to the belief that its administration was reserved to St. Aphraates, "the Persian Sage", though he wrote (b) The Great Patristic Age: Fourth to Seventh Century.-References to extreme unction in this period are much more abundant and prove beyond doubt the universal use of the Jacobean unction in every part of the Church. Some testimonies, moreover, refer specifically to one or more of the several ends and effects of the sacrament, as the cure or alleviation of bodily sickness and the remission of sins, while some may be said to anticipate pretty clearly the definition of extreme unction as a sacrament in the strict sense. illustrating the universal use of the Jacobean unction, we may cite in the first place St. Ephraem Syrus As (d. 373), who in his forty-sixth polemical sermon (Opera, Rome, 1740, vol. II, p. 541), addressing the sick person to whom the priests minister, says: "They pray over thee; one blows on thee; another seals thee." The "sealing" here undoubtedly means anointing with the sign of the cross", and the reference to St. James is clear [see Bickell, Carmina Nisibena, Leipzig, 1866, pp. 223, 4, note, and the other passage (seventy-third carmen) there discussed]. Next we would call attention to the witness of an ancient Ordo compiled, it is believed, in Greek before the middle of the fourth century, but which is preserved only in a fragmentary Latin version made before the end of the fifth century and recently discovered at Verona ("Didascalia Apostolorum" in "Fragmenta Veronensia", ed. Hauler, Leipzig, 1900), and in an Ethiopic version. This Ordo in both versions contains a form for consecrating the oil for the Jacobean rite, the Latin praying for "the strengthening and healing" of those who use it, and the Ethiopic for their "strengthening and sanctification". Mr. Puller, who gives and discusses both versions (op. cit., p. 104 sq.), is once more obliged to postulate a corruption of the Ethiopic version because of the reference to sanctification. But may not the "strengthening" spoken of as distinct from "healing" be spiritual rather than corporal? Likewise the "Testamentum Domini", 720 EXTREME Ethiopic and Arabic versions (still in MSS.) contains compiled in Greek about the year 400 or earlier, and preserved in Syriac (published by Rahmani), and in besides bodily healing, the sanctifying power of the oil a form for consecrating the oil of the sick, in which, 77, 78). From these instances it appears that Seraas applied to penitents is referred to (see "The Testapion's Sacramentary was not without parallels during ment of Our Lord", tr. Cooper and Maclean, 1902, pp. this period. 427; in P. L., XXXIV, 887–1040), which is made up almost entirely of Scriptural texts, without comment In St. Augustine's "Speculum de Scripturâ" (an. by the compiler, and is intended as a handy manual of Christian piety, doctrinal and practical, the injunction of St. James regarding the prayer-unction of the sick is quoted. This shows that the rite was a commonplace in the Christian practice of that age; and we are in P. L., XXXII, 56), that the saint himself "followed the rule laid down by the Apostle that he should visit told by Possidius, in his "Life of Augustine" (c. xxvii, only orphans and widows in their tribulation (James, i, 27), and that if he happened to be asked by the sick to pray to the Lord for them and impose hands on refer to the Jacobean rite as an "imposition of hands", and this title survived to a very late period in the them, he did so without delay". We have seen Origen Church of St. Ambrose, who was himself an ardent student of Origen and from whom St. Augustine very likely borrowed it (see Magistretti, "Manuale Ambrosianum ex Codice sæc. XI", etc., 1905, vol. I, p. 79 eleventh and thirteenth centuries have as title for the office of extreme unction, impositio manuum super insq., 94 sq., 147 sq., where three different Ordines of the firmum). It is fair, then, to conclude from the biographer's statement that, when called upon to do so, St. Augustine himself used to administer the Jacobean Innocent I (see below). St. Ambrose himself, writing unction to the sick. This would be exactly on the against the Novatians (De Poenit., VIII, in P. L., lines laid down by Augustine's contemporary, Pope XVI, 477), asks: "Why therefore do you lay on hands and believe it to be an effect of the blessing [benedictionis opus] if any of the sick happen to recover? Why do you baptize, if sins cannot be remitted by men?" The coupling of this laying-on of hands with baptism and the use of both as arguments in favour of charismatic healing by a simple blessing, but of a rite which, like baptism, was in regular use among the penance, shows