St. John of Damascus was the first to develop an early exposition of this system of gradation.
What an interesting question. I'd like to learn how the Magisterium implemented this in the Dark Ages.
Can you link to where you read about St. John Damascene? I find that surprising, and imagine it's something else he developed.
I was thinking of how the publication in Latin of all Damascene's works influenced Latin theological opinion greatly in the early medieval period. This was ordered by Pope Eugene III, and completed by Burgundius (Burgundio of Pisa), henceforth the more complex theological notes began emerging, with Peter Lombard and St. Thomas Aquinas. It would be a PhD.-level endeavour to analyse this relationship thoroughly. There is mention (lacking) in the Catholic Encyclopaedia to this effect: " It is no small credit to John of Damascus that he was able to give to the Church in the eighth century its first summary of connected theological opinions. At the command of Eugenius III it was rendered into Latin by Burgundio of Pisa, in 1150, shortly before Peter Lombard's "Book of Sentences" appeared. This translation was used by Peter Lombard and St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as by other theologians, till the Humanists rejected it for a more elegant one.".
St. John Damascene, of course, in his determinations, did refer to earlier Church Fathers. It is the idea of a codifiable system that can be enforced by the Church which is import, so it may be widely disseminated in the universities and developed by the Magisterium... forgive my language, but you know what I'm getting at. This is because, if one truly were to delve deeper into the idea of stratifying heresies, sins, and all manner of transgressions, and then drawing conclusions to treatable action on the part of the Church, it's really Tertullian who affected the Church so much in that way. This was a time in the 2nd century when the Church struggled to come to consensus on how to deal with penitents, which sins the Church could forgive, which is should leave to God, and so on.. the Encratites of the late 2nd century were very rigid, but fell out of favor. The more legalistic prescriptions of Tertullian (not that they represent all his work, and he did provide a way for the worst penitents via ' Exomologesis'), were rejected by Pope Calixtus I. These decades of theological development are generally referred to as 'the penitential controversy'. I was just referring to its description in Msgr. Philip Hughes' first volume of Church History. It is fruitful to consider how the popes were challenged in these matters but had the final say. That is grace and providence at work. It is an impossibility for the "Orthodox" and the Protestants, thus, their theologies are defective. Calixtus certainly had his battles and was martyred.
