As well as passing on or reaffirming decisions made at Nicaea, the apostolic see around 400 CE was dealing with issues the council had not addressed about who was entitled to administer a given ritual and when it was appropriate to do so. Questions arose notably about the ritual called consignatio, baptism, fast days in the week, a death ritual, and about marriage, adultery, and the Eucharist. These were problems without self-evident answers, and finding solutions might involve considerations both of principle and practicality.

Most of the rituals that would much later be defined as ‘sacraments’ make an appearance in the earliest papal legislation, along with one or two rituals that never made it into the final ‘sacrament’ category, notably a curious combination of penance and quasi-exorcism. The papal decretals show Christian ritual in a formative phase of development. Liturgy too is both recognizable in broad lines – the structure of the year and the week according to the life of Christ, penance, and celebration – but not yet in the form with which medievalists are familiar. Liturgy and rituals are saturated with a symbolic mentality.