Academic literature on the topic 'Irish penitentials'

Some of the earliest references to ritual lamentation or keening in the early Irish sources are found in the penitential handbooks dated to around the seventh and eighth centuries. In previous scholarship, these passages have commonly been interpreted as evidence of the continuous attempts of the Church to curb pagan practices among the ‘nominally Christian’ populace, thus assuming that such regulations were primarily used as a means of social control. This article examines the wider theological and intellectual context of these texts, by focusing in particular on the influence of the Old Testament on early Irish ecclesiastical writing. It will be argued that the demonstrable preoccupation of these sources with issues such as ritual purity and proper religious observance suggests that the stipulations pertaining to lamentation were not solely intended to regulate lay behavior.

The handbooks for confessors known as penitentials are, I shall argue, an important source for our knowledge of early medieval attitudes on the part of churchmen and others towards children. These texts, basically lists of sins with the prescription of an appropriate penance for each iniquity, can be said to reflect widespread practices and ideas. They originated in the Irish and British Churches in the sixth century and spread from there over all of Western Europe, where they remained in use until the twelfth century.

Abstract Although the advent of the Kingdom of God in Jesus contains as an intrinsic quality the opportunity for repentance (metanoia) as often as required, the Church of the first five-hundred years shows serious difficulties with the opportunity of conversion after a relapse in sinning after baptism. The Church allowed only one chance of repentance. Requirement for the reconciliation were a public confession and the acceptance of severe penances, especially after committing the mortal sin of apostasy, fornication or murder. As severe as this paenitentia canonica appears, its entire conception especially in the eastern part of the Church, the Oriental Church, is a remedial one: sin represents an ailment of the soul, the one, who received the confession, is called upon to meet the confessing person as a spiritual physician or soul-friend. Penance does not mean punishment, but healing like a salutary remedy. Nevertheless, the lack of privacy led to the unwanted practice of postponing repentance and even baptism on the deathbed. An alternative procedure of repentance arose from the sixth century onwards in the Irish Church as well as the Continental Church under the influence of Irish missionaries and the South-West-British and later the English Church (Insular Church). In treatises about repentance, called penitentials, ecclesiastical authorities of the sixth to the eight centuries wrote down regulations, how to deal with the different capital sins and minor trespasses committed by monks, clerics and laypeople. Church-representatives like Finnian, Columbanus, the anonymous author of the Ambrosianum, Cummean and Theodore developed a new conception of repentance that protected privacy and guaranteed a discrete, an affordable as well as a predictable penance, the paenitentia privata. They not only connected to the therapeutic aspect of repentance in the Oriental Church by adopting basic ideas of Basil of Caesarea and John Cassian, they also established an astonishing network in using their mutual interrelations. Here the earlier penitentials served as source for the later ones. But it is remarkable that the authors in no way appeared as simple copyists, but also as creative revisers, who took regard of the pastoral necessities of the entrusted flock. They appeared as engaged in the goal to improve their ecclesiastical as well as their civil life-circumstances to make it possible that the penitents of the different ecclesiastical estates could perform their conversion and become reconciled in a dignified way. The aim of the authors was to enable the confessors to do the healing dialogue qualitatively in a high standard; quantity was not their goal. The penitents should feel themselves healed, not punished.

The recent accession to the Vatican Archives of registers of the Sacred Penitentiary, a category of business which remained closed when the general records of the papacy were opened to scholarly research at large in 1881, is an important development. It has especially exciting implications for late medieval Irish history The availability of the Penitentiary material will greatly facilitate an undertaking which is of prime importance but for which the sources are otherwise scanty the study of religious sentiment in Ireland in the period from about the second decade of the fifteenth century, when these registers begin, to the Reformation. This is an aspect of ecclesiastical history to which the legalistic and contentious documents of the beneficiary deposits, the principal point of contact between Ireland and the papacy in the middle ages — though immensely valuable in their own right — do not readily lend themselves.

