Handout #110

The evolution of penitential practice in the church over six centuries

Some seventh and eighth century tariffs

We recommend that each priest should learn all the tariffs that he reads here and should consider with care the sex, the age, the social condition, the state and the person of each penitent. He should take into consideration inner feelings and judge according to circumstances... Anyone who kills a monk or a cleric shall leave armed service and enter the service of God or do seven years penance. Anyone who kills a layperson through hate or cupidity shall do four years penance. The soldier who kills in the course of a war shall fast for forty days. The mother who kills the child she is carrying in her womb before the fortieth day following conception shall fast for one year; if it is after the fortieth day she shall fast three years. However, there is a great difference between the poor woman who has killed her child because she cannot feed it and the profligate ... Anyone who gets so drunk as to vomit shall fast forty days if he is a priest or deacon; thirty days if he is a religious; twelve days if he is a lay person. Penitential of Bede (Great Britain)

Commutations

A mass is equivalent to three days fasting ... sixty-six psalms recited during the night, plus three hundred blows, is equivalent to two days of fasting. One hundred and twenty masses plus three psalters plus three hundred blows is equivalent to one hundred gold sous...

The powerful man shall take twelve men who will fast in his stead for three days, on bread, water and green vegetables. He shall then go in search of seven times one hundred and twenty men, each of whom shall fast in his place for three days. The fast days thus obtained will be equal to the number of days contained in seven years. Penitentials of the seventh-eighth and tenth centuries

Pilgrimage was a special penance. The pilgrimage to Jerusalem became a crusade. This carried with it an indulgence which had penitential value and could also apply to the dead. The penitential tariff fell into discredit, and confession of sins took pride of place.

Various eleventh-century confessions

We must confess our secret sins to the clergy of all orders. As to public faults, it is fitting for them to be confessed only to priests through whom the church binds and looses act which it knows by reason of their public nature. If you do not find any clergy at all to whom to make your confession, choose an honorable man from your locality ..In the absence of all clergy a pure man can purify a guilty man.

And if someone cannot find anybody to confess to, he should not despair, for the Fathers are agreed in saying that it is enough to confess to God. John Chrysostom, Cassian, Ambrose...Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury (1005-1089 A.D.).

During the course of the twelfth century a close association was gradually established between confession, contrition and absolution by the priest. 

The confession of grave sins must be made to a priest, and in detail, for he is the only one who has the power to bind and loose.. Confession made to anyone else does not procure absolution from sins; here we are absolved by self-abasement and by the prayers of our brothers. That is why in this case we do not say, I forgive your sins' (the first trace of the formula of absolution) but only, 'May almighty God have mercy on you.'

Compulsory confession and annual communion: the Lateran Council (1215)

All the faithful of either sex who have reached the age of discretion must faithfully confess all their sins at least once a year to their own parish priest, carefully perform, as far as they are able, the penance which he imposes on them, and reverently receive the sacrament of the eucharist at Easter. Save in the case where, on the advice of their parish priest, for some reasonable cause, they think that they should abstain from receiving it for the moment. Otherwise, they are to be forbidden to enter the church, if they are alive, and to be deprived of burial by the church, if they are dead.

Return to Text