for in 1154 it was observed all over France,
until in 1275, through the efforts of the Paris Univer-
sity it was abolished in Paris and other dioceses.
After the saint's death the controversy arose anew
between Nicholas of St. Albans, an English monk
who defended the festival as established in England,
and Peter Cellensis, the celebrated Bishop of Chartres.
Nicholas remarks that the soul of Mary was pierced
twice by the sword, i. e. at the foot of the cross and
when St. Bernard wrote his letter against her feast
(Scheeben, III, 551). The point continued to be
debated throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, and illustrious names appeared on each
side. St. Peter Damian, Peter the Lombard, Alex-
ander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, and Albert the
Great are quoted as opposing it. St. Thomas at first
pronounced in favour of the doctrine in his treatise on
the "Sentences" (in I. Sent. c. 44, q. I ad 3), yet
in his " Summa Theologica " he concluded against it.
Much discussion has arisen as to whether St. Thomas
did or'did not deny that the Blessed Virgin was im-
maculate at the instant of her animation, and learned
books have been written to vindicate him from hav-
ing actually drawn the negative conclusion. Fortius
controversy see: Cornoldi, " Sententia S. Thoma; etc.",
(2nd ed., Naples, 1870); Ronard de Card, " L'ordre
des Freres-precheurs et I'iramaculee Conception"
(Brussels, 1864); Pesch, " Prsl. dogm. " III (Frei-
burg, 1895), 170; Heinrich-Gutberlet, " Dogmat.
Theol.", VII (Mainz, 1896), 436; Tobbe, "Die Stel-
lung des hi. Thomas zu der unbefl. Empfangnis"
(Munster, 1892); C. M. Schneider, "Die unbefl. Emp-
fangnis und die Erbsiinde" (Ratislion, 1892); Pohle,
"Lehrbuch d. Dogmatik", II (Paderborn, 1903),
254. Yet it is hard to say that St. Thomas did not
require an instant at least, after the animation of
Mary, before her sanctification. His great difficulty
appears to have arisen from the doubt as to how she
could have been redeemed if she had not sinned.
This difficulty he raised in no fewer than ten passages
in his writings (see, e. g., "Summa Theol.", Ill, Q.
xxvii, a. 2, ad 2um). But while St. Thomas thus held
back from the essential point of the doctrine, he
himself laid down the principles which, after they had
been drawn together and worked out, enabled other
minds to furnish the true solution of this difficulty
from his own premises.
In the thirteenth century the opposition was largely due to a want of clear insight into the suliject in dispute. The word " conception " was used in differ- ent senses, which had not been separated by careful definition. If St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and other theologians had known the doctrine in the sense of the definition of 1854, they would have been its strongest defenders instead of being its opponents. We may formulate the question discussed by them in two propositions, both of which are against the sense of the dogma of 1854: (1) the sanctification of Mary took place before the infusion of the soul into the flesh, so that the immunity of the soul was a conse- quence of the sanctification of the flesh and there was no liability on the part of the soul to contract orig- inal sin. This would approach the opinion of the Damascene concerning the holiness of the active conception. (2) The sanctification took place after the infusion of the soul by redemption from the servi-
tude of sin, into which the soul had been drawn by its
union with the unsanctified flesh. This form of the
thesis excluded an immaculate conception. The
theologians forgot that between sanctification before
infusion and sanctification after infusion there was a
medium, i. e., sanctification of the soul at the moment
of its infusion. To them the idea seemed strange that
what was subsequent in the order of nature could be
simultaneous in point of time. Speculatively taken,
the soul must be created before it can be infused and
sanctified, but, in reality, the soul is created and sanc-
tified at the very moment of its infusion into the body.
Their principal difficulty was the declaration of St.
Paul (Rom., v. 12). that all men have sinned in Adam.
The purpose of this Pauline declaration, however,
is to insist on the need which all men have of redemp-
tion by Christ. Our Lady was no exception to this
rule. A second difficulty was the silence of the earlier
Fathers. But the divines of those times were dis-
tinguished not so much for their knowledge of the
Fathers or of history, as for their exercise of the
power of reasoning. They read the Western Fathers
more than those of the Eastern Church, who exhibit
in far greater completeness the tradition of the
Immaculate Conception. And many works of the
F'athers which had then been lost sight of have since
been brought to light. The famous Duns Scotus (d.
1308) at last (in III Sent., dist. iii, in both commen-
taries) laid the foundations of the true doctrine so
solidly and dispelled the objections in a manner so
satisfactory, that from that time onward the doc-
trine prevailed. He showed that the sanctification
after animation — sanctificatio post animationem —
demanded that it should follow in the order of nature
(natura-) not of time (temporis); he removed the
great difficulty of St. Thomas showing that, so far
from being excluded from redemption, the Blessed
Virgin olitained of her Divine Son the greatest of
redemptions through the mystery of her preservation
from all sin. He also brought forward, by way of
illustration, the somewhat dangerous and doubtful
argument of Eadmer (S. Anselm) "decuit, potuit,
ergo fecit" (cf. Scheeben, III, 555, ss.).
From the time of Scotus not only did the doctrine become the common opinion at the universities, but the feast spread widely to those countries where it had not been previously adopted. With the exception of the Dominicans, all or nearly all, of the reli- gious orders took it up. The Franciscans at the gen- eral chapter at Pisa in 1263 adopted the Feast of the Conception of Mary for the entire order; this, however, does not mean that they professed at that time the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Following in the footsteps of their own Duns Scotus, the learned Petrus Aureolus and Franciscus de May- ronis Ijecame the most fervent champions of the doctrine, although their older teachers (St. Bonaven- ture included) had been opposed to it. The contro- versy continued, but the defenders of the opposing opinion were almost entirely confined to the members of the Dominican Order. In 1439 the dispute was brought Ijefore the Council of Basle where the Uni^ versity of Paris, formerly opposed to the doctrine, proved to be its most ardent advocate, asking for a dogmatical definition. The two referees at the council were John of Segovia and John Turrecremata (Torquemada) . After it had been discussed for the space of two years before that assemblage, the bishops declared the Immaculate Conception to be a doctrine which was pious, consonant with Catholic worship, Catholic faith, right reason, and Holy Scripture; nor, said they, was it henceforth allowable to preach or declare to the contrary (Mansi, XXXIX, 182). The Fathers of the Council say that the Church of Rome was celebrating the feast. This is true only in a cer- tain sense. It was kept in a number of the churches of Rome, especially in those of the rehgious orders,