that there is question not of mere of St. James. St. Athanasius, in his encyclical letter of 341 (P. G., XXV, 234), complaining of the evils to Novatians, and which can only have been the unction religion caused by the intrusion of the Arian Bishop catechumens were left to die without baptism and that many sick and dying Christians had to choose the hard Gregory, mentions among other abuses that many alternative of being deprived of priestly ministrations of the Arians to be laid on their heads". Here again of the use of extreme unction recorded in the lives of from the life of an Eastern saint, Hypatius (d. about 446), is worthy of particular notice. While still a young monk and before his elevation to the priesthood, he was appointed infirmarian in his monastery (in Bithynia), and while occupying this office he showed a splendid example of charity in his care of the sick, whom he sought out and brought to the monastery. "But if the necessity arose says his disciple and biographer, "of anointing the sick person, he reported to the abbot, who was a priest (y yàp peoßTepos), and had the unction with the blessed oil performed by him. And it often happened that in a few days, God co-operating with his efforts, he sent the man home restored to health" (Acta SS., 17 June, p. 251). It appears from this testimony that the Jacobean unction was administered only to those who were seriously ill, that only a priest could administer it, that consecrated oil was used, that it was distinct from charismatic unction (which the saint himself used to perform, while still a layman, using consecrated oil), and finally that bodily healing did not always follow and was not apparently expected to follow, and that when it did take place it was not regarded as miraculous. It is, therefore, implied that other effects besides bodily healing were believed to be produced by the Jacobean unction, and these must be understood to be spiritual. as to As evidence of the use of the unction by the Nestorians we may refer to the nineteenth canon of the synod held at Seleucia in 554 under the presidency of the Patriarch Joseph, and which, speaking of those who have been addicted to various diabolical and superstitious practices, prescribes that any such person on being converted shall have applied to him, " one who is corporally sick, the oil of prayer blessed by the priests (Chabot, Synodicon Orientale, 1902, 363). Here, besides the legitimate use of the Jaco bean unction, we have an early instance of an abuse, which prevails in the modern Orthodox (schismatical) church, of permitting the euchelaion to be administered, on certain days of the year, to people who are in perfect health, as a complement of penance and a preparation for Holy Communion [see below VI, (3)]. That the Monophysites also retained the Jacobean unction after their separation from the Catholic Church (451) is clear from the fact that their liturgies (Armenian, Syrian, and Coptic) contain the rite for blessing the oil. There is reason to suppose that this portion of their liturgies in its present form has been borrowed from, or modelled upon, the Byzantine rite of a later period (see Brightman in "Journal of Theological Studies", I, p. 261), but this borrowing supposes that they already possessed the unction itself. It has nowadays fallen into disuse among the Nestorians and Armenians, though not among the Copts. Many testimonies might be quoted in which the Jacobean unction is recommended specifically as a means of restoring bodily health, and the faithful are urged to receive it instead of recurring, as they were prone to do, to various superstitious remedies. This is the burden of certain passages in Procopius of Gaza [c. 465-525; "In Levit.", xix, 31, in P. G., LXXXVII (1), 762 sq.1, Isaac of Antioch (b. about 350; Opp., ed. Bickell, Pt. I, pp. 187 sq.), St. Cyril of Alexandria (De Adorat. in Spiritu et Veritate, VI, in P. G., LXVIII, 470 sq.), St. Cæsarius of Arles (Serm. cclxxix, 5, "Append ad sermm. Augustini" in P. L., XXXIX, 2273), and John Mandakuni (Montagouni), Catholicos of the Armenians from 480 to 487 (Schmid, Reden des Joannes Mandakuni, pp. 222 sq.). This particular effect of the prayer-unction is the one specially emphasized in the form used to this day in the Orthodox Eastern Church (see above, I). Mention of the remission of sins as an effect of the Jacobean rite is also fairly frequent. It is coupled with bodily healing by St. Cæsarius in the passage just referred to: the sick person will "receive both health of body and remission of sins, for the Holy Ghost has given this promise through James". We have mentioned the witness of John Cassian, and the witness of his master, St. Chrysostom, may be given here. In his work "On the Priesthood" (III, vi, in P. G., XLVIII, 644) St. Chrysostom proves the dignity of the priesthood by showing, among other arguments, that the priests by their spiritual ministry do more for us than our own parents can do. Whereas our parents only beget our bodies, which they cannot save from death and disease, the priests regenerate our souls in baptism and have power, moreover, to remit post-baptismal sins; a power which St. Chrysostom proves by quoting the text of St. James. This passage, like that of Origen discussed above, has given rise to no little controversy, and it is claimed by Mr. Puller (op. cit., pp. 45 sqq.) as a proof that St. Chrysostom, like Origen, understood St. James as he (Mr. Puller) does. But if this were so it would still be true that only clinical penance is referred to, for it is only of the sick that St. James can be understood to speak; and the main point of Mr. Puller's argument, viz., that it is inconceivable that St. Chrysostom should pass over the Sacrament of Penance in such a context, would have lost hardly any of its force. We know very little, except by way of inference and assumption, about the practice of clinical penance in that age; but we are well acquainted with canonical penance as administered to those in good health, and it is to this obviously we should expect the saint to refer, if he were bound to speak of that sacrament at all. Mr. Puller is probably aware how very difficult it would be to prove that St. Chrysostom anywhere in his voluminous writings teaches clearly and indisputably the necessity of confessing to a priest: in other words, that he recognizes the Sacrament of Penance as Mr. Puller recognizes it; and in view of this general obscurity on a point of fundamental importance it is not at all so strange that penance should be passed over here. We do not pretend to be able to enter into St. Chrysostom's mind, but assuming that he recognized both penance and unction to be efficacious for the remission of postbaptismal sins-and the text before us plainly states this in regard to the unction-we may perhaps find in the greater affinity of unction with baptism, and in the particular points of contrast he is developing, a reason why unction rather than penance is appealed to. Regeneration by water in baptism is opposed to parental generation, and saving by oil from spiritual disease and eternal death to the inability of parents to save their children from bodily disease and death. St. Chrysostom might have added several other points of contrast, but he confines himself in this context to these two; and supposing, as one ought in all candour to suppose, that he understood the text of St. James as we do, in its obvious and natural sense, it is evident that the prayer-unction, so much more akin to baptism in the simplicity of its ritual character and so naturally suggested by the mention of sickness and death, supplied a much apter illustration of the priestly power of remitting post-baptismal sins than the judicial process of penance. And a single illustrative example was all that the context required. Victor of Antioch (fifth century) is one of the ancient witnesses who, in the general terms they employ in speaking of the Jacobean unction, anticipate more or less clearly the definition of a sacrament in the strict sense. Commenting on St. Mark, vi, 13, Victor quotes the text of St. James and adds: "Oil both cures pains and is a source of light and refreshment. The oil, then, used in anointing signifies both the mercy of God, and the cure of the disease, and the enlightening of the heart. For it is manifest to all that the prayer effected all this; but the oil, as I think, was the symbol of these things" (Cramer, Caten. Græc. Patrum, I, p. 324). Here we have the distinction, so well known in later theology, between the signification แ and causality of a sacrament; only Victor attributes the signification entirely to the matter and the causality to the form (the prayer). This was to be corrected in the fully developed sacramental theory of later times, but the attribution of sacramental effects to the form (the prayer, the word, etc.) is characteristic of patristic suggestions of a theory. Victor clearly attributes both spiritual and corporal effects to the prayerunction; nor can the fact that he uses the imperfect tense (vhpyet, "effected"; TÔрxe, "was") be taken to imply that the use of the unction had ceased at Antioch in his day. The use of the present tense in describing the signification of the rite implies the contrary, and independent evidence is clearly against the supposition. In the passage from John Mandakuni, referred to above, the prayer-unction is repeatedly described as the gift of grace", "the grace of God", Divinely instituted and prescribed, and which cannot be neglected and despised without incurring "the curse of the Apostles"; language which it is difficult to understand unless we suppose the Armenian patriarch to have reckoned the unction among the most sacred of Christian rites, or, in other words, regarded it as being what we describe as a sacrament in the strict sense (cf. Kern, op. cit., pp. 46, 47). There remains to be noticed under this head the most celebrated of all patristic testimonies on extreme unction, the well-known passage in the Letter of Pope Innocent I (402-417), written in 416, to Decentius, Bishop of Eugubium, in reply to certain questions submitted by the latter for solution. In answer to the question as to who were entitled to the unction, the pope, having quoted the text of St. James, says: There is no doubt that this text must be received or understood of the sick faithful, who may be [lawfully] anointed with the holy oil of chrism; which, having been blessed by the bishop, it is permitted not only to priests but to all Christians to use for anointing in their own need or that of their families." Then he diverges to point out the superfluous character of a further doubt expressed by Decentius: "We notice the superfluous addition of a doubt whether a bishop may do what is undoubtedly permitted to priests. For priests are expressly mentioned [by St. James] for the reason that bishops, hindered by other occupations, cannot go to all the sick. But if the bishop is able to do so or thinks anyone specially worthy of being visited, he, whose office it is to consecrate the chrism, need not hesitate to bless and anoint the sick person." Then, reverting to the original question, he explains the qualification he had added in speaking of "the sick faithful": "For this unction may not be given to penitents [i. e. to those undergoing canonical penance], seeing that it is a sacrament [quia genus sacramenti est]. For how is it imagined that one sacrament [unum genus] may be given to those to whom the other sacraments are denied?" The pope adds that he has answered all his correspondent's questions in order that the latter's Church may be in a position to follow "the Roman custom" (P. L., XX, 559 sq., Denzinger, no. 99-old no. 61). We do not, of course, suggest that Pope Innocent had before his mind the definition of a sacrament in the strict sense when he calls the Jacobean unction a sacrament, but since "the other sacraments" from which penitents were excluded were the Holy Eucharist and certain sacred offices, we are justified in maintaining that this association of the unction with the Eucharist most naturally suggests an implicit faith on the part of Pope Innocent in what has been explicitly taught by Scholastic theologians and defined by the Council of Trent. It is interesting to observe that Mr. Puller, in discussing this text (op. cit., pp. 53 sqq.), omits all reference to the Holy Eucharist, though it is by far the most obvious and important of "the other sacraments" of which Innocent is speaking, and diverts his reader's attention to the eulogia, or blessed bread (pain bénit), a sacramental which was in use in many churches at that time and in later ages, but to which there is not the least reason for believing that the pope meant specially to refer. In any case the reference is certainly not exclusive, as Mr. Puller leaves his reader to infer. What Pope Innocent, following the "Roman custom", explicitly teaches is that the "sacrament" enjoined by St. James was to be administered to the sick faithful who were not doing canonical penance; that priests, and a fortiori bishops, can administer it; but that the oil must be blessed by the bishop. The exclusion of sick penitents from this "sacrament" must be understood, of course, as being subject to the same exception as their exclusion from "the other sacraments", and the latter are directed to be given before the annual Easter reconciliation when danger of death is imminent: 'Quando usque ad desperandum venerit, ante tempus pascha relaxandum [est] ne de sæculo [ægrotus] absque communione discedat." If the words of Innocent and the same observation applies to other ancient testimonies, e. g. to that of Cæsarius of Arles referred to above-seem to imply that the laity were permitted to anoint themselves or members of their household with the oil consecrated by the bishop, yet it is clear enough from the text of St. James and from the way in which Pope Innocent explains the mention of priests in the text, that this could not have been considered by him to be identical with the Jacobean rite, but to be at most a pious use of the oil allowable for devotional, and possibly for charismatic, purposes. But it would not be impossible nor altogether unreasonable to understand the language used by Innocent and others in a causative sense, i. e. as meaning not that the laity were permitted to anoint themselves, but that they were to have the blessed oil at hand to secure their being anointed by the priests according to the prescription of St. James. We believe, however, that this is a forced and unnatural way of understanding such testimonies, all the more so as there is demonstrative evidence of the devotional and charismatic use of sacred oil by the laity during the early centuries. It is worth adding, as a conclusion to our survey of this period, that Innocent's reply to Decentius was incorporated in various early collections of canon law, some of which, as for instance that of Dionysius Exiguus (P. L., LXVII, 240), were made towards the end of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century. In this way Innocent's teaching became known and was received as law in most parts of the Western Church. (c) The Seventh Century and Later.-One of the most important witnesses for this period is St. Bede (d. 735), who, in his commentary on the Epistle of St. James, tells us (P. L., XCIII, 39) that, as in Apostolic times, so now the custom of the Church is that the sick should be anointed by the priests with consecrated oil and through the accompanying prayer restored to health". He adds that, according to Pope Innocent, even the laity may use the oil provided it has been consecrated by the bishop; and commenting on the clause, "if he be in sins they shall be remitted to him", after quoting I Cor., xi, 30, to prove that "many because of sins committed in the soul are stricken with bodily sickness or death", he goes on to speak of the necessity of confession: "If, therefore, the sick be in sins and shall have confessed these to the priests of the Church and shall have sincerely undertaken to relinquish and amend them, they shall be remitted to them. For sins cannot be remitted without the confession of amendment. Hence the injunction is rightly added [by St. James], 'Confess, therefore, your sins one to another."" St. Bede thus appears to connect the remission of sins in St. James's text with penance rather than the unction, and is therefore claimed by Mr. Puller as supporting his own interpretation of the text. But it should be observed that in asserting the necessity of confessing post baptismal sins, a necessity recognized in Catholic teaching, Bede does not deny that the unction also may be efficacious in remitting them, or at least in completing their remission, or in remitting the lighter daily sins which need not be confessed. The bodily sickness which the unction is intended to heal is regarded by St. Bede as being, often at any rate, the effect of sin; and it is interesting to notice that Amalarius of Metz, writing a century later (De Eccles. Offic., I, xii, in P. L., CV, 1011 sq.), with this passage of Bede before him, expressly attributes to the unction not only the healing of sickness due to the unworthy reception of the Eucharist, but the remission of daily sins: "What saves the sick is manifestly the prayer of faith, of which the sign is the unction of oil. If those whom the unction of oil, i. e. the grace of God through the prayer of the priest, assists are sick for the reason that they eat the Body of the Lord unworthily, it is right that the consecration [of the oil] of which there is question should be associated with the consecration of the Body and Blood of the Lord, which takes place in commemoration of the Passion of Christ, by Whom the author of sin has been eternally vanquished. The Passion of Christ destroyed the author of death; His grace, which is signified by the unction of oil, has destroyed his arms, which are daily sins." The confusing way in which St. Bede introduces penance in connexion with the text of St. James is intelligible enough when we remember that the unction was regarded and administered as a complement of the Sacrament of Penance, and that no formal question had yet been raised about their respective independent effects. In the circumstances of the age it was more important to insist on the necessity of confession than to discuss with critical minuteness the effects of the unction, and one had to be careful not to allow the text of St. James to be misunderstood as if it dispensed with this necessity for the sick sinner. The passage in St. Bede merely proves that he was preoccupied with some such idea in approaching the text of St. James. Paschasius Radbertus (writing about 831) says from the same standpoint that "according to the Apostle when anyone is sick, recourse is to be had in the first place to confession of sins, then to the prayer of many, then to the sanctification of the unction [or, the unction of sanctification]" (De Corp. et Sang. Domini, c. viii, in P. L., CXX, 1292); and the same writer, in what he tells us of the death of his abbot, St. Adelhard of Corbie, testifies to the prevalence of an opinion that it was only those in sins who had need of the unction. The assembled monks, who regarded the holy abbot as "free from the burdens of sins", doubted whether they should procure the Apostolic unction for him. But the saint, overhearing the debate, demanded that it should be given at once, and with his dying breath exclaimed: "Now dismiss thy servant in peace, because I have received all the sacraments of Thy mystery" (P. L., CXX, 1547). As proving the uninterrupted universality during this period of the practice of the Jacobean rite, with a clear indication in some instances of its strictly sacramental efficacy, we shall add some further testimonies from writers, synods, and the precepts of particular bishops. As doubts may be raised regarding the age of any particular expression in the early medieval liturgies, we shall omit all reference to them. There is all the less need to be exhaustive as the adversaries of Catholic teaching are compelled to admit that from the eighth century onwards the strictly sacramental conception of the Jacobean rite emerges clearly in the writings and legislation of both the Eastern and the Western Churches. Haymo, Bishop of Halberstadt (841-853), in his Homily on Luke, ix, 6 (P. L., CXVIII, 573), and Amulo, Bishop of Lyons (about 841), in his letter to Theobald (P. L., CXVI, 82), speak of the unction of the sick as an Apostolic practice. Prudentius, Bishop of Treves (about 843-861), tells how the holy virgin Maura asked to receive from his own hands "the Sacraments of the Eucharist and of Extreme Unction" (P. L., CXV, 1374; cf. Acta SS., 21 Sept., p. 272); and Jonas, Bishop of Orléans, in his "Institutio Laicalis" (about 829), after reprobating the popular practice of recurring in sickness to magical remedies, says: "It is obligatory on anyone who is sick to demand, not from wizards and witches, but from the Church and her priests, the unction of sanctified oil, a remedy which [as coming] from Our Lord Jesus Christ will benefit him not only in body but in soul" (III, xiv, in P. L., CVI, 122 sq.). Already the Second Council of Châlon-sur-Saône (813), in its fortyeighth canon, had prescribed as obligatory the unction enjoined by St. James, "since a medicine of this kind which heals the sicknesses of soul and of body is not to be lightly esteemed" (Hardouin, IV, 1040). The Council of Aachen in 836 warns the priest not to neglect giving penance and unction to the sick person (once his illness becomes serious), and when the end is seen to be imminent the soul is to be commended to God "more sacerdotali cum acceptione sacræ communionis" (cap. ii, can. v, ibid., 1397). The First Council of Mainz (847), held under the presidency of Rhabanus Maurus (cap. xxvi), prescribed in the same order the administration of penance, unction, and the Viaticum (Hardouin, V, 13); while the Council of Pavia (850), legislating, as seems clear from the wording of the capitulary (viii), according to the traditional interpretation of Pope Innocent's letter to Decentius (see above), directs preachers to be sedulous in instructing the faithful regarding "that salutary sacrament which James the Apostle commends a truly great and very much to be desired mystery, by which, if asked for with faith, both sins are remitted and as a consequence corporal health restored" (ibid., III, 27; Denzinger, Freiburg, 1908, no. 315). The statutes attributed to St. Sonnatius, Archbishop of Reims (about 600-631), and which are certainly anterior to the ninth century, direct (no. 15) that "extreme unction is to be brought to the sick person who asks for it", and "that the pastor himself is to visit him often, animating and duly preparing him for future glory" (P. L., LXXX, 445; cf. Hefele, Conciliengesch., III, 77). The fourth of the canons promulgated (about 745) by St. Boniface, the Apostle of Germany (see Hefele, III, 580 sq.), forbids priests to go on a journey "without the chrism, and the blessed oil, and the Eucharist ", so that in any emergency they may be ready to offer their ministrations; and the twenty-ninth orders all priests to have the oil of the sick always with them and to warn the sick faithful to apply for the unction (P. L., LXXXIX, 821 sq.). In the "Excerptiones" of Egbert, Archbishop of York (732-766), the unction is mentioned between penance and the Eucharist, and ordered to be diligently administered (P. L., LXXXIX, 382). But no writer of this period treats of the unction so fully as, and none more undeniably regards it as a true sacrament in the strict sense than, Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans, and with him we will conclude our list of witnesses. A long section of his second Capitulare, published in 789, is taken up with the subject (P. L., CV, 220 sq.): "Priests are also to be admonished regarding the unction of the sick, and penance, and the Viaticum, lest anyone should die without the Viaticum." Penance is to be given first, and then, "if the sickness allow it," the patient is to be carried to the church, where the unction and Holy Communion are to be given. Theodulf describes the unction in detail, ordering fifteen, or three times five, crosses to be made with the oil to symbolize the Trinity and the five senses, but noting at the same time that the practice varies as to the number of anointings and the parts anointed. He quotes with approval the form used by the Greeks while anointing, in which remission of sins is expressly mentioned; and so clearly is the unction in his view intended as a preparation for death that he directs the sick person after receiving it to commend his soul into the hands of God and bid farewell to the living. He enjoins the unction of sick children also on the ground that it sometimes cures them, and that penance is (often) necessary for them. Theodulf's teaching is so clear and definite that some Protestant controversialists recognize him as the originator in the West of the teaching which, as they claim, transformed the Jacobean rite into a sacrament. But from all that precedes it is abundantly clear that no such transformation occurred. Some previous writers, as we have seen, had explicitly taught and many had implied the substance of Theodulf's doctrine, to which a still more definite expression was later to be given. The Scholastic and Tridentine doctrine is the only goal to which patristic and medieval teaching could logically have led. IV. MATTER AND FORM.-(For the technical meaning of these terms in sacramental theology sce SACRAMENTS.)-(1) The remote matter of extreme unction is consecrated oil. No one has ever doubted that the oil meant by St. James is the oil of olives, and in the Western Church pure olive oil without mixture of any other substance seems to have been almost always used. But in the Eastern Church the custom was introduced pretty early of adding in some places a little water, as a symbol of baptism, in others a little wine, in memory of the good Samaritan, and, among the Nestorians, a little ashes or dust from the sepulchre of some saint. But that the oil must be blessed or consecrated before use is the unanimous testimony of all the ages. Some theologians, however, have held consecration to be necessary merely as a matter of precept, not essential for the validity of the sacrament, e. g. Victoria (Summ. Sacramentorum, no. 219), Juénin (Comm. hist. et dogm. de Sacram., D. vii, q. iii, c. i), de Sainte-Beuve (De Extr. Unct., D. iii, a. 1), Drouven (De Re Sacramentariâ, Lib. VII, q. ii, c. i, 2); indeed Berti, while holding the opposite himself, admitted the wide prevalence of this view among the recent theologians of his day. But considering the unanimity of tradition in insisting on the oil being blessed, and the teaching of the Council of Trent (Sess. XIV) that "the Church has understood the matter [of this sacrament] to be oil blessed by the bishop", it is not surprising that by a decree of the Holy Office, issued 13 Jan., 1611, the proposition asserting the validity of extreme unction with the use of oil not consecrated by the bishop should have been proscribed as "rash and near to error" (Denzinger, no. 1628-old no. 1494), and that, to the question whether a parish priest could in case of necessity validly use for this sacrament oil blessed by himself, the same Holy Office, reaffirming the previous decree, should have replied in the negative (14 Sept., 1842; ibid., no. 1629-old no. 1495). These decisions only settle the dogmatic question provisionally and, so far as they affirm the necessity of episcopal consecration of the oil, are applicable only to the Western Church. As is well known, it is the officiating priest or priests who ordinarily bless the oil in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and there is no lack of evidence to prove the antiquity of this practice (see Benedict XIV, De Synod. Dicec., VIII, i, 4). For Italo-Greeks in communion with the Holy See