Private Penance Research Articles

The Irish Penitentials and Conscience Formation

As commonly used in its moral sense I will, for the purposes of this paper, take the concept of “conscience” to be the inherent ability of every healthy human being to perceive what is right and what is wrong and, on the strength of this perception, to control, monitor, evaluate and execute their actions. Such values as right or wrong, good or evil, just or unjust, and fair or unfair have existed throughout human history and are also shaped by an individual’s cultural, political and economic environment. The medieval penitential literature offers just one such historical snapshot. These manuals or guides for confessors, including prayers, lists of questions to be asked by the confessor, and penances to be assigned for various sins were an integral part of the practice of private penance which began in the Celtic Church and later spread through Europe with the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon missions. Penitential books for use by confessors in private penance appeared in the sixth through ninth centuries. These texts were not as a rule decreed by episcopal synods. Their authority generally rested on the reputation of their compiler or editor. Public penances were assigned for public sins that caused scandal for the church. Private penances were assigned for private sins or matters of conscience. The Penitentials were generally more flexible than the churches’ ancient canonical penitential system which they largely replaced. While later European Penitentials tended to provide more complete guidance for the confessor instead of mere lists of rules and penalties; such instruction is not entirely absent from the earlier Irish texts and ancillary documents. Thus, the goal of penance in the early middle ages was not only sacramental but also didactic. It would have been an occasion to inculcate Christian beliefs, an opportunity to model proper Christian behaviour and by extension a key part of the formation of conscience. As was the case with later expressions of casuistry (Etym. Latin casus, case, or problem to be solved) the purpose of the penitential literature was thus to adapt and apply the unchangeable norms of Christian morality to the changing and variable circumstances of human life albeit in somewhat rudimentary fashion. As such this literary genre and the pastoral practices stemming from it are a valid and worthy object of any historical study and theological analysis concerning the ‘formation of conscience.’

Why Medieval Allegory?

Why Medieval Allegory?

Something from Nothing:

The relentless negations in these lines—denials of action, thought, being, and feeling—emphasize the narrator’s lack of productive intellectual or social influence and his emotional void. Yet “nothing” takes on an allegorical force as it “cometh or gooth” and as the narrator describes his “felyng in nothyng.” This allegory illogically suggests that the Dreamer finds something—a feeling—in nothing, a paradoxical notion that anticipates a deep

Confession and Bookkeeping: The Religious, Moral, and Rhetorical Roots of Modern Accounting. By James Aho. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Pp. xx+131.

Book Reviews Confession and Bookkeeping: The Religious, Moral, and Rhetorical Roots of Modern Accounting. By James Aho. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Pp. xx⫹131. Bill Maurer University of California, Irvine Confession and Bookkeeping is an insightful and quirky little book that significantly expands the scholarly discussion on double-entry bookkeep- ing, long a topic of fascination to historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and accounting scholars. Revisiting the classic debate between Sombart and Weber on religion and the rise of capitalism, James Aho argues per- suasively that Weber got it wrong, and backs up his argument with a telling history of the transformation of the Catholic sacrament of penance. In this age of Enron, WorldCom, and Halliburton, where bookkeeping and scandal seem to go hand in hand, the book is also a plea for a more scrupulous, indeed, reverent, accounting. The argument, in brief, is that the innovation of sacramental confession in the Catholic church provided a model for business accounting as well as a method for merchants to demonstrate their moral purity, or at the very least the agony with which they exposed themselves to self-scrutiny. They did not use double-entry bookkeeping, pace Weber, to plan their business activities, but rather to account for the state of their souls and justify their activities to church fathers. For Weber, the Catholic rite of penance inhibited material acquisition and thus business, for it inspired an inner asceticism. The problem is that Weber’s thesis ignores the in- convenient fact that double-entry bookkeeping actually arose in medieval Catholic Italy. Aho shows that it also arose in tight conversation with the rite of penance itself. Contra Weber’s conviction that, during the Middle Ages, “a business career was possible only for those who were lax in their ethical standards” (quoted on p. 49), Aho demonstrates that the medieval businessperson was racked with anxiety about the ethical standing of their activities and the moral reckoning they would face on judgment day. The key to Aho’s argument is the transformation of confession: the shift from canonical penance—the conferral of a special status on the penitent for a period of time during a ritual to be observed only once a lifetime (if that)—to part of papal law that required the regular and repeated divulgence of one’s sins to a priest in a quasi-therapeutic setting. Sacramental penance did not become a requirement until the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which adopted the Celtic rite and made it com- pulsory. Originally decried by church fathers interested in preserving their authority (penitential handbooks were ordered burned in 829 CE), private penance spread like wildfire, creating an “epidemic of scrupulosity” (p. 25), indeed, an almost neurotic fixation on it. Possibly derived from Hindu practices and Greek medicine—the cura animarum—private penance

