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Introduction Penitential questions: sin, satisfaction and reconciliation in the tenth and eleventh centuries R  M ...

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Introduction Penitential questions: sin, satisfaction and reconciliation in the tenth and eleventh centuries R  M 

As early medieval clergymen realized, to confess one’s sins to a priest is not an easy thing to do. They thus admonished priests to assign a specific penance without delay, since otherwise it might be necessary to question the penitent a second time; while for the penitent confessing sins only once was difficult enough. 1 The Blickling homilist preached that confessors should ‘humbly teach and instruct sinful men, so that they know how to confess their sins aright – because they are so various, and some so very impure, that a man will avoid ever telling them except the priest ask him concerning them’. 2 Despite the difficulties involved, acknowledging your faults and being prepared to make up for them is one of the most intimate ways in which an individual is related to the religious community that is the church, is confronted with ecclesiastical norms and with the ways in which he has lived up to those norms, or failed to do so. How far the rite of confession penetrated medieval society is therefore an indication of the nature and extent of that society’s religious beliefs. David Bachrach has recently addressed this larger topic of the Christian character of the early Middle Ages by focusing on the frequency of confession, specifically by looking at evidence for confession by soldiers.3 He concluded that confession must have been a regular feature in the religious life of lay people and that therefore 1

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See the instruction Quotienscumque, ed. R. Kottje, Paenitentialia minora Franciae et Italiae saeculi VIII–IX, CCSL 156 (Turnhout, 1994), p. 187. Blickling Homilies, no. 4 in The Blickling Homilies with a Translation and Index of Words together with the Blickling Glosses, ed. R. Morris, EETS OS 58, 63 and 73 (Oxford, 1874, 1876, 1889; reprinted in one volume 1967), pp. 42–3; cited by Catherine Cubitt below. D.S. Bachrach, ‘Confession in the Regnum Francorum (742–900)’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 54 (2003), pp. 3–22.

Early Medieval Europe   () 1–6 © Blackwell Publishing Ltd ,  Garsington Road, Oxford OX DQ, UK and  Main Street, Malden, MA , USA

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views of the early Middle Ages as a period in which Christianity hardly touched the surface of people’s lives cannot be sustained. Aaron Gurevich, on the other hand, tried to show how shallow early medieval Christianity was by analysing Bishop Burchard of Worms’s handbook for confession. Following a model closely related to the one propagated by Annales historians such as Jacques le Goff or Jean-Claude Schmitt, Gurevich contended that the descriptions of magical and superstitious beliefs and forms of behaviour as they are found in Burchard’s famous Decretum, and particularly in the nineteenth book, the Corrector sive Medicus, show that Christians remained attached to pre-Christian attitudes in the most important fields of human existence: health, love and economic success.4 For Arnold Angenendt the stress on external behaviour in penitential handbooks indicated a return to more archaic forms of religious beliefs (Rearchaisierung) compared to the more ethical attitudes found in early Christianity.5 Such contrasting views show that there is still a lot of work to be done if we are to understand early medieval religion and particularly the nature of early medieval confession. The themes of confession, penance and reconciliation, fortunately, have received more attention in recent years, as is shown by the Ecclesiastical History Society choosing this theme for their annual conference in 2003. 6 Confession and penance have long been the exclusive domain of ecclesiastical historians.7 Traditionally the investigation of the development of these rituals and practices was used as an argument for or against the respectability and the authority of current practices. But the renewed 4 5

