Evolution and rediscovery of the concept of Sacramentum in the tradition of the of the Western Church

Abstract

In the past, the Latin word sacramentum owned some pagan meanings and uses. With the passing of time, in the Latin Church it was opted to employ it for the designation of certain sacred actions. But this change had its proper process of adaptation and theological reflection, equal to what happened in the Oriental Church with the Greek term mystêrion. In this study it is intended to show how, since the Christian antiquity, the word sacramentum has continued to be enriched with a series of theological contents and, despite that not all of them have kept its importance in the course of time, some of them, as the most genuine semantic sense of the Latin concept, have lasted up to our days.