Confirmation: A Separate Sacrament

In the early centuries of the Church’s history, Christian initiation was celebrated as a single event.  While young children were included, the process was geared to adults.  This is seen in The Apostolic Tradition (c. 225) or the sets of Easter homilies from the late fourth century (those of Ambrose, Cyril, Theodore, John Chrysostom or Augustine).  First there was a catechumenate of several years when candidates reformed their lives, listened to the Scriptures and engaged in charitable works.  After a final Lenten preparation, the rites of Christian initiation (with significant local variations) were celebrated at Easter with the bishop.  Candidates made a threefold profession of faith and each time were baptised by immersion in the water of the font. Dressed in white, they came to the bishop for the imposition of hands and the anointing with oil.  Then for the first time they shared at the table of the Eucharist.

Soon, most of the candidates for initiation were small children.  This changed and shortened the patterns of the catechumenate.  Then, as the church expanded and parishes were established in the fourth and fifth centuries, it became impossible for the bishop to be present each time Christian initiation was celebrated.  So, for those occasions, part of the rite was kept for the time soon afterwards when the bishop was able to ‘confirm’ the children’s initiation by the laying on of hands and the anointing with Chrism.

By the twelfth century, worried by high infant mortality, parents wanted their babies baptised with days of birth and even lay people were taught how to baptise in case of emergency.  It was now rare that the bishop would be involved with baptism, but he retained his role of ‘confirming’.  This was to happen as soon as possible.  For example, in Medieval England, people were urged to go to the bishop whenever he passed within seven miles and the bishop’s confirmation would take place there and then, even by the roadside.  Iconographic evidence suggests that, right up until the reformation in the sixteenth century, infants were confirmed in England; in Europe, by this time, it seems as though confirming toddlers and young children was becoming more common.

It was only in the mid twelfth century that the firm list of seven sacraments (including confirmation) was established.  This was formally affirmed by the Council of Florence in the fifteenth century and at the Council of Trent in the sixteenth. 

By the beginning of the twentieth century, first communion and confirmation were generally delayed until about twelve or fourteen years of age.  Pius X was keen to encourage regular communion and to open first communion to younger children.  His 1910 decree, Quan singulari, established seven as the age of first communion, but he did not mention confirmation which was left at the later age.  This is the origin of its understanding in popular Catholic catechesis as a ‘sacrament of maturity’.  In 1963, Vatican Council II directed that confirmation should once again be understood in relation to baptism and first communion, and it introduced the renewal of baptismal promises at confirmation to reinforce this relationship.  This was implemented in the revised rite of 1972, which specified seven (the same age as first communion) as the age for confirmation. 

As a child grows to adulthood and into old age, the Church provides a sacrament for the regular renewal of their baptismal commitment.  It is the sacrament of penance.  It regularly calls a Catholic to that conversion of heart which first occurred in baptism.

‍Image Attribution - The apse of Saint Peter's Basilica, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Dnalor 01