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A. Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception (Cambridge, 1988). A. Angenendt, Geschichte der Religiosität im Mittelalter (Darmstadt, 1997), pp. 21–2, 626 – 44. Angenendt’s thesis had been developed by his pupil Hubertus Lutterbach; see, e.g., his ‘Die mittelalterlichen Bußbücher – Trägermedien von Einfachreligiosität?’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 114 (2003), pp. 227–44. Cf. however the reaction by R. Kottje, ‘Intentions-oder Tathaftung? Zum Verständnis der frühmittelalterlichen Bußbücher’, Zeitschrift der SavignyStiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 91 (2005), pp. 738–41. Published as K. Cooper and J. Gregory (eds), Retribution, Repentance, and Reconciliation, Studies in Church History 40 (Woodbridge, 2004). The first one who tried to break away from confessional prejudices in this field was Henry Charles Lea, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1896); confessional views, however, could still inspire H.J. Schmitz in his search for a Roman penitential, see H.J. Schmitz, Die Bussbücher und die Bussdisciplin der Kirche (Mainz, 1883; reprinted Graz, 1958) and his Die Bussbücher und das kanonische Bussverfahren. Nach handshriflichen Quellen dargestellt (Düsseldorf, 1898; reprinted Graz, 1958). The still indispensable works of Bernhard Poschmann and Josef Andreas Jungmann are strongly influenced by their catholic views, see e.g. B. Poschmann, Die abendländische Kirchenbusse im frühen Mittelalter, Breslauer Studien zur historischen Theologie XVI (Breslau, 1930); B. Poschmann, Penance and the anointing of the sick (New York 1964); J.A. Jungmann, Die lateinischen Bussriten in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Innsbruck, 1932). French historiography is less confessional, see the work of Paul Fournier, ‘Études sur les pénitentiels’, Revue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses 6 (1901), pp. 289–317, 7 (1902), pp. 59 – 70 and 121–127, 8 (1903), pp. 528–553 and 9 (1904), pp. 97–103 and Cyrille Vogel, Le pécheur et la pénitence au Moyen Age. Textes choisis, traduits et présentés par Cyrille Vogel (Paris 1969) and his Les “Libri Paenitentiales”, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental 27 (Turnhout, 1978).

Early Medieval Europe   ()

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 

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interest in religious history – especially following the investigation of mentalités pioneered by the Annales school – has also stimulated research in the field of penance and confession. Penitential handbooks have, for example, been drawn upon as privileged sources for the history of sexuality, of magic and superstitions, and of attitudes towards food. 8 Accompanying this renewed interest in these works as sources for social and cultural history, have been investigations into their textual history. Allen Frantzen carefully investigated the textual traditions and the cultural environment of penitential texts from the early Middle Ages in England.9 The most fundamental exploration of the textual history of penitential handbooks was, however, instigated by Raymund Kottje. His aim was to provide new, up-to-date editions of all the early medieval penitential handbooks written on the European mainland, resulting so far in two volumes published in the Latin Series of the Corpus Christianorum.10 Apart from these editions, Kottje’s research project has given rise to a number of studies in which the textual affiliations of particular texts have been thoroughly examined.11 The focus of all this work has been the eighth and ninth centuries, a period to which I also devoted most of my attention when dealing with the so-called ‘tripartite penitentials’.12 Returning to the manuscripts for the preparation of modern editions, yielded many unexpected results. Apart from new manuscripts of wellknown texts, some previously unknown material was also unearthed. 8

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Jean-Louis Flandrin, Un temps pour embrasser. Aux origines de la morale sexuelle occidentale (VI–XI siècle) (Paris, 1983). P. Payer, Sex and the Penitentials: The Development of a Sexual Code, 550 –1150 (Toronto, 1984). H. Lutterbach, Sexualität im Mittelalter. Eine Kulturstudie anhand von Bußbüchern des 6. bis 12. Jahrhundert, Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 43 (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 1999). V. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1991). J.-C. Schmitt, ‘Les “superstitions”’, in J. Le Goff (ed.), Histoire de la France religieuse, I: Des dieux de la Gaule à la papauté d’Avignon (des origines au XIVe siècle) (Paris, 1988), pp. 417–551. R. Meens, ‘Pollution in the Early Middle Ages: The Case of the Food Regulations in Penitentials’, EME 4 (1995), pp. 3–19. M. Muzzarelli (ed.), Una componente della mentalità occidentale: penitenziali nell’alto medio evo (Bologna, 1980); eadem, ‘Norme di comportamento alimentare nei libri penitenziali’, Quaderni Medievali 13 (1982), pp. 45– 80. H. Lutterbach, ‘Die Speisegesetzgebung in den mittelalterlichen Bußbüchern (600 –1200). Religionsgeschichtliche Perspektiven’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 80 (1998), pp. 1–37. Allen J. Frantzen, The Literature of Penance in Anglo-Saxon England, (New Brunswick, 1983). R. Kottje (ed.), Paenitentialia minora Franciae et Italiae saeculi VIII–IX, CCSL 156 (Turnhout, 1994) and F. Bezler (ed.), Paenitentialia Hispaniae, CCSL 156A (Turnhout, 1998). F.B. Asbach, Das Poenitentiale Remense und der sogen. Excarpsus Cummeani: Überlieferung, Quellen und Entwicklung zweier kontinentaler Bußbücher aus der 1. Hälfte des 8. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg, 1975). G. Hägele, Das Paenitentiale Vallicellianum I. Ein oberitalienischer Zweig der frühmittelalterlichen kontinentalen Bußbücher. Überlieferung, Verbreitung und Quellen, Quellen und Forschungen zum Recht im Mittelalter 3 (Sigmaringen, 1984). F. Kerff, Der Quadripartitus. Ein Handbuch der karolingischen Kirchenreform. Überlieferung, Quellen und Rezeption, Quellen und Forschungen zum Recht im Mittelalter 1 (Sigmaringen, 1982). R. Haggenmüller, Die Überlieferung der Beda und Egbert zuge-schriebenen Bußbücher (Frankfurt a.M. and Berne, 1991). L. Körntgen, Studien zu den Quellen der frühmittelalterlichen Bußbücher, Quellen und Forschungen zum Recht im Mittelalter 7 (Sigmaringen, 1993). R. Meens, Het tripartite boeteboek. Overlevering en betekenis van vroegmiddeleeuwse biechtvoorschriften (met editie en vertaling van vier tripartita) (Hilversum, 1994).



