Early church councils punished women for abortions that were combined with other sexual crimes, as well as makers of abortifacient drugs,[10] but, like some early Church Fathers such as Basil of Caesarea, did not make distinction between "formed" and "unformed" fetuses.[18][19] While Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor held that human life already began at conception,[19] Augustine of Hippo affirmed Aristotle's concepts of ensoulment occurring some time after conception, after which point abortion was to be considered homicide,[20] while still maintaining the condemnation of abortion at any time from conception onward.[21] Aquinas reiterated Aristotle's views of successive souls: vegetative, animal, and rational. This would be the Catholic Church's position until 1869, when the limitation of automatic excommunication to abortion of a formed fetus was removed, a change that has been interpreted as an implicit declaration that conception was the moment of ensoulment.[15] Most early penitentials imposed equal penances for abortion whether early-term or late-term, but later penitentials in the Middle Ages normally distinguished between the two, imposing heavier penances for late-term abortions and a less severe penance was imposed for the sin of abortion "before [the foetus] has life".[22]