seven sacraments: baptism, confirmation, the Mass, penance, marriage, ordination and last rites. Sometimes they were spoken of as the seven arteries of the Body of Christ, through which the lifeblood of God’s grace was pumped. That this all looks rather mechanistic was precisely the point, for the unwashed masses, being uneducated and illiterate, were considered incapable of having an explicit faith. So, while an ‘explicit faith’ was considered desirable, an ‘implicit faith’, in which a person came