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Two further texts were, for example, added to the corpus of the earliest generation of Frankish penitential handbooks, the Paenitentiale Oxoniense I and the Paenitentiale Sletstatense.13 Ludger Körntgen discovered another unknown text, which not only proved to be the unidentified source for the third series of the Paenitentiale Romanum, but is also an intriguing and original composition of the first half of the eighth century: the Paenitentiale Oxoniense II.14 This text may even have been composed by the Anglo-Saxon missionary, Willibrord. 15 Because of this kind of detailed analysis of the manuscript tradition of certain works and of the sources on which it drew, we are now able to date and to localize specific texts in a much more convincing way than hitherto. We are also in a better position to assess the influence of specific works. It can be shown, for example, that from amongst the group of eighth-century tripartite penitentials, the Paenitentiale Capitula Iudiciorum was mainly known in southern Germany and Italy, while the Excarpsus Cummeani was utilized primarily in southern Germany, northern France and Spain.16 While Kottje’s project made it possible to use penitential handbooks with much more precision than before, it also raised new questions. Franz Kerff interrogated the generally accepted assumption that these texts were used in everyday pastoral care. Since they were often found in manuscripts in which they were surrounded by texts of a juridical nature, he argued that penitential canons were probably used in an episcopal court rather than in a parish church. 17 Kerff ’s views were supported by Alexander Murray, who not only questioned the applicability of these texts, but also the regular occurrence of the ritual of confession as an element of ordinary pastoral activity in the early Middle Ages.18 Another important issue raised in recent decades is the distinction between public penance and its secret counterpart. Following decrees 13 14 15

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Kottje (ed.), Paenitentialia minora, pp. 1–60 and 83–93. Körntgen, Studien zu den Quellen, pp. 90 –205; Kottje (ed.), Paenitentialia minora, pp. 181–205. R. Meens, ‘Willibrords boeteboek?’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 106 (1993), pp. 163–78; idem, ‘Christentum und Heidentum aus der Sicht Willibrords? Überlegungen zum Paenitentiale Oxoniense II’, in M. Polfer (ed.), L’évangélisation des régions entre Meuse et Moselle et la fondation de l’abbaye d’Echternach (Ve–IXe siècle), Publications de CLUDEM 16 (Luxemburg, 2000), pp. 415–28. For the P. Capitula Iudiciorum, see L. Mahadevan, ‘Überlieferung und Verbreitung des Bussbuchs “Capitula Iudiciorum”’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 72 (1986), pp. 17–75; for the Excarpsus Cummeani, Asbach, Das Poenitentiale Remense. F. Kerff, ‘Mittelalterliche Quellen und mittelalterliche Wirklichkeit. Zu den Konsequenzen einer jüngst erschienenen Edition für unser Bild kirchlicher Reformbemühungen’, Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 51 (1987), pp. 275–86 and idem, ‘Libri paenitentiales und kirchliche Strafgerichtsbarkeit bis zum Decretum Gratiani. Ein Diskussionsvorschlag’, Zeitschrift der SavignyStiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 75 (1989), pp. 23–57; see the reaction by R. Kottje, ‘“Buße oder Strafe?”. Zur “Iustitia” in den “Libri Paenitentiales”’, in La Giustizia nell’alto medioevo (secoli V–VIII), Settimane 42 (Spoleto, 1995), pp. 443–74. A. Murray, ‘Confession before 1215’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser. 3 (London, 1993), pp. 51–81.



