Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/796

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REGENERATION


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REGENERATION


dinary dress of the later Roman Empire, and they did not acquire their liturgical character until after they had become the customary apparel of emperors on state occasions. This form of underclothing can be plainly traced in the consular diptychs upon which the consuls are represented as presiding at the games. In these same diptychs the most prominent feature in the official vesture is an elaborately embroidered scarf which hangs down perpendicularly in front, passes round the body, and falls over the left arm. This scarf is called the lorum. It is almost certainly the ancestor of the archiepiscopal pallium, but it re- mained for long centuries, as numberless Byzantine paintings and sculptures show, the most conspicuous element in the imperial state costume. There is serious reason to believe, though the details cannot be gone into here, that the lorum is represented b}' the "armill", though this is now a sort of stole which two or three centuries back was tied at the elbows. The address originally made at the delivery of the armill declared it to be a symbol of the "Divine en- folding" (dii'inw circtimdationis), which agrees much better with a WTap like the lorum than -n-ith a stole or bracelet. Again "the Robe Royal or Pall of cloth of gold", which is embroidered with eagles, cannot with any reason be described as an ecclesias- tical cope. It certainly represents the royal mantle which was originally a four-square garment fastened with a clasp over the right shoulder, such as is seen to recur several times in the carvings of the ivory- book- cover of Queen Melisende now in the Brit- ish Museum; such also as was found vesting the body of Edward I when his tomb was opened in 1774.

Not less misleading is the interpretation recently attached to one of the three swords carried before the king and known as the "sword of the spirituality" or "the sword of the Church". This does not in any way represent, as contended, a claim to exercise jurisdiction over the Church, but it only symbolizes the solemn promise of the king to protect the Church. There were three such promises originally made by the king: the first to defend and secure peace for the Church; the second to punish wrong-doers; and the third to show justice and mercy in all his judgments. Now the three swords, now and anciently borne before the king at his coronation, were known as the sword of the clergy, the sword of the laity, and the third (curtana), which has no point, the sword of mercy. There is every reason to believe that these three swords tj-pify the matter of the king's three ancient promises. As for the sword with which the king him self is girded in the coronation ceremony, this was originally in imperial coronations at Rome laid upon the tomb of Blessed Peter and, like the arch- bishop's pallium, presented as de corpore beali Petri sumptum and consequently as a kind of relic of the Prince of the Apostles, in whose name and to defend whose authority the power of the sword is given to rulers by the Church. A theory that the orb is only a variant of the sceptre with a cross is now generally rejected, and with reason.

The questions here discussed are mislcadingly treated in most manuals dealing with the coronation, e. g., Leqg, The Coronation Records (London. 1902); Davenport, The English Reqalia (London, 1897); Jones, Crown and Coronations (London, 1902). The reader may be referred for a fuller discussion to Thurston, The Coronation Ceremonial (London, 1911); or Idem, Ts the Crowned King an Ecclesiastical Person? in Nineteenth Crnturt/ and After (March, 1902). For the archsEological data regarding the regalia, the above works of Davenport and Leqo are of value. For the German regalia see especially BocK. Die Klein- odien des heil. R6m. Reiches (Vienna. 1864); and Frensdorff. Zur Gefichichte der deutschen Reichsinsignien in the NachHchten of the Gottingen Academy (1897).

Herbert THtmsTON.

Regeneration (Lat. regeneralio, Gr. ivayivmiait and 5ra\i77ei'f<rIo) is a Biblico-dogmatic term closely connected with the ideas of justification, Divine son-


ship, and the deification of the soul through grace. Confining ourselves first to the Biblical use of the term, we find regeneration from God used in indissol- uble connexion with baptism, which St. Paul expressly calls "the laver of regeneration" (Titus, iii, 5). Lot His discourse with Nicodemus (John, iii, 5), the Saviour declares: "Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. " In this passage Christianity from its earliest days has found the proof that baptism may not be repeated, since a repeated regeneration from God is no less a contradiction than repeated physical birth from a mother. The idea of "birth from God" enjoys a special favour in the Joannine theology. Outside the FourtliGospel (i, 12 sq.; iii, 5), the Apostle uses the term in a variety of ways, treating "birth of God" as synonymous now with the "doing of jus- tice" (I John, ii, 29), now with "faith in Jesus Christ" (I John, V, 1, 4 sq.), and elsewhere deducing from it a certain " sinlessness " of the just (I John, iii, 9; v, 18), which, however, does not necessarily exclude from the state of justification the possibility of sinning (cf. Bellarmine, "De justificatione", III, xv). It is true that in all these passages there is no reference to baptism nor is there any reference to a real " regenera- tion"; nevertheless, "generation from God", like baptismal "regeneration", must be referred to justi- fication as its cause. Both terms effectually refute the Protestant notion that there is in justification not a true annihilation, but merely a covering up of the sins which still continue (covering-up theory), or that the holiness won is simply the imputation of the external holiness of God or Christ (imputation theory).

The very idea of spiritual palingenesis requires that the justified man receive through the Divine genera- tion a quasi-Divine nature as his "second nature", which cannot be conceived as a state of sin, but only as a state of interior holiness and justice. Thus alone can we explain the statements that the just man is assured "participation in the divine nature" (cf. II Peter, i, 4: divintje consorles nalurir), becomes "a new creature" (Gal., v, 6; vi, 1.5), effects which de- pend on justifying faith working by charity, not on "faith alone" (sola fides). When the Bible elsewhere refers regeneration to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (I Peter, i, 3) or to "the word of God who liveth and remaineth for ever" (I Peter, i, 23), it indicates two important external factors of justification, which have nothing to do with its formal cause. The latter text shows that the preaching of the Word of God is for the sinner the introductory step towards justification, which is impossible without faith, whereas the former text mentions the meritorious cause of justification, inasmuch as, from the Biblical standpoint, the Resur- rection was the final act in the work of redemption (cf. Luke, xxiv, 46 sq.; Rom., iv, 2.5; vi, 4; II Cor., V, 16). To the above-mentioned ideas of regeneration, generation out of God, participation in the Divine nature, and re-creation, a fifth, that of Divine son- ship, must be added; this represents the formal effect of justification and is crowned by the personal in- dwelling of the Holy Ghost in the justified soul (cf. Rom., V, 5; viii, 11; I Cor., iii, 16 sq.; vi, 19, etc.). Since, however, this Divine sonship is expressly de- scribed as a mere adoptive sonship (filiatio adoptiva, ulofleir/a; cf. Rom., viii, 1.5 sqq.; Gal., iv, 5), it is evident that " regeneration from God" implies no sub- stantial emerging of the soul from the nature of God as in the case of the eternal generation of the Son of God (Christ), but must be regarded as an analogical and accidental generation from God.

As regards the use of the term in Catholic theology, no connected history of regeneration can be written, as neither Christian antiquity nor medieval Scholas- ticism worked consistently and regularly to develop this pregnant and fruitful idea. At every period, how-