The Humiliation of Sinners: Public Penance in Thirteenth-Century France by Mary C. Mansfield

BOOK REVIEWS309 The Humiliation ofSinners:Public Penance in Thirteenth-Century France. By Mary C. Mansfield. (Ithaca, New York: CorneU University Press. 1995. Pp. xvi, 343. $39.95.) Mary Mansfield's The Humiliation of Sinners was completed as a doctoral dissertation at Berkeley in the spring of 1989· She died Ui an automobUe accident the foUowing August at the age of 29. Her dissertation dUector, Gerard Caspary and her father, Harvey Mansfield, prepared the manuscript for pubUcation, preserving it, they teU us, as she had left it.Thus the publication date of 1995 is for a manuscript finished in 1989. It is the work of a formidable scholar whose intensive research in a wide range of sources produced a bold reinterpretation of the history of medieval penance. The book has two principal, interrelated goals.The first is to reject the thesis that medieval penance is the progenitor of the privacy, interiority and individualism that we believe are characteristic of modern western culture.That argument (waged throughout but most clearly summarized in the final chapter) is inevitably speculative, and although it produces important reflections on this problem, I found it beyond the reach of her evidence.The second goal is to "rehabiUtate " public penance by showing that historians have misunderstood its longevity and vitality between about 1000 and 1350.That project is founded on new, varied, and extremely interesting evidence. The restoration of public penance to the prominence it enjoyed in medieval Ufe and values rests first of all on a critique of the reigning paradigm in the history of penance. In the first three chapters, "Penance and Privacy," "The FaUure of aTheology of Private Penance," and "The PubUcity of Private Penance," Mary Mansfield undermines that history by insisting that historians (foUowing CyrUle Vogel rather than the seventeenth-century Oratorian Jean Morin) have been misled by the clarity of distinctions drawn by scholastic theologians and canonists .Where historians have seen a neat progression from canonical, to tariffed,to private, sacramental, auricular confession, her reading of Lanfranc, Peter Comestor, Alan of IiUe, Robert of Flamborough, and Thomas of Chobham uncovers an awkward period of transition in which confusions—never successfully resolved—about public, private, and sacrament abound. Her examples of penitential practice that embarrass attempts to see in auricular confession a preserve ofwhat we caU "privacy" are not unfamUiar and not without counter-arguments: the pubUc site of confession, the recourse to "reputation " to uncover sinners to be disciplined, sins reserved to higher ecclesiastical authorities, rigorous satisfactions specified by penitential canons that retained their prestige, restitution as a condition of absolution, and excommunications, especiaUy latae sententiae. Medieval society prized humiUation."Behind aU the praise of contrition lurks a longing for pubUc humiUation," she asserts, and describes a "general phenomenon of hauling secret sinners into the Ught of day" (pp.46, 124). Chapter four defines the terms and explains the procedures of pubUc penance, with concrete examples of her thesis that pubUc penance was -widely 310BOOK REVIEWS observed north of the Loire (unlike Italy and southern France). It punished ecclesiastical crimes such as clerical concubinage,violence against clerics, and destruction of church property, as weU as crimes shared with secular jurisdictions such as adultery,usury, and blasphemy. Once again, therefore, certain features of the received history of penance remain vaUd: "Solemn pubUc penance was for criminals, not saints" (p. 100); nor, one might add, for routine sinners. The analysis ofecclesiastical seasons and theU ritual (particularly penitential) celebrations in chapter five, "CoUective Expiation, CoUective Rejoicing," discerns a"ritual logic" (p. 158) that prepares for an impressive textual history and analysis of seventy-five French pontificals from 1150 to 1350 in chapters six and seven. She plots pontifical genealogies, orders them in fifty-year periods, and submits them to a meticulous reading. Her argument for the reliability of her sources is persuasive. French scribes did not merely copy rites of public penance from earlier models, they constantly revised them. In short, they experimented and thereby chronicled dramatic changes from the eleventh to the fourteenth century. In the earUer period, the ritual was genuinely communal: the expulsion and reconciUation of"scapegoats"were joyously received as a purification of the community. But in the thirteenth century, the rite...