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issued by Carolingian councils, it had been taken for granted that a neat distinction existed between the episcopally controlled ritual of public penance and parochial pastoral practice of private penance. Recent research, however, suggests that a vast ‘middle ground’ must have existed between these two poles.19 This ‘middle ground’ in which public and communal elements of the ritual of penance merged with more secret ones, also has consequences for the uses of penitential handbooks, which must have functioned in a more public environment than hitherto suspected. A Utrecht-based endeavour, funded by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research, now aims to take Kottje’s project further in several directions. It plans to tackle the tenth and eleventh centuries, a period which had not been well served by historians of penance before Sarah Hamilton’s major contribution to the field appeared in 2001. 20 Hamilton used a plethora of material showing the importance of penance at this time, but refrained from using the penitential handbooks from this period to the full, precisely because so little is known about these texts. 21 The Utrecht penitential project intends to remedy this lacuna. Two central texts, the Libri duo de synodalibus causis written by Regino of Prüm in the early years of the tenth century and Burchard’s Decretum, which is almost a century younger, are not tackled head-on because other projects are already addressing the problems involved with these works.22 Other important areas of research in this period, however, comprise the texts composed and known in Italy and England, two areas which will be of central importance in our project. In the process, particular attention will be paid to the manuscripts containing penitential 19

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M.B. de Jong, ‘What was Public about Public Penance? Paenitentia publica and Justice in the Carolingian World’, in La Giustizia nell’alto medioevo II (secoli IX–XI), Settimane 44 (Spoleto, 1997), pp. 863–904; and eadem, ‘Transformations of Penance’, in F. Theuws and J.L. Nelson (eds), Rituals of Power: From Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, Boston and Cologne, 2000), pp. 185–224. Mary C. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners: Public Penance in Thirteenth-Century France (Ithaca, 1995). R. Meens, ‘The Frequency and Nature of Early Medieval Penance’, in P. Biller and A.J. Minnis (eds), Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages, York Studies in Medieval Theology 2 (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 35–61. S. Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, 900–1050 (Woodbridge, 2001). B. Bedingfield, ‘Public Penance in AngloSaxon England, ASE 31 (2002), pp. 223–55. Hamilton, Practice of Penance. Hamilton, Practice of Penance, pp. 47–8. For Regino see now Wilfried Hartmann, Das Sendhandbuch des Regino von Prüm, Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters 42 (Darmstadt, 2004); Klaus Waldmann works on a dissertation in which he analyses the penitentials used by Regino, see W. Hartmann, ‘Die Capita incerta im Sendhandbuch Reginos von Prüm’, in O. Münsch and T. Zotz (eds), Scientia veritatis. Festschrift für Hubert Mordek zum 65. Geburtstag (Ostfildern, 2004), pp. 207–26, at p. 208, n. 10. For Burchard’s Decretum: Greta Austin, ‘ Jurisprudence in the Service of Pastoral Care: The Decretum of Burchard of Worms’, Speculum 79 (2004), pp. 929–59 and her forthcoming book Law, Theology and ‘Forgery’ Around the Year 1000: The Decretum of Burchard of Worms; see also L. Körntgen, ‘Fortschreibung frühmittelalterlicher Bußpraxis. Burchards “Liber corrector” und seine Quellen’, in W. Hartmann (ed.), Bischof Burchard von Worms 1000–1025 (Mainz, 2000), pp. 199–226, and his contribution below.



