penitentials

penitentials, lists of sins and the fixed penances needed for their forgiveness, possibly appearing first in Wales, but developing their characteristic form in Ireland in the 6th to 8th centuries. They spread to the Anglo‐Saxons and the Franks, and eventually throughout Latin Christendom. At a time when the Latin church was struggling to find a workable theology of the remission of sins, these lists offered a new approach based on two sources. From Irish law came the notion that an offence carried with it a price, varying with the status of the parties, to be paid by the offender to the one injured. From monastic spirituality came the idea of penitence as an ongoing therapy. The penitentials looked on a sin as a crime with a debt attached to it, and in paying this debt the offender is healed. So penances (e.g. fasting for a fixed time) were graded by the deed, and the status of offender. Sins, as crimes against God, became private matters which could be put behind one through a process repeated many times in a lifetime. Behind these provisions lay a new understanding of sin as culpa (to be overcome by inner conviction of sorrow—the Irish developed the notion of ‘the penance of tears’ that anticipates the notion of ‘contrition’) and poena (the debt to justice and the requisite penitential therapy). The penitentials were a crucial step in the development of sacramental penance, and, since longer penances could be commuted to less demanding ones, the later practice of indulgences developed. They were the most significant Irish contribution to the western church.

Bibliography

O'Loughlin, T. , Celtic Theology: Humanity, World and God in Early Irish Writings (2000)

Thomas O'Loughlin