“The fourth sacrament is penance, the matter of which is, as it were, the acts of the penitent, which are divided into three parts.” This description from the Council of Florence (1439) does not define penance’s matter, full stop, but its matter “as it were”— quasi materia. This does not suggest that, alone among the […] The post From Contrition to Absolution: Form and Matter of Penance appeared first on Adoremus.
