Penitential

A penitential is a book or set of church rules concerning the Christian sacrament of penance, a "new manner of reconciliation with God" that was first developed by Celtic monks in Ireland in the sixth century AD. When priests heard confessions, a practice originally begun by monks to use amongst themselves as a religious cleansing ritual, they compiled unofficial handbooks that dealt with the most confessed sins and a wrote down set penances for those sins.

In the Early Christian Church absolution had been freely offered to sinners, who joined the group of penitents gathered outside the basilica and abased themselves publicly, in the presence of the congregated faithful. Reconciliation was followed by readmission to the Eucharist. Absolution was granted once in a lifetime, publicly, and at set seasons of the year; questions arose concerning repeat offenders: were recidivists inevitably damned?

Violent Irish or Merovingian nobles were unlikely candidates for public humiliation. Private penance after a secretly heard confession permitted the maintenance of public status. The schedule of sins listed in the penitentials listed a certain number of years on an abstinent diet of bread and water for each sin. Alternately, a penitent could pay a certain number of solidi in lieu of each year of fasting. The connection with the principles embodied in codes of Germanic law, which were largely composed of schedules of wergeld, are inescapable.

The penitentials took no account of the sinner's state of mind, nor of the free gift of God's grace. "Recidivism was always possible, and the commutation of sentence by payment of cash perpetuated the notion that salvation could be bought." (Rouche 1987 p. 529). The system espoused in the penitentials could not reach the poorest, for whom a few solidi was a fortune and the possibility of some meat in the diet an essential source of calories. Thus the penitentials reinforced the commonplace connection of poverty with sinfulness and depravity.

The Council of Paris of 829 condemned the penitentials and ordered all of them to be burnt. In practice, a penitential remained one of the few books that a country priest might have possessed. The last penitential was composed by Alain de Lille, in 1180.

See also

• Indulgence

References

• Michel Rouche, "The Early Middle Ages in the West: Sacred and Secret" in Paul Veyne, ed., A History of Private Life 1: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium (Harvard University Press) 1987, pp. 528-9.
• Catholic Encyclopedia: "Penitential Canons" "...have now only an historic interest."