In contemporary Ireland, mountains, holy wells, and islands attract people from various geographic and religious backgrounds to participate in annual pilgrimages. Scholars and participants continue to debate the historical links of these events to 19th-century turas, “journey” traditions, early medieval penitential liturgies, and even prehistoric veneration of natural phenomena. Drawing from recent participant observation at Croagh Patrick mountain and excavations on Inishark Island, I analyze how modern and medieval pilgrimage practices generated “enchantments” through movements and embodied encounters with stones that materialize both past human action and other-than-human agency. Rather than products of timeless continuity of experience, such enchantments have varied widely across time. Viewing pilgrimage movements and materials in their taskscape settings highlights the articulation between the embodied affects and political and ideological effects of pilgrims’ engagement with stones in particular historic contexts. Questioning simple narratives of continuity, this study demonstrates how a relational approach can enhance analyses of pilgrimage as scenes of social reproduction, ideological controversy, and political contest.

This thesis aims at an exploration of the ascetical theology and praxis of the sixth to the eighth century Irish monasticism viewed as a radical response to the Christian evangelium. It also aims to analyse the extent to which the distinctive response of the monastic Irish in the period arose from their Celtic cultural context. Culture influences all aspects of life and given that this work is addressing the critical period of the emergence of a people from primitive forms of religious belief and practice to Christianity it would be important to evaluate the influence of culture. The thesis is an exploration in the sense that, though much has been written about monasticism and specifically the Irish monastic movement up to and beyond the tenth century, the discussion of the ascetical theology and praxis has the potential to open up new pathways to better understanding and appreciation of this phenomenon within the wider Irish Church.  The scope of the work ranges briefly over the cultural context of Irish society in the pre and post-Christian era: its social organisation, sagas, Brehon laws and druidism. The primary sources utilised include the penitentials, the monastic rules, the Vitae and writings of ColumCille and Columbanus. These formative works regarding two of the most influential early Irish monastic founders are seen as encapsulating, and broadly illustrating, the ascetical emphasis and praxis of this time. The work draws on the ancient notions and practices of asceticism and the principle of contraries brought to light by Cassian. One facet of the radicality of Irish monasticism, manifested specifically in the penitentials, lies partly in the fact that, whereas asceticism is usually perceived as a personal response to the call to change one's lifestyle, the Irish praxis was, on the whole, undertaken in the context of a community.  Chapter One looks briefly at the Irish Church as part of that phenomenon called the Celtic Church. Other aspects of the topic addressed in this chapter include history (the Irish of the period had a particular way of looking at it), theology, asceticism, radicality and how each of these facilitates the future analysing of the primary sources. Chapter Two analyses the Irish penitentials that traditionally, and often today, have been seen as harsh and inflexible. Chapter Three analyses the monastic rules of some early founders and demonstrates that they are a call to a radical lifestyle for those committed to the religious life, compared with the ordinary demands of the Christian evangel. In Chapters Four and Five, the lives and writing of ColumCille and Columbanus are treated. The Sermons of Columbanus are the primary material used in Chapter Five. The conclusions of this work are that the radicality in the monastic rules, penitentials and the Vitae of its most prominent founders reveals that all the practices were designed to promote personal growth in the spiritual life and were not primarily focussed on punishment. They were about an inner transformation that enhanced one's personal, spiritual and human well being rather than a humiliation and belittling of the person. Present day psychology and the behavioural sciences in general would affirm the wisdom of the fundamental belief inherent in Cassian's contraries, which underpinned the injunctions in both the monastic rules and penitentials. The evidence deduced from many of the injunctions in the extant penitentials is that of a balanced presentation of the ideals of asceticism, which were a guide for the inner transformation of the person. Both the penitentials and the monastic rules also point to the emphasis on individuality that is evident in much Irish secular writing. The injunctions of the extant rules make it clear that their asceticism was, through prayer, sacrifices or mortification and work, to aid in the transforming of the energy of self-denial into a spiritual power. The asceticism thus recommended in these primary sources of the sixth to the eighth century Irish monastic movements was not harsh and inhuman, for the radicality of their lives depended on the fact that it was deliberately and personally chosen by the monks. They were captured by the beauty of their newly found faith in the Christian God, incarnated in Jesus whose life they contemplated in the daily recitation of the Canonical Hours and whose presence surrounded them in the totality of creation.