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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Throughout the modern period Catholic and Orthodox Christians alike have taken it for granted that forgiveness for sins committed after baptism is obtained first and foremost through confession to a priest and absolution by a priest, the humility of confession plus the power of the sacrament being deemed the most effective remedy for human weakness. Other elements in overcoming sin, such as regular religious observance and the avoidance of the occasions of sin, were not forgotten, but were put in second place. The falling away from sacramental confession in the Catholic Church today is doubtless a complex phenomenon, but one reason for the decline is the widespread perception that this remedy does not work, that a penitential discipline that places so heavy a reliance on the power of priestly absolution, without adequate attention to the other aspects of repentance and forgiveness, is ineffectual. It also represents what is arguably an impoverished and clericalized Catholicism. The aim of this paper is to explore those elements of penitential practice in the early middle ages that belong to a tradition at once richer and more flexible.
1 Cassian, John, Conferences, transl. Ramsey, B., Ancient Christian Writers 57 (New York, 1997), XX.8, 698–9.Google Scholar
2 Ibid.
3 The same is true of the list of means of gaining forgiveness in John Chrysostom, De diabolo tentatore. Homily 2, 6 (PG 49, 263-4), which specifies five modes: self-condemnation, forgiving one’s neighbour, prayer, almsgiving, and ‘humility’.
4 Members of the clergy guilty of grave sin were degraded; as laymen they could do public penance, but not as clerics: see Cyrille Vogel, ‘Pénitence et excomunication dans l’Église ancienne et durant le Haut Moyen Âge’, Concilium 107 (1975), 11-22, repr. in idem, En rémission des péchés: recherches sur la systèmes pénitentiels dans l’Eglise latine (Aldershot, 1994), IV, esp. 15. To the references he gives may be added for the earlier period Basil, Canon 32 (see a 15 below) and Augustine, De correctioneDonatistarum 45 (ep. 185), PL 33, 812. In the Carolingian period the distinction was made that, to reduce exposure, degraded clergy did ‘canonical’ penance rather than ‘public’ penance: Mayke de Jong, ‘Power and Humility in Carolingian Society: the Public Penance of Louis the Pious’, Early Medieval Europe 1 (1992), 29-52, esp. 34 n. 18.
5 This is fully demonstrated by Karl-Josef Klar, Das kirchliche Bussinstitut von den Anfãngen bis zum Konzil von Trient ( Main, Frankfurt am and New York, 1991). Klar cites quantities of texts from the early centuries which show that Matt 18, 15-20 on the efficacy of repentance in response to rebuke by the person wronged remained one of the favourite forms of the forgiveness of sin. John Chrysostom, the most read of the Greek Fathers in the medieval period, was particularly emphatic on this (In Mt. Hom. 60–61 Google Scholar, in Klär, , Bussinstitut, 129–30)Google Scholar.
6 Rentinck, Pietro, La Cura Pastorale in Antiochia nel IV secolo, Analecta Gregoriana 178 (Rome, 1970), 281–309, esp. 289–90 Google Scholar. As was shown in Holl, Karl, Enthusiasmus und Bussgewalt beim griechischen Mõnchtum: eine Studie zu Symeon dem Neuen Theologen (Leipzig, 1898), 273–301 Google Scholar, public penance was never formally abolished. It was, however, very rarely imposed.
7 Bussière, Groupe de la, Pratique de la Confession (Paris, 1983), 59 Google Scholar.
8 There is a huge literature on the early medieval penitentials and the influence of Celtic practice. Klar, Das kirchliche Bussinstitut, 13 9-60, offers a useful summary.
9 The classic triad of mortal sins requiring canonical penance – idolatry, murder and adultery – was well established in the Late Antique period, as can be illustrated from Pacian of Barcelona (PL 13, io83f.), Augustine (PL io, 636), Pope Leo (PL 54, 1209) and John of Ephesus (PO XVII, 241).
10 Vogel, Cyrille, ‘La discipline pénitentielle en Gaule, des origines au DCe siècle: le dossier hagiographique’, Revue des sciences religieuses 30 (1956), 1–26, 157–86 Google Scholar, repr. in idem, En rémission des péchés, VI.
11 Barringer, Robert, ‘Ecclesiastical Penance in the Church of Constantinople: a Study of the Hagiographical Evidence to 983 A.D.’, unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1979 Google Scholar.