the practice was sanctioned by Clement VIII in 1595 and by Benedict XIV (see ibid.) in 1742; and it has likewise been sanctioned for various bodies of Eastern Uniats down to our own day (see "Collect. Lacensis", II, pp. 35, 150, 582, 479 sq.; cf. Letter of Leo XIII, "De Discipl. Orient. conservandâ" in "Acta S. Sedis", XXVII, pp. 257 sq.). There is no doubt, therefore, that priests can be delegated to bless the oil validly, though there is no instance on record of such delegation being given to Western priests. But it is only the supreme authority in the Church that can grant delegation, or at least it may reserve to itself the power of granting it (in case 724 EXTREME reservation the ordinary bishop would have this power). The Eastern Uniats have the express approone should wish to maintain that in the absence of gards the schismatical Orthodox, one may say either bation of the Holy See for their discipline, and, as rethat the reservation of episcopal power does not extend to them. In spite of the schism the pope has that they have the tacit approbation of the pope or privileges of the Orthodox in matters of this kind. never wished or intended to abrogate the ancient reference to the purpose of anointing the sick. Hence, The prayers for blessing the oil that have come down to us differ very widely, but all of them contain some and not delegated, no special form would seem to be necessary for validity, provided this purpose is exat least in the case of a bishop, whose power is ordinary chrism and the oil of catechumens, it appears doubtful pressed. But where it is not at all expressed or inwhether either of these oils would be valid matter for tended, as in the forms at present used for blessing the extreme unction (cf. Kern, op. cit., p. 131). But in the nature of things there does not seem to be any suffice to make the same oil valid matter for more than reason why a composite form of blessing might not one sacrament. according to present usage in the Western and Eastern (2) The proximate matter of extreme unction is the Churches have been mentioned above (I), but it is to unction with consecrated oil. The parts anointed practice in various branches of the Orthodox Church be observed that even to-day there are differences of whether several unctions are necessary for a valid sacrament, and if so, which are the essential ones. (see Echos d'Orient, 1899, p. 194). The question is Arguing from the practice with which they were acquainted and which they assumed to have existed always, the Scholastics not unnaturally concluded that the unctions of the five organs of sense were esmously by the School and by many later theologians sential. This was the teaching of St. Thomas (Suppl., down to our own day (e. g. Billot, De Sacramentis, II, Q. xxxii, a. 6), who has been followed pretty unanip. 231) who set the method and tradition of the School above positive and historical theology. But a wider knowledge of past and present facts has made it increasingly difficult to defend this view, and the best theologians of recent times have denied that the unction of the five senses, any more than that of the feet The facts, broadly speaking, are these: that no ancient testimony mentions the five unctions at all, much less or loins, is essential for the validity of the sacrament. prescribes them as necessary, but most of them speak simply of unction in a way that suggests the sufficiency of a single unction; that the unction of the five senses has never been extensively practised in the East, and is not practised at the present time in the Orthodox Church, while those Uniats who practise it have simply borrowed it in modern times from Rome; and that even in the Western Church down to the eleventh century the practice was not very widespread, and did is proved by a number of sixteenth-century Rituals that have been preserved (for details and sources see not become universal till the seventeenth century, as Kern, op. cit., p. 133 sq.). In face of these facts it is impossible any longer to defend the Scholastic view except by maintaining that the Church has frequently changed the essential matter of the sacrament, or that she has allowed it to be invalidly administered during fore, is that as far as the matter is concerned nothing the greater part of her history, as she still allows without protest in the East. The only conclusion, theretion with duly consecrated oil, and this conclusion may henceforth be regarded as certain by reason of the more is required for a valid sacrament than a true uncrecent decree of the Holy Office already referred to (I), which, though it speaks only of the form, evidently supposes that form to be used with a single |