Source habrown

1-16-46

PEN, WRITING-PENS. It is well known that the ancients employed a certain reed, the nature of which is not precisely ascertained, for writing. The reeds were split, and shaped to a point like our quills. When goose-quills first came into use, or who first borrowed from the emblem of folly the instruments of wisdom, is not known. It has been asserted, that quills were used for writing as early as the fifth century, according to the history of Constantius. The oldest certain account is a passage of Isidore, who died 636 A. D., and who, among the instruments employed for writing, mentions reeds and feathers. There exists, also, a poem on a pen, written in the same century, and to be found in the works of Adhelm, the first Saxon who wrote in Latin. Alcuin (q. v.), the friend and teacher of Charlemagne, mentions writing-pens in the eighth century. After that time, proofs exist which put the question of their use beyond dispute. Mabillon (q. v.) saw a manuscript gospel of the ninth century, in which the evangelists were represented with pens in their hands. Calami properly signify the reeds which the ancients used in writing. Modern authors often use the word as a Latin term for pens, and it is probable that the same was employed to signify quills before the time of Isidore. Reeds were used for a considerable time after the introduction of writing-pens. In convents they were retained a long time for the initials only. By some letters of Erasmus to Reuchlin, it appears that the former received three reeds from the latter, and expressed a wish that Reuchlin, when he procured more, would send some of them to a certain learned man in England. Quills, for some reason, were, about the

year 1433, extremely rare in Venice. We learn from the familiar letters of learned men of that time, that they were equally troubled by the rarity of quills and by the difficulty of making good ink. Of late, steel pens have been much used and improved, and for certain purposes, as for signing bank notes, to make the signatures uniform, they appear well adapted; as also for people who cannot make pens; but, on the whole, the quill affords a much easier and handsomer chirography.

PENAL LAW. (See Criminal Law.)

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PENANCE; every penalty borne for the expiation of an offence. In the early Christian church, this ancient judicial principle was transferred to religious penance, that is, to the atonement which the sinner has to make, for his trespasses, to God and the church. According to the doctrine of the Protestants, it is not among the sacraments. This doctrine considers compunction and faith as the only elements of repentance and reformation. Penance is considered by the Catholic church a sacramental institution. conditions for the necessary transition from bad to good, are a humble consciousness of guilt. The conversion itself is a change in the soul of man, effected by the power of God, but necessarily connected with an exterior alteration. The power of forgiving sins, in the literal sense of the word, say the Catholics, has been transferred by Christ to the apostles, and to the church; but the latter can forgive the sins only of the truly repentant and converted sinner. To bring him to the knowledge of himself, the church has established confession; to calm his conscience, absolution; for the instruction and discipline of the converted, she in