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13 The discipline of public penance remained officially in force for centuries; the ritual is described in Symeon of Thessalonica, Desacro templo (PG 155, 357-60), written in c.1420, but such descriptions bore no relation to contemporary practice.
14 Barringer, ‘Ecclesiastical Penance’, 193. John Chrysostom thought it necessary to argue against the belief that annual communion was adequate for attaining the forgiveness of sins even without works of penance (De beato Philogonio, PG 48, 755).
15 These canons are contained in Basil, epp. 188, 199, 217 (written in 374-5) in Basile, Saint, Lettres, ed. Yves Courtonne, 3 vols (Paris, 1957-66), 2:120-31, 154–64, 208–17.Google Scholar
16 Arranz, Miguel, ‘Les prières pénitentielles de la tradition byzantine’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica [hereafter OCP] 57 (1991), 87–143 Google Scholar and 58 (1992) 23-82; idem, Xes formulaires de confession dans la tradition byzantine’, OCP 58 (1992), 423-59 and 59 (1993), 63-89.
17 Holl, Enthusiasmus (see n. 6).
18 Alfeyev, Hilarion, St Symeon the New Theologian (Oxford, 2000), 197 Google Scholar, quoting the unpublished Third Letter.
19 Letter on Penance 11, pr. in Holl, Enthusiasmus, 119-20.
20 Cat. 28, 291-3, in Syméon le Nouveau Théologien, Catéchèses, ed. Basile Krivochéine French, transl. Joseph Paramelle, Sources chrétiennes 96, 104, 113 (Paris, 1963-65), 3: 150.
21 Letter on Penance 16, in Holl, Enthusiasmus, 127.
22 See Holl, Enthusiasmus, 226-39 on Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and Alfeyev, St Symeon, 197-201.
23 Holl, Enthusiasmus, 324.
24 Arranz, Xes prières pénitentielles’, OCP 58 (1992), esp. 64-82.
25 Symeon of Thessalonica, Responsa ad Gabrielem Pentapolitanum 10-13, PG 155, 860-4.
26 Peter Brown, The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Antiquity’, Late, Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971), 80–101 Google Scholar, repr. in idem, , Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London, 1982), 103–52, 141 Google Scholar. The significance of this episode was already appreciated by Morinus, Johannes, Commentarius historicus de disciplina in administratione sacramenti poenitentiae (Paris, 1651; repr. Farnborough, 1970), 416 Google Scholar.
27 MGH, Concilia II. 1 ( Leipzig, Hannover, 1906), 280 Google Scholar. Churchmen often tried to limit this principle to the case of minor sins: examples are Alcuin, ep. 112 (PL 100, 337-8), and Aelfric, The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: The First Part, Containing the Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric, ed. Benjamin Thorpe (London, 1844), 124-5. It is significant that when Burchard of Worms mentioned confession to God alone in c.iooo, he described belief in its efficacy as an error of the Greeks: Cyrille Vogel, Le Pécheur et la pénitence au Moyen Âge (Paris, 1969), 203.
28 Meens, Rob, ‘The Frequency and Nature of Early Medieval Penance’, in Biller, Peter and Minnis, A J., eds, Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages (York, 1998), 35–55 Google Scholar. For a survey of the history of the study of early medieval penance see Hamilton, Sarah, The Practice of Penance 900–1050 (Woodbridge, 2001), 1–13 Google Scholar.
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31 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Supplementum 8.2, adprimum.
32 Flinn, John, Le Roman de Renart dans la littérature française et dans les littératures étrangères au Moyen Age (Toronto, 1963), 624–6 Google Scholar. For an English version of this episode, see The History of Reynard the Fox, transl. Caxton, William, ed. Blake, N. F. (London, 1970), 25–8 Google Scholar.
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35 Weber, Simon, Ausgewahlte Schriften der armenischen Kirchenväter, 2 vols (Munich, 1927), 2: 58–68.Google Scholar
36 Ligier, L., ‘Pénitence et Eucharistie en Orient’, OCP 29 (1963), 5–78, esp. 18–24 Google Scholar.
37 Note the development in the West by c.1000 of a practice by which absolution followed immediately on confession and preceded penance: Palmer, P. F., Sacraments and Forgiveness: History and Doctrinal Development of Penance, Extreme Unction and Indulgences (London, 1960), 173–4 Google Scholar. This fatally undermined the importance of acts of penance.