The Irish Penitentials and Their Significance for the Sacrament of Penance Today by Hugh Connolly

BOOK REVIEWS 477 communicating Queen Elizabeth, a controversial act about which the author brooks no debate. The current revisionist (and pro-Catholic) reading ofthe English Reformation, led by Eamon Duffy, Christopher Haigh, andJ. J. Scarisbrick, is not mentioned. Cardinal Newman's Second Spring—an admission that the Oxford Movement could not work—is never cited, although Catholic revivals in several countries besides England are given honorable mention. What is worse is the author's inability to resist the occasional irreverent remark , as when he mentions "mating calls"being emitted by cardinals at one conclave (p. 109), and the comment that Cardinal Spellman "owed [Sr. Pasqualina] more favors than we may ever know" (p. 258). This tendency is unfortunate and mars what should have been a helpful book. JohnVidmar, O.P Dominican House ofStudies Washington, D.C. The Irish Penitentials and Their Significance for the Sacrament ofPenance Today. By Hugh Connolly. (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Four Courts Press. Distributed by International Specialized Book Services, Inc., 5804 N.E. Hassalo Street, Portland, OR 97213-3644. 1995. Pp. xii,256. $45.00.) In five chapters Father Connolly makes his case for the contemporary relevance and significance of the ancient Irish handbooks of penance. After placing the penitentials in their cultural and historical context he undertakes a lengthy textual analysis of the works from the point of view of one of their central organizing principles—the eight capital sins that were inherited from John Cassian (gluttony, avarice, anger, dejection, lust, languor, vainglory, and pride). The fourth chapter reads the penitentials through the perspective and within the framework afforded by the Ordopaenitentiae of the modern Irish Church. He puts it somewhat differently, "an analysis of the sacrament of penance and its parts passed through the filter, as it were, of Celtic penitential theology" (p. 124). Here he shows that the conception and spirit of penance and confession evidenced in the traditional elements of contrition (of heart), confession (by mouth),and satisfaction (through works) are reflected in the penitentials. In the final chapter Connolly takes a broad, interpretative approach to the symbolism of the penitentials through a discussion of three models of penance that run through the texts—the judicial model, the medical model of disease and healing , and the pilgrimage model. The penitentials appeared in Western Europe when the harsh system ofnonrepeatable public penance was waning, to be replaced with repeatable, private penance or confession. It is likely that they both encouraged and facilitated the transition to the more humane system, and it is certain that they set the tone and content for confessional manuals for at least five hundred years (up to the twelfth century). It is ironic that Connolly's book would appear now, at a time 478 BOOK REVIEWS when repeatable, private penance is tending to give way to public, communal penance in many quarters ofthe Roman Church. However ironic it may be, I believe that the author succeeds in showing that the pivotal period of the Irish penitentials has some valuable lessons for the present pivotal period in the history of the development of the sacrament of penance. He demonstrates an insightful reading of the texts and an imaginative interpretation of their (of course limited) contemporary significance. Having said this, I must add that it is disappointing to read a book published in 1995 that shows such little awareness of the careful work that is being done on the textual history of the penitentials. None of the works of the leading scholar in this field (Professor Raymund Kottje) are even listed in the bibliography . Connolly's book is not the book to read if one wants to gain any critical, historical knowledge of the penitentials, Irish or otherwise. It is, however, a reflective , insightful meditation on the theology of the penitentials, and a perceptive guide to their limited significance for today. Pierre J. Payer Mount Saint Vincent University Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Stratégie Missionnaire du Saint-Siège sous Léon XIII (1878-1903)- Centralisation romaine et défis culturels. By Claude Prudhomme. [Collection de l'École Française de Rome, 186.] (Rome: École Française de Rome, Palais Farnèse. 1994. Pp. iv,621. Paperback.) This very long and detailed...

Stratégie Missionnaire du Saint-Siège sous Léon XIII (1878-1903). Centralisation romaine et défis culturels by Claude Prudhomme

478 BOOK REVIEWS when repeatable, private penance is tending to give way to public, communal penance in many quarters ofthe Roman Church. However ironic it may be, I believe that the author succeeds in showing that the pivotal period of the Irish penitentials has some valuable lessons for the present pivotal period in the history of the development of the sacrament of penance. He demonstrates an insightful reading of the texts and an imaginative interpretation of their (of course limited) contemporary significance. Having said this, I must add that it is disappointing to read a book published in 1995 that shows such little awareness of the careful work that is being done on the textual history of the penitentials. None of the works of the leading scholar in this field (Professor Raymund Kottje) are even listed in the bibliography . Connolly's book is not the book to read if one wants to gain any critical, historical knowledge of the penitentials, Irish or otherwise. It is, however, a reflective , insightful meditation on the theology of the penitentials, and a perceptive guide to their limited significance for today. Pierre J. Payer Mount Saint Vincent University Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Stratégie Missionnaire du Saint-Siège sous Léon XIII (1878-1903)- Centralisation romaine et défis culturels. By Claude Prudhomme. [Collection de l'École Française de Rome, 186.] (Rome: École Française de Rome, Palais Farnèse. 1994. Pp. iv,621. Paperback.) This very long and detailed study of the missionary movement during the pontificate of Leo XIII is a substantial contribution to the mission history of the nineteenth century. Its major theme is the centralization, Romanization, and "papal-ization" of the missionary movement at this time. The book is divided into three major parts. The first describes the Congregation of the Propaganda during Leo's pontificate. The author provides not only the names ofthe prefects and secretaries of the Congregation but also of its members and consultors and describes both their tasks and how they came to be chosen. He has an interesting description of the ordinary path a Roman cleric would take in pursuit of an ecclesiastical career. He also shows with striking detail the bonds that existed between the various Congregations themselves and between them and the Pope,for the cardinals ofthe Propaganda were the Pope's chosen men and they invariably served on more than one Congregation. This guaranteed loyalty, uniformity , and Romanization in every detail. The second part of the book deals with the activity of the Propaganda during this time, describing how they developed a tradition of mission theory, controlled missionary action through questionnaires, synods, and apostolic delegates, assigned territories and chose mission congregations to serve there, and controlled the work of the missionary societies and the appointment of heads of the mission. Loyalty to the Pope, BOOK REVIEWS 479 submission to Rome, and uniformity in doctrine were expected of all missionaries —this permeates all decisions and communications. The third part of the book addresses the missionary strategy of Leo XIII as expressed by him and the Congregation. The centralization and "papal-ization" of missionary activity was pursued even though there were many obstacles along the way. The author treats well and in detail the struggles Rome had with Portugal over the Padroado in Asia and Africa, with the European Powers following the Berlin Conference on Africa in 1885, with France over the Religious Protectorate in China, and with Italy over the protection of missionaries in China and Africa. The author suggests that Leo's preferred interest was union with the Eastern Churches,but Leo also was concerned that missionary expansion should fit into his global plan for the Church. While centralization developed greatly during this period, there were two checks on its development: Rome could not persuade France to give up its religious protectorate in China and thus had to abandon its plan for an apostolic delegation; and Rome could not persuade the Society for the Propagation of the Faith to move its offices from Lyons to Rome and to entrust the distribution of funds to the Propaganda. These were minor setbacks when compared with the major accomplishments in this area. The author...

The Penitentials Attributed to Bede

Scholars have long recognized the value of penitentials, or handbooks of penance, as sources for the intellectual and social history of the Middle Ages. Lists of sins likely to be confessed, followed by penances graded according to the severity of the offenses, the penitentials would seem to be richly informative of medieval morality. But they are evidence that must be used with care. Especially for the early medieval period, the texts are available only in old editions which do not offer reliable guides to dating, provenance, authorship, or other criteria without which valid historical analysis is impossible.1 This essay studies various penitentials attributed to the Venerable Bede (d. 735). Any tradition linking the foremost English churchman of the early Anglo-Saxon period to a specific text is worthy of study in its own right. But the penitentials attributed to Bede claim our attention for important reasons that are not related to the question of authorship. The historical context of the English penitentials has not been carefully defined. We do not know enough about the relationship of early English to earlier Irish penitentials, or about the manuscript traditions of handbooks attributed to Bede and his near contemporaries, Theodore of Canterbury (d. 690) and Egbert of York (d. 766). These traditions-will illuminate the development of private penance on the continent, where nearly all the manuscripts of supposedly English penitentials have survived. Indeed, the best argument for close textual analysis of all early medieval penitentials is our need for greater geographical as well as chronological precision when discussing their historical significance.2

FROM PENANCE TO CONFESSION: THE CELTIC CONTRIBUTION

Summary In the history of Penance, the influence of the Celtic church has been considered a significant factor in the evolution of the sacrament. The general assumption is that the Irish church developed a unique confession practice which was repeatable, had no public rites and was administered by a priest who was aided by the penitential books. Canonical or public penance had never existed in Ireland because the Celtic church had been cutoff from the Continent by the Barbarian invasions. Moreover, this unique practice was brought to the Continent by the Celtic missionaries at the end of the sixth century and gradually replaced canonical Penance. Several aspects of this theory have been called into question by contemporary archeological and epigraphical studies, by the similarities of the penances recorded in the penitential books to elements of Continental practice and by the existence of groups of penitents attached to Irish monasteries. These groups clearly constitute a public penitent class. The condemnation of private Penance by the Council of Toledo (589) is frequently understood as referring to the Irish penitential practice. An examination of canons 11 and 12 of Toledo and canon 8 of Chalon-sur-Saône (ca. 650) raises questions concerning that assumption. Commentators on the Council of Toledo offer widely differing interpretations which point to a variety of existing practices. These variations indicate that private, repeatable Penance had already emerged in a sporadic form without the impetus of Celtic influence. Canon 12 of Toledo confirms that on the Continent a presbyter delegated by the bishop was also an administrator of Penance. Confession to a priest rather than to the bishop was therefore not an Irish innovation. Perhaps the greatest influence of the Irish on Continental practice came about as a result of the abuses of tariff Penance. The penances assigned for particular sins were often so severe and of such duration that commutations became inevitable. These substitutions, as well as the proliferation of penitential books were factors leading to abuse and the obliteration of the process of expiation. These abuses effected the future of the sacrament of Penance by fostering individualism, promoting the juridical role of the confessor and in particular, emphasizing the act of confessing as the guarantee of forgiveness. Thus the Celtic contribution was to change the focus of the sacrament from penance to confession.

The Significance of the Frankish Penitentials

It has been argued that the handbooks of penance known as the ‘Frankish’ penitentials, though ‘an important and necessary stage in the development of medieval church and society’, were an ‘ephemeral and ultimately despised intrusion’ into the Frankish Church of the eighth and ninth centuries. The importation of these books by Irish and Anglo-Saxon missionaries and the adverse reaction of the Frankish bishops to the Irish system of private penance which they introduced is a story too well known to require rehearsal here; after spreading rapidly in the eighth century the penitentials were challenged and condemned by several synods in the century which followed. This reaction had important consequences for the penitentials, to be sure, but to my knowledge it has not previously been asserted that the Frankish penitentials were merely transitional or that their impact on the Frankish Church was either peripheral or minimal. On the contrary, Fournier, Watkins and McNeill and Gamer, among others, believe the Carolin-gian era to have been heavily influenced by these texts and, in turn, to have been decisive in their development.

Penitential discipline and Public Wars in the Middle Ages: A Mediaeval Contribution to the development of humanitarian law

An exposé of the nature of the penitentials would take us far into the long history of penance in the Eastern and Western Churches of Christendom and, in particular, to the supersession of public by private penance. In spite of the efforts of many scholars the steps in this process are still far from clear. All that can be said here is that the system of private penance depicted in the penitentials appears in the North West corner of Christendom at a time when public penance was virtually obsolete throughout the rest of Christendom.

Jean Morin and the Problem of Private Penance II

Jean Morin and the Problem of Private Penance II

Jean Morin and the Problem of Private Penance

Jean Morin and the Problem of Private Penance

Review of Book: The Origins of Private Penance in the Western Church

Review of Book: The Origins of Private Penance in the Western Church

The Origins of Private Penance in the Western Church. By Rev. R. C. Mortimer. Pp. 194. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1939. 10s. 6d.

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The Origins of Private Penance in the Western Church

The Origins of Private Penance in the Western Church

<italic>The Origins of Private Penance in the Western Church</italic>. By Rev. R. C. Mortimer, Student and Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford, University Lecturer in Early Canon Law, Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Ripon. (New York: Oxford University Press. 1939. Pp. 194. $3.50.)

<italic>The Origins of Private Penance in the Western Church</italic>. By Rev. R. C. Mortimer, Student and Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford, University Lecturer in Early Canon Law, Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Ripon. (New York: Oxford University Press. 1939. Pp. 194. $3.50.)

Book Review: The Origins of Private Penance in the Western Church

Book Review: The Origins of Private Penance in the Western Church

REVIEWS

REVIEWS The Origin of Private Penance in the Western Church, by the Rev. R. C. MORTIMER Pp. 194. ( Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1939.) R. D. WHITEHORN R. D. WHITEHORN Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume os-XLI, Issue 162, April 1940, Pages 220–221, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/os-XLI.162.220 Published: 01 April 1940