Page:The spiritual venality of Rome.djvu/36

 but it is in the nature of direct fine, not as the redemption of penance.

We now return to the legitimate and congenial soil of such productions; and in the Penitentiale Romanum—a collection from a more ancient book of the same name, and others, and strongly characterised by its offensiveness—and there, in an extract from the ancient work and Theodorus, tit. ix. cap. xxvi.—xxix. we find the same pecuniary composition for declined penance, adapted in one case, in the proportion of three to one, to the different means of the rich and the poor. The Canon derived from Theodorus is nearly, if not quite, the same as that given above from Beda.

In the Canons subjoined to the Decretals of Gratian, near the end, is the following note:—Notandum etiam secundum Jo. si pœnitentia sit imposita a Canone, liberatur quis a jejunio dando denarium, vel legendo Psalterium propria autoritate. Innoc. vero dicit, quod jejunia necessaria, ut quatuor temporum, et hujusmodi non possunt redimi nisi subsit rationabilis causa; voluntaria vero redimi possunt etiam sine autoritate Superioris.