Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/226

200 primitive instinct which see sins as stuff which soils or corrupts, which one should, therefore, wash away, or destroy, was strengthened by the extreme systematizing of sin, by their figurative representation, and even by the penitentiary technique of the Church itself. In vain did Denis the Carthusian remind the people that it was but for the sake of comparison that he calls sin a fever, a cold and corrupted humour—popular thought undoubtedly lost sight of the restrictions of dogmatists. The terminology of the law, less anxious than theology as to doctrinal purity, did not hesitate, in England, to connect with felony the notion of a corruption of the blood: this is the realistic conception in its spontaneous form.

On one special point the dogma itself demanded this perfectly realist conception: that is to say, with regard to the blood of the Redeemer. The faithful are bound to conceive it as absolutely material. A drop of the precious blood, said Saint Bernard, would have sufficed to save the world, but it was shed abundantly, as Saint Thomas Aquinas expresses it in a hymn: