ETHICS Lateran Council of 1215, laid down that all Catholics must make regular confession to a priest It made a distinction between two classes of sin, mortal and venial: mortal sins were more serious, and if unrepented rendered the sinner liable to the eternal punishments of hell Under the new rule, a penitent was bound to confess all mortal sins according to their species, number, and circumstances Henceforth, Catholic moralists focused less on consideration of the virtues than on the speciWcation and individuation of diVerent kinds of sin, and the listing of aggravating or mitigating circumstances Casuistry The decree of Trent fostered a whole new ethical discipline: the science of casuistry Casuistry in general is the application of moral principle to particular decisions; in particular to ‘cases of conscience’ where such principles might appear to conXict with each other In the broad sense, any expert advice given to resolve a particular moral dilemma might count as an exercise of casuistry: for instance, the guidance given to the Emperor Charles V by a group of theologians on the treatment of his new American subjects, or the counsel given to King Charles I by Archbishop Laud on the legality of the impeachment of the Earl of StraVord But when contemporaries and historians talked of casuistry they commonly had in mind the textbooks and manuals, produced in abundance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which dealt not with actual decisions, but with imaginary cases, as a guide to confessors and spiritual directors in their dealings with the penitent and the devout Although manuals of casuistry were written by theologians from many diVerent religious orders, casuistry became and remained specially associated with the newly founded Counter-Reformation order of the Jesuits, the Society of Jesus While the Jesuit system of training made provision for more scholarly students to study the moral system of Aquinas, those destined for non-academic work learnt their ethics through the study of cases of conscience, reading manuals of casuistry, listening to lectures from casuists, and practising pastoral care through case conferences Jesuits were much in demand as confessors, in particular to the great and the good; in 1602 the general of the order felt obliged to issue a special instruction On the 247