The close links between confession, penance, and extreme unction may warrant discussing these topics together in a single chapter of a book on medieval canon law. For most of the Middle Ages, penance and canon law were closely related and at times even virtually indistinguishable, as the first section of this chapter will explain. This was so even though penance could take many different forms and shapes, ranging from very informal acts of penance more or less fueled by feelings of contrition, on the one hand, to disciplinary penances, which were formally imposed by priests, bishops, and ecclesiastical or even secular courts, on the other, as the second section of this chapter will argue. Confession, moreover, served from very early on as an intrinsic part of the rituals that prepared a Christian for his or her last voyage: the rites of extreme unction. The final part of this chapter will deal with the development of these last rites into a more or less defined liturgical ritual as it emerged in the Carolingian age and lasted through the centuries.

This chapter discusses the formal and less formal ways in which Christians in the first millennium, especially during the early Middle Ages, could compensate for transgressing moral rules. Monastic ways of confessing and atoning for transgressions were introduced to specific lay audiences. Especially in the insular world, penitential books were composed that provided guidelines for this process. Such works were closely connected to other forms of ecclesiastical regulation. In the Carolingian world, penance became an issue of central concern, discussed at councils and in canonical collections. As a consequence, a substantial number of new texts were composed and disseminated widely. Such works of Carolingian inspiration reached an audience outside of the Carolingian realms: in Spain, Italy, and England. They were also increasingly included in canonical collections. The close connection between penitential books and canonical collections suggests that both genres could be employed in diverse settings. Distinctions between public and private penance, or between penance and jurisdiction (judicial punishment) are not as clear or self-evident as used to be thought.

1. Arezzo, Biblioteca Consorziale, Ms. 312 (s. XII/1)

2. Bamberg, Staatliche Bibliothek, Ms. Can.2 (A.I.35) (s. IX med., northeastern France)

3. Barcelona, Biblioteca de la Universidad, Ms. 228 (s. X/2, northern Italy)

4. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Hamilton 290 (s. X/2, northern Italy)

5. Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 10034–7 (s. IX med., northeastern France)

6. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 265 (s. XI/1, England)

7. Châlons-en-Champagne, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 32 (s. XI/2, western parts of Germany/Lotharingia?)

8. Cologne, Dombibliothek, 117 (Darmst. 2116) (s. IX med.-IX/2, eastern France?)

9. Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek, 281 (886) (s. IX 2/4, France)

10. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ashburnham 1814 (s. IX/2, France)

11. Gent, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Ms. 506 (551) (s. IX 3/4, west of the Rhine)

12. Heiligenkreuz, Stiftsbibliothek, Hs. 217 (s. X ex., southern Germany or Bohemia)

13. Koblenz, Landeshauptarchiv, Best. 701 Nr.759,7 (s. XI/XII)

14. Kynžvart, Zámecká knihovna, 20 K 20 (s.XII/1, St Blasien)

15. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Ms. L 28 sup. (s. IX 3/3, northern Italy)

16. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Ms. Trotti 440 (s. XII/1, northern Italy, possibly Milan)

17. Monte Cassino, Archivio dell’Abbazia, Cod. 557 bis 0 (s. XI/1, Monte Cassino)

18. Montpellier, Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire, Médecine 304 (s. XII med., Normandy)

19. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 3851 (s. IX ex., eastern France, Lotharingia?)

20. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 3853 (s. X/2, southern Germany, Augsburg?)

21. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 3909 (1138–43, Augsburg)

22. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 12673 (s. X, Salzburg?)

23. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14532 (s. IX ex., northeastern France, Lotharingia?)

24. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 17068 (1152–8, written for or in the monastery of Schäftlarn)

25. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 17195 (s. XII med., in or for Schäftlarn)

26. Münster, Staatsarchiv, VII 5201 (c. 945, Corvey)

27. Novara, Biblioteca Capitolare, 18 (LXXI) (s. IX med.-IX 3/4, northern Italy)

28. Orléans, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 216 (188) (s. IX/2, northeastern France)

29. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodl. 516 (2570) (s. IX 3/4, northern Italy)

30. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Can. Patr. lat. 49 (s. XII med., northern Italy)

We have seen in the last chapter that penitential handbooks from Ireland were known in England and on the European mainland from the late sixth century onward. Probably they had been introduced there by Irish monks during their peregrinatio. Apart from particular historical figures such as Columbanus and Fursa, the influence of whom we have sketched above, there might have been more about whom we do not know a lot. However, the evidence for the existence of penitential handbooks and the practice of hearing confession that these texts presuppose, dating from the seventh and early eighth centuries, is scarce. Although, for example, Cummean’s penitential was used in a couple of eighth- and ninth-century texts, only one manuscript – and a rather late one – containing this text has survived. There are good reasons for this lack of manuscript evidence. As is clear from the case of the penitential attributed to Egbert, the manuscripts may have remained unbound, existing only as loose quires. This would endanger their preservation for future generations, while the fact that they probably were written in an insular script, which at some point was no longer easy to read, may also have contributed to the bad state of survival of these texts. At the Carolingian councils of the first half of the ninth century, penitential handbooks came under fire and, as we shall see in this chapter, the council of Paris (829) actually called for the destruction of such books. It is not very probable that such an inquisition had much success, but it goes to show that we must reckon with the fact that many penitential handbooks did not survive the ravages of time.

VERSION G (CANONES GREGORII)

1. Kynžvart, Zámecká knihovna, 20 K 20 (s. XII/1, St Blasien)

2. London, British Library, Add. 8873 (s. XII/1, Italy)

3. London, British Library, Add. 16413 (s. XI in., southern Italy)

4. Merseburg, Dombibliothek, Ms. 103 (s. IX/1, northern Italy)

5. Monte Cassino, Archivio dell’Abbazia, Cod. 372 (s. XI in., S. Nicola della Cicogna, near Monte Cassino)

6. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 3852 (s. XI, southern Germany)

7. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6241 (s. X/2, Freising)

8. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6245 (s. IX/2, Freising)

9. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14789 (s. VIII/IX, France)

10. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodl. 311 (s. X, northern–northwestern France)

11. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 2123 (814–16, Flavigny)

12. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 3848 B (s. VIII–IX, Flavigny)

13. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, n.a.l. 281 (s. X/XI, northern Italy/southern France)

14. Prague, Knihovna pražké kapituly, O. LXXXIII (short before 794, Bavaria?)

15. Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 5751 (s. IX ex., northern Italy)

In the last chapter we saw that some Irish monasteries opened up ways for the laity to atone for their sins. This applied mostly to serious sins such as killing someone or having sex with someone you were not allowed to have such relations with. For people with close links to a monastery, such as the lay tenants or supporters of monastic institutions, more guidelines helping them to lead a Christian life would be offered. Such guidelines were codified in texts we call penitentials that were written in Ireland and adjacent territories in Britain. We have seen that Columbanus probably took a file of such texts with him when he travelled to Francia, where these were collected and with some other material fitting the local situation turned into a text later known as Columbanus’s penitential. In England Cummean’s penitential was known as a ‘libellus scottorum’. This shows that Irish monks following the urge to leave their home country took penitential texts with them. In Ireland the desire to leave your country for a peregrinatio, that is the ascetic practice of leaving your family and relatives to follow the way of Christ, was particularly strong. From the late seventh century onwards, English monks would follow in their wake. In travelling abroad Irish and Anglo-Saxon clerics seem to have taken penitential texts and attitudes with them, but had to adapt these to the new surrounding in which they found themselves. It is to the dissemination of insular penitential ideas and their adaptation to new circumstances that we shall now turn.

For over a hundred years historians have taken for granted that private penance originated in Ireland. Since Paul Fournier demonstrated that those penitential handbooks which Hermann Joseph Schmitz still believed to be of Roman origin were actually written in Francia on the basis of earlier texts composed in Ireland and England, it has been generally assumed that penitential handbooks as we know them from the early Middle Ages originated in Ireland and the regions dominated by Celtic-speaking peoples in Britain. There is no doubt that the earliest texts of this new genre do indeed stem from these regions. However, this does not automatically imply that private penance originated with these texts, as so many authors have assumed. As this chapter will demonstrate, there are many uncertainties about the status and the function of penitential handbooks in early medieval Ireland and Wales and their role may at the same time have been more constricted than historians have assumed, but also more far-reaching.

First we have to remember that Christianity had taken root in Ireland at some point in the fifth century. The chronicler Prosper of Aquitaine recorded that in the year 431 a deacon by the name of Palladius had been sent to ‘the Irish who believe in Christ’ as their first bishop, by Pope Celestine I. As Pope Leo I, with whom Prosper was in close contact, recognized, the introduction of Christianity into Ireland was a unique event, since it meant that Christianity transcended the political boundaries of the Roman empire. Whereas in Gaul the position of the bishop could in many aspects relate to the Roman past, this was much harder in Ireland where, for example, no towns existed which were comparable to the late Roman towns as they were found in regions of the former Roman empire. The earliest phases of the process of Christianization in Ireland still raise many questions. The relationship between Palladius and Patrick, for example, is a perennial question in early Irish history. Palladius was a deacon of the church of Auxerre prior to his departure for Ireland and was closely connected to the influential bishop of Auxerre, Germanus, who combatted Pelagianism in Britain.

In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council decreed that every Christian who had come to the age of discretion should confess his sins at least once a year individually in front of his own priest. This decree is sometimes regarded as innovative for introducing regular lay confession, but it should rather be seen as the first general regulation on this topic in a centralizing Christian Church. There had been earlier rules concerning the frequency of confession, which was mostly closely related to receiving the Eucharist, sometimes requiring a higher rate of three times a year. Regino of Prüm had included among his demands for the laity that they should confess their sins at the beginning of Lent and fulfil their penitential obligations at least once a year. What was new was the way in which Innocent III now called together this enormous gathering of prelates and secular lords in order to formulate a truly formidable programme of reform that was to be applicable for all Christendom. The Fourth Lateran Council has been called ‘the most important statement of the nature and structure of the Catholic faith since the great ecumenical councils of late antiquity’, as well as ‘the most pastoral of all the general church councils of the Middle Ages’. Inspired by ideas about a much more active role of the church in society as they had been developing in Parisian circles, Lateran IV inaugurated a remarkable increase in the composition of pastoral works, a development that is sometimes referred to as a pastoral revolution. These works, many of which still need careful study, were meant to propagate the new ideas about penance and confession as they had developed in the twelfth-century schools to the priests and monks hearing confession and through them to communicate these to the laity. Penance, vices and virtues became the main subjects of a wealth of pastoral literature that was being produced in this period.

We begin in the year 590 in Rome. At this moment the situation in the former capital of the world can be characterized as simply disastrous. Justinian’s attempt to reconquer the western parts of the Roman empire, which started with the destruction of the Vandal kingdom in northern Africa in 533, resulted in Italy in the Gothic Wars. This prolonged confrontation between the troops of the Byzantine generals Belisarius and Narses and the Gothic armies in Italy brought an end to the economic prosperity of the Italian peninsula. Whereas under Gothic rule late Roman structures had continued to function, the Gothic Wars put a definitive end to the prosperity of late antique Italy, leading to famine and plague. In November 589 the waters of the Tiber had risen to such heights that buildings collapsed and ecclesiastical granaries were destroyed. Great amounts of grain had been lost while people were seeing snakes and dragons swimming in the river. In January the plague hit hard, Pope Gelasius II being among its first casualties. The people of Rome looked for guidance to a former prefect of the city, a member of a distinguished Roman family living on the Coelian Hill, the same family from which Pope Felix III (483–92) had come. Gregory the Great, as the scion of this family later came to be known, came to the papal office with serious reservations as he had chosen the contemplative life and was now forced to return to the sorrows of the active life again. His fame, however, seems to have spread fast. Soon after he had become the new bishop of Rome, his namesake, Bishop Gregory of Tours, included an account of Gregory’s election in his Histories. The bishop of Tours relates that he was informed about Roman affairs by a deacon who had travelled to Rome in that year, bringing back relics to the town of Tours. Gregory’s account informs us of the catastrophes in Rome and the way the newly elected pope tried to remedy them. The new pope saw the plague as a divine punishment for the sins of the people in Rome and organized a penitential procession to atone for these sins.