The recovery of
death-bed penitents
(i) Sometimes a penitent who received
absolution on his (presumed) death-bed recovered unexpectedly. The earliest custom,
in these cases, was to hold him exempt from further penance. So Cyprian, ep.
64, I—'pacem quomodocumque a sacerdote Dei semel datam non putavimus
auferendam'; cp. Ib., 55, 13; Dionysius Alex., ep. ad Canon. (ed.
Feltoe (1905), pp. 59-62).
(ii) Conc. Nic., can. 13 (supra,
pp. 278, 511), whilst insisting that all sinners who desired it must be
reconciled on their death-beds, enacted that if they recovered they must complete
their appointed course of penance: εδ
δε απογνωσθεις
και κοινωνιας
παλιν τυχων
παλιν εν
τοις ζως
ν εξετασθη, μετα των
κοινωνουντων της
ευχης μονης
εστω. So also Greg. Nyssa., ep. ad Letoium,
5: and community. Hence (Leo, ep. 167, 9 ad Rust.), a sick man who had
sent for a priest prematurely, and on his arrival found himself a little
better, would rather naturally plead for a postponement of the rite.
(iii) The Nicene canon had not
actually said that sinners were to be absolved, but only that they were
to receive the viaticum . . . (Kenneth E. Kirk, The Vision of God: The
Christian Doctrine of the Summum Bonum—The Brampton Lectures for 1928
[London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1931], 512)