Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/874

 RESERVATION

784

RESERVATION

Rescripts expire for the most part in the same man- ner as faculties.

Decretals Greg. IX, I, 3; Tadnton, The Law of the Church (London, 1906). A. B. MeeHAN.

Reservation, the restriction in certain cases by a superior of the jurisdiction ordinarily exercised by an inferior. Reservation obtains in appointing to a benefice (q. v., section Collation), in dispensing from vows (q. v.), and in absolving from sins and censures. The power of reservation is vested in its fullness in the pope, who may exercise this right throughout the world. Bishops, regular superiors, or others with quasi-episcopal jurisdiction in the penitential forum may reserve to themselves the absolution of sins of their own subjects. Parish priests and local superiors do not possess this right. The chief reason for thus restricting the power of confessors is to deter evil-doers by the difficulty of obtaining absolution. Only graver mortal sins, that are e.xternal and completed, not merely attempted acts, should be reserved. Con- fession would prove too odious, were the confessor's jurisdiction unduly limited. Sins are reserved with censure (see Censdre.s, Ecclesi,4stic.\l) or without censure: nearly all papal reservations belong to the former class, and the reservation is principally on account of the censure; episcopal reservations pertain for the most part to the latter category.

See Apostoucjd Sedis Moderation! ; Censures, Eccle- siastical, section Absolution from Censures; Council of Trent, Ses3. XIV. cap. vii. can. xi; Taunton, Law of the Church, s. v. Reserved Cases; and the works of mora! theologians.

A. B. Meehax.

Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, the

practice of jireserving after the celebration of the Liturgy a portion of the consecrated elements for the Communion of the sick or for other pious purposes. The extreme antiquity of such reservation cannot be disputed. Already Justin Martyr, in the first de- tailed account of Eucharistie practice we possess, tells us that at the close of the Liturgy "there is a distribution to each and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons" (I Apol., Ixxxvii). Again St. Irenseus as quoted by Eusebius (Hist, eccl., V, x.xiv, 15) wrote to Pope Victor that "the presbyters before thee who did not observe it [i. e., the Quart odeciman practice] sent the Eucharist to those of other districts who did observe it". Ter- tuUian uses the actual word, reservare, and seems to suggest that a man who scrupled to break his fast on a fast day might approach the Holy Table and carry the Blessed Sacrament away with him to consume it later on — "accepto corpore Domini et reservato, utrumque salvum est, et participatio sacra- menti et executio officii" ("De orat.", XIX; C. S. E. L., XX, 192. Cf. "Ad ux.", II, 5).

In St. Cyprian, about the middle of the third cen- tury, we already find the record of Eucharistie mir- acles, as, for example, when he tells us of a woman who sought to open with polluted hands the casket (area) in which she kept the Blessed Sacrament and was deterred by flames bursting from it (De lapsis, 26; C. S. E. L., I, 256). And again, at about the same period, an account written by St. Dionysius of Alexandria has been copied by Eusebius (Hist, eocl., VI, xliv) from which we learn that a priest, being ill and unable himself to visit a dying person who had sent a boy to him to ask for the Holy Viaticum in the middle of the night, gave the boy a portion of the Eucharist to take to the sufferer who was to consume it moistened with water. This story illustrates the first and primary purpose of reservation, which is thus formally stated in the thirteenth canon of Nicaea: "With respect to the dying, the old rule of the Church should continue to be observed which for- bids that anyone who is on the point of death should be deprived of the last and most necessary Viaticum"

(roO TfKfVTalov Kal avafKaioTarov i(f>o5lov). But it was clearly also permitted to Christians, especially in the time of persecution, to keep the Blessed Sacra- ment in their own possession that they might receive it privately (see, e. g., St. Basil, Ep. cclxxxix, "Ad Caesar", and St. Jerome, Ep. i, "Ad Panimach.", n. 15). This usage lasted on for many centuries, es- pecially under certain exceptional circumstances, for example, in the case of hermits. An answer given by the Bishop of Corinth to Luke the Younger, an anchoret in Achaia in the tenth century, explains in detail how Communion should be received under such circumstances (Combefis, "Patr. Bib. Auctuar.", II, 45).

At an earlier date, when certain hereticallj'-minded monks of Mount Calanion in Palestine expressed doubts whether the Holy Eucharist which had been kept to the morrow did not lose its consecration, St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote (P. G., LXXVI, 1075) that those who so spoke must be mad (tmlmtrrai). What is more surprising, it remained the custom in many re- hgious houses of women in the West down to the eleventh and twelfth centuries or later to receive on the day of their solemn profession a little provision of the Blessed Sacrament, and with this they spent a period of eight days in a sort of retreat, being free "to partake daily of this heavenly food " (see Martene, "De Antiquis Ecclesiae Ritibus", II, 187). We also learn that Christians sought to carry the Blessed Sacrament about with them in times of grievous peril as a means of protection (St. Ambrose, "De Excessu Fratris", I, 43) or as a source of consolation. Further, as noticed above, the Eucharist was sent from one bishop to another in token of charitable communion, and it appears from the first "Ordo Romanus" (nn. 8 and 22) that a portion of the Eucharist remaining over from a previous sacrifice was mingled with the elements consecrated in the next celebration, probably as a token of continuity, while the practice of the Mass of the Presanctified, in which the species pre- viously consecrated alone were used, was from an early period prescribed in the Eastern Church through- out the whole of Lent, the Sundays only excepted.

On the other hand, there appears to be no reliable evidence that before the year 1000, or even later, the Blessed Sacrament was kept in churches in order that the faithful might visit it or pray before it. Such evidence as has been quoted in proof of such a practice will be found on closer inspection to tell the other way. For example, though the altar is called by St. Optatus of Milevis ("De schism. Don.", VI, I; in P. L., XI, 1066) the throne of the Body and Blood of Christ (sedes et corporis et sangvinis Chri^i), the altar is also described in the same context as the place "where Christ's Body and Blood dwell for a certain brief space" (per certa momenta). Further, the true explanation of a passage in which St. Greg- ory Nazianzen describes his sister Gorgonia as \nsit- ing the altar in the middle of the night (P. G., XXXV, 810) seems to be that she went there to seek such crumbs or traces of the Eucharistie species as might accident allv have fallen and been overlooked (see Journal of Theol. Stud., Jan., 1910, pp. 275-78). It would probably, then, be correct to say that down to the later Middle Ages, those who came to the church to pray outside the hours of service came there not so much to honour the Eucharistie presence as to pray before the altar upon which Jesus Christ was wont to descend when the words of consecration were spoken in the Mass.

As to the manner and place of reservation during the early centuries there was no great uniformity of praciice. Undoubtedly the Eucharist was at first often kept in private houses, but a Coimcil of Tole<l(i in 480, which denounced those who did not immediately consume the sacred species when they received them from the priest at the altar, very