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texts, in order to answer questions about the actual context in which they might have been used. Kerff has, for example, drawn attention to the legal character of manuscripts containing these texts. 23 While Hamilton has shown the importance of liturgical ritual in the actual staging of penance, liturgical manuscripts comprising penitential texts have not been served well by historians.24 Understanding the various connections between law and liturgy is therefore one of the aims of the Utrecht project, and from this it follows logically that questions of secrecy and publicity of penance are of crucial importance. The papers in this special issue of Early Medieval Europe derive from a one-day workshop held in Utrecht in 2002 to launch the new research project.25 The papers deal with the general questions which are central to it. While Roger Reynolds provides an overview of the manuscripts in which penitential material is combined with collections of canon law, Adriaan Gaastra analyses the inclusion of penitential canons in a particular canon law collection from Italy. Marjolijn Saan and Carine van Rhijn present their first results regarding the so-called Pseudo-Theodore penitential, one of the texts that will be studied in depth. This is a ninth-century text, but proved to be influential in late Anglo-Saxon England. A context for this Anglo-Saxon interest in Pseudo-Theodore is then sketched by Katy Cubitt. Ludger Körntgen probes the question for whom and for what purposes Burchard composed his Decretum, while I give an overview of the penitential manuscripts circulating in the tenth and eleventh centuries, in order to understand why new texts were no longer composed in such quantities as they had been in the ninth. From the ensuing papers it will be clear that all speakers were inspired by Sarah Hamilton’s wonderful study of the practice of penance in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Sarah was present at the workshop in Utrecht, but the paper she presented was unfortunately already spoken for. 26 For all of us there the day provided a wonderful opportunity to discuss our ideas with her, and the papers in this issue of EME show how her work has sparked a renewed interest in the history of penance in the period between the Carolingian Renaissance and the Gregorian Reforms. It has made us consider again our suppositions and assumptions, and the results of our efforts to rethink penitential questions are presented here. University of Utrecht 23 24 25

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See n. 17 above. Hamilton, Practice of Penance, particularly pp. 104–72. The workshop was sponsored by the Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies as well as by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research, and I would like to express my gratitude for their support. Published as ‘Rites for Public Penance in Late Anglo-Saxon England’ in H. Gittos and M.B. Bedingfield (eds), The Liturgy of the Late Anglo-Saxon Church (Woodbridge, 2005).



Penitentials and the practice of penance in the tenth and eleventh centuries R  M 

This article reconsiders the function of penitentials in the tenth and eleventh centuries; were they used mainly to support priests in the administration of penance, or rather as legal texts in either the episcopal court or in the schoolroom? Through an examination of the evidence of the manuscripts from across Europe, it shows that whilst few new penitentials were composed, many older ones, especially those which gave their authorities, continued to be copied in this period, and that most were preserved in a legal rather than pastoral context. Finally, it suggests that this shift towards collections of a legal nature indicates not only tighter episcopal control, but also a concern for the better legal training of priests. The tenth and eleventh centuries have until recently not been well served by historians of penance. Modern historians of this period, such as Geoffrey Koziol or Gerd Althoff, have, however, emphasized the penitential aspects of the ritual vocabulary in political discourse. Koziol, for example notes that ‘the language of political submission was nothing but the language of penance’,1 whilst Gerd Althoff concludes that ‘Ritual acts taken from ecclesiastical penance functioned as building blocks for the creation of a ritual, which provided the possibility for a peaceful resolution of secular conflicts.’ 2 Although Althoff specifically mentions the ritual of public penance and particularly that of Louis the Pious in 833, as a model for later rituals of deditio, Koziol maintains that ‘from the ninth through the eleventh centuries all penance, whether public or private, required the gestures and language of supplication, 1

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G. Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca and London, 1992), p. 187. G. Althoff, Die Macht der Rituale. Symbolik und Herrschaft im Mittelalter (Darmstadt, 2003), p. 69: ‘Rituelle Handlungen der Kirchenbuße dienten also als Bausteine bei der Kreation eines Rituals, das es erlaubte, weltliche Konflikt gütlich beizulegen.’


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and through them exposed the laity to a universe structured around the act of entreating a beneficent lord.’3 The question, however, of whether ecclesiastical penance was really such a regular feature of early medieval life has recently been the subject of debate. 4 The actual forms of the ecclesiastical penitential ritual, moreover, have until recently only received scant attention.5 