The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

RULES FOR PHYSICIANS. 89
several provincial synods had made strict regulations on the
subject. A synod held at Ravenna in 1311 had ordered
doctors to withhold their services from the sick to whom
they were called until they had first seen to the salvation of
their souls. A synod held at Tortosa in 1429, and the pro-
vincial synod held by Charles Borronieo at Milan in 1565
had made similar laws. Fired with zeal to promote in every
possible way, and by everj^ possible means, the spiritual wel-
fare of all Christians, Pius V. returned to the attack, and on
March 8th, 1566, issued a constitution which laid down that
every physician who was summoned to a sick person who was
confined to his bed was before everything else bound to exhort
him to receive the sacrament of penance, and to suspend his
visits after three days unless a confessor had attested in
writing that the confession had been made, or else that for
some good reason an extension of the time had been allowed.^
In spite, however, of the severe penalties imposed for the nonobservance
of this regulation, it did not meet with much
success. 2
It is not surprising that so strict a Pope should have waged
war against public immorahty in Rome, and should have
^ Bull. Rom., VII., 430 seq. ; cf. Kober in Tiih. Theol. Quarial-
schrifi, LV., 660 seq. The extract in Ranke, Papste, P, 233, is
partly inexact. An *Avviso di Roma of March 19, 1569, records
the severe ordinance against doctors who gave persons in good
health permission to eat meat on fasting days (Urb. 1040, p. 37b).
Cf. in Urb. 1042, p. 29b, the *Avviso di Roma of February 24,
157 1, Vatican Library.
^ Theologians and canonists of repute maintained the view that
the rigorism of the ordinaces of Pius V. went too far, and they
accordingly declared that when the malady was dangerous the
doctor was not obUged to suspend his care and aid, and that in
such a case the ordinance was not binding. Other theologians
namely that the doctor was bound
made yet another limitation ;
to make his exhortation to the reception of the sacraments, not
in every illness, but only in the case of those which were dangerous,
or where the issue was doubtful. See Benedict XIV., Instit.,
XXII. ; Kober, loc. cit., 666 seq.