Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/469

 H0L7

415

HOLT

that quality which is, by appropriation, the charac- teristic quality of the Third Divine Person. Charity and goodness are especially attributed to the Holy Ghost, as power is to the Father and wisdom to the Son. Just, then, as they termed sins against the Father those that resulted from frailty, and sins against the Son those that sprang from ignorance, so the sins against the Holy Ghost are those that are committed from downright malice, either \>y despising or rejecting the inspirations and impulses which, hav- ing been stirred in man's soul by the Holy Ghost, would turn him away or deliver him from evil. It is easy to see how this wide explanation suits all the circumstances of the case where Christ addresses the words to the Pharisees. These sins are commonly reck- oned six: despair, presumption, impenitence or a fLxed determination not to repent, obstinacy, resisting the known truth, and envy of another's spiritual welfare.

The sins against the Holy Ghost are said to be un- pardonable, but the meaning of this assertion will vary very much according to which of the three explanations given above is accepted. As to final impenitence, it is absolute; and this is easily understood, for even God cannot pardon where there is no repentance, and the moment of death is the fatal instant after which no mortal sin is remitted. It was because St. Augustine considered Christ's words to imply absolute unpardon- ableness that he held the sin against the Holy Ghost to be solely final impenitence. In the two other ex- planations, according to St. Thomas, the sin against the Holy Ghost is irremissible, not absolutely and always, but inasmuch as, considered in itself, it has not the claims and extenuating circumstances, inclining towards a pardon, that might be alleged in the case of sins of weakness or ignorance. He who, from pure and deliberate malice, refuses to recognize the mani- fest work of God, or rejects the necessary means of salvation, acts exactly like a sick man who not only refuses all medicine and all food, but who does all in his power to increase his illness, and whose malady becomes incurable, due to his own action. It is true that, in either case, God coukl, by a miracle, over- come the evil; He could, by His omnipotent inter- vention, either nullify the natural causes of bodily death, or radically change the stubborn will of the sinner; but such intervention is not in accordance with His ordinary providence; and if He allows the secondary causes to act, if He ofTers the free human will only the help of ordinary but sufficient grace, w-ho shaU seek cause of complaint? In a word, the irre- missibleness of the sins against the Holy Ghost is exclusively on the part of the sinner, on account of the sinner's act.

On the dogma see: St. Thomas, Summa Theol., I. Q. xxxvi- xliii; Franzeliv, De Deo Trino (Rome, 18S1): C. Pesch, PrcB- lectiones dogmaticte, II (Freiburg im Br., 1895) ; Pohle, Lehrbutrh der Dogmatik, I (P.iderbom, 1902); Tanquerey, Synop. theol. dogm, spec, I, II (Rome, 1907-8). Omceming the Scriptural arguments for the dogma: Winstanley, Spirit in the New Testa- ment (Cambridge, 1908); Lemonnyer, Epitres de S. Paid, I (Paris, 1905). (Concerning tradition: Petavius, De Deo Trino in his Dogmata theologica; Schwane, Dogmengeschichte, I (Frei- burg im Br., 1892); heKegsok, Etudes theologiguessur la Sainte Trinile (Paris, 1892); TlxERONT, Hisl. des dogmes, I (Paris, 19051; TcRMEL, Hist, de la thiol, positive (Paris, 1904).

J. Forget.

Holy Ghost, Order of the. — The Hospital of the Holy Ghost at Rome was the cradle of an order, which, beginning in the thirteenth century, spread through- out all the countries of Christendom, and whose incal- culable services have been recognized by every histo- rian of medicine. Speaking of the hospital itself. La Porte du Theil calls it "a useful establishment, the most beautiful, the largest, and the best-ordered per- haps that exists at present, I say not in this queen of cities, I say in any civilized society of Europe". The famous Virchow of Berlin, an imbeliever, says, in speaking of the order; " It is just to recognize that it was reserved for the Roman Church, above all for

Innocent III, not merely to tap this source of charity and Christian mercy in its plenitude, but to diffuse its beneficent flood in a methodical manner to every sphere of social life." Not that the idea of gathering together the sick in order that they might be assured of the care of a community of infirmarians was new in the Church. Nevertheless, a mistake must not be made on this point. The hospilium, the domus hos- pilatis, the xenodochium, which are mentioned be- fore the thirteenth century, were in general only a refuge for alien {hospitcs, l^roi) travellers, poor wan- derers, and pilgrims so numerous in the Middle Ages. The sick were treated at their homes in accordance with the words of Jesus Christ; "Infirmus (eram) et visitastis me" (I was sick, ami you visited me. — Matt., XXV, 36). The first hospitals in the modern sen.se of the word found their origin in the monasteries under the name of infirmitoria. During the Prankish period,

Facade, Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome,

Belonging to the Order of the Holt Ghost

The facade shown here was added in 15S7, by Sixtus Vi to

the church as rebuilt by Paul III in 1540

in the absence of a school of medicine, medical science foimd a refuge in the monasteries. The care of the sick formed part of the duties of charity imposed upon the monks. Hence there were two sorts of infirmaries, the infirmitorium fralrum within the dausura, and the infirmitorium paupcrum or scculi without.

From the time of the crusades the hospitia of the Holy Land, those of the Hospitallers of St. John and the Teutonic Order (q. v.), were of a mixed character; foimded for the reception of pilgrims to the Holy Places, they also served as hospitals for the sick. They became at the same time, as is well known, military in character, and to this circumstance may be credited the repeated attempts to give a military character to the Hospitallers of the Holy Ghost, although they have never carried arms nor had occasion to use them. Two circumstances led to the creation of the Hospi- tallers of the Holy Ghost by Innocent III; the exam- ple given in Provence by Guy de Montpellier, who established in his native town a lay community for the care of the sick under the patronage of the Holy Ghost (it is not known what caused him to choose this patronage; perhaps the Holy Ghost was chosen as the Spiritus amoris); the second cause was a