Henry Charles Lea

Studies in Church History. the Rise of the Temporal Power.--benefit of Clergy.--excommunication. Henry Charles Lea

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1869. Excerpt: ... Archbishop Sharpe; and the sessions register of Dunfermline, March 5th, LG48, records a similar sentence passed on Margaret Nicholsone for scolding and drunkenness. A still more effective means of torment was found in the jaggs or jougs (jugum), an iron collar which was locked around the neck of the penitent and secured to the wall near the church door at a height to render the attitude of confinement painful. Sometimes the length of punishment was only an hour, but it was repeated in aggravated cases, some stubborn offenders being jagged every Sunday for six months. Sometimes the application was prolonged. In 1570 the kirk-sessions of St. Andrews warned Gelis Symson that she should be jagged for twenty-four hours if she did not reform her habits of scolding and Sabbath-breaking. Nor was this severity of punishment at all unlikely, when in 1606 we see the kirk-sessions of Ayr inflict the jaggs and pillar of repentance on John M'Crie for saying that "no bodie had the wyte (blame) of the poore folks but the devill and the priest."1 This severity of discipline continued until the Scottish Parliament in lG9O abolished the civil penalties of excommunication.2 A fatal blow then was struck at the temporal usurpations of the kirk, and the abuses which had flourished so luxuriantly commenced rapidly to decline. The Anglican church inherited its discipline from Rome more directly than any other of the Protestant denominations, and its relations with our subject are therefore easily comprehended. When Henry VIII. threw off his spiritual allegiance to Clement VII., his object was to create a schism, not a heresy, and simply to supplant the tiara by the crown. Assuming to himself the supreme authority wielded by the pope, it formed no part of his plan to diminish that authority in any respect, a...