Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/717

 SEAL

649

SEAL

town and its environs, occupied in making baskets and fans from the palms in the neighbouring forests (Sozomen, "Hist, eccles. ", VIII, 13); with them the four Tall Brothers took refuge when expelled from Egypt by the patriarch Theophilus for so- called origenist ideas. In 634 the Greeks were de- feated by the Arabs in the marshes of Bethsan; in 1182 the little town fought valiantly against Saladin. To-day Beisan is a Mu-ssulman village, situated by the railway from Caipha to Mzerib in the Hauran. The ancient ruins still exist, e.si:)ecially those of the theatre which measures 130 metres in half-circum- ference; the ruined acropolis stands in the hill of Kalat el Hosn. The climate is charming, the land very fertile and well watered. Rabbi Simon ben Lakish said: "If paradise is in Palestine, its gate is at Beisan".

Smith, Diet. Gr. and Roman Geog., s. v. Bethsan; Robinson, Biblical Researches, 326-9; Sumey of Western Palestine. Memoires II (London, 1882), 101-13; Neubaueb, La geographic du Talmud (Paris, 1868), 174 sqq.; Gu^rin, Description de la Palestine. Samarie, I (Paris, 1874), 284-98; Legbndre in Diet, de la Bible, a. v. Bethsan; Bouilujn in Echos d'Orient, I, .371-8; Thomsen, Loca sancta (Halle, 1907), 106.

S. Vailh^.

Seal. — The use of a seal by men of wealth and posi- tion was common before the Christian era. It was natural then that high functionaries of the Church should adopt the habit as soon as they became so- cially and politically important. An incidental allusion in one of St. Augustine's letters (ccxvii to Victori- nus) lets us know that he used a seal. The prac- tice spread and it seems to be taken for granted by Clovis at the very beginning of the Merovingian pe- riod (Mon. Germ. Hist.: Leg., II, 2). Later ecclesias- tical synods require that letters under the bishop's seal should be given to priests when for some reason they lawfully quitted their own proper diocese. So it was enacted at Chalon-sur-Saonc in 813. Pope Nicho- las I in the same century complains that the bishops of Dole and Reims had contra morem sent their letters to him unsealed (.Jaffe, "Regesta", nn. 2789, 280G, 2823). The custom of bi.shops possessing seals may from this dxite be assumed to have been pretty gen- eral. At first they were only used for securing the document from impertinent curiosity and the seal was commonly attached to the ties with which it was fastened. When the letter was opened by the ad- dressee the seal was necessarily broken. Later the seal served as an authentication and was attached to the face of the document. The deed was thus only held to be valid .so long as the seal remained intact. It soon came to follow from this point of view that not only real persons like kings and bishops, but also every kind of body corporate, cathedral chapters, munici- palities, monasteries, etc., also required a common seal to validate the acts which were executed in their name.

During the early Middle Ages seals of lead, or more properly "bulls" (q. v.), were in common use both in East and West, but except in the case of the papal chancery, these leaden authentications soon went out of favour in western Christendom and it became the universal practice to take the impressions in wax. In England hardly any waxen seals have survived of earlier date than the Norman Conquest. In the British Museum collection the earliest bishop's seals preserved are those of William of St. Carileph, Bishop of Durham (1081-96) and of St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (1093-1109). The importance of the seal as a means of authentication necessitated that when authority passed into new hands the old seal should be destroyed and a new one made. When the pope dies it is the first duty of the Cardinal Camer- lengo to obtain possession of the Fisherman's Ring, the papal signet, and to see that it is broken up. A simi- lar practice prevailed in the Middle Ages and it is often alluded to by historians, as it seems to have been

a matter of some ceremony. Thus we are concisely told: "There died in this year Robert de Insula, Bishop of Durham. After his burial, his seal was pub- hcly broken up in the presence of all by Master Rob- ert Avenel." (Hist. Dunel. Scrip. Tres., p. 63). Matthew Paris gives a similar description of the breaking of the seal of WilHam, Abbot of St. Albans, in 1235.

GmY, Manuel de Diplomatique (Pani, 1894), 622-657; Demay, Inventaire des sceaux de la Normandie (Paris, 1881) ; Birch, Reah, Connoisseurs' Library (1907) ; Birch, Catalogue of Seals in British Museum (Ix)nf)on, 1S87-99); d'Arcq, Collection de Sceaux (3 vols., Paris, 1868). HERBERT ThURSTON.

Seal of Confession, The Law of the. — In the "Decretum" of the Gratian who compiled the edicts of previous councils and the principles of Church law which he published about 1151, we find (secunda pars, dist. VI, c. II) the following declaration of the law as to the seal of confession: "Deponatur sacerdos qui peccata poenitentis pubhcare pra?sumit", i. e., "Let the priest who dares to make known the sins of his penitent be deposed", and he goes on to say that the violator of this law should be made a life-long, igno- minious wanderer. Canon 21 of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), binding on the whole Church, lays down tlu! obligation of secrecy in the following words: "Let the priest absolutely beware that he does not by word or sign or by any manner whatever in any way be- tray the sinner: but if he should happen to need wiser counsel let him cautiously seek the same without any mention of person. For whoever shall dare to reveal a sin disclosed to him in the tribunal of penance we decree that he shall be not only deposed from the priestly office but that he shall also be sent into the confinement of a monastery to do perpetual penance" (see Hefele-Leclercq, "Hist, des Conciles" at the year 1215; also Mansi or Harduin, "Coll. concilio- rum"). It is to be noted that neither this canon nor the law of the "Decretum" purports to enact for the first time the secrecy of confession. In a context cited further on the great fifteenth-century English canonist, Lyndwood, speaks of two reasons why a priest is bound to keep secret a confession, the first being on account of the sacrament because it is almost (quasi) of the essence of the sacrament to keep secret the confession. (Cf. also Jos. Mascardus, "De pro- bationibus", Frankfort, 1703, arg. 378.)

England. — Medieval England. — At a much earlier date in Anglo-Saxon England we meet with several laws concerning confession. The laws of Edward the Elder (921-4), son of Alfred the Great, enjoin: "And if a man guilty of death (i. e., who has incurred the penalty of death) desires confession let it never be denied him". This injunction is repeated in the forty-fourth of the secular laws of King Canute (1017-35). These laws are prefaced thus: "This then is the secular law which by the counsel of my 'witan' I will that it be observed all over England". The laws of King Ethelred who reigned from 978 to 1016 declare (V, 22) : "And let every Christian man do as is needful to him: let him strictly keep his Christianity and accustom himself frequently to shrift (i. e., confess): and fearlessly declare his sins". The very close connexion between the religion of the Anglo-Saxons and their laws, many of which are purely ordinances of religious observance enacted by the State, the repeated recognition of the supreme jurisdiction of the pope, and the various instances of the application in the Church in England of the laws of the Church in general lead conclusively to the opinion that the ecclesiastical law of the secrecy of confession was recognized by the law of the land in Anglo-Saxon England.

In the period between the Norman Conquest and the Reformation we find the law of the Church in gen- eral as to the inviolability of the seal of confession stringently enjoined by English councils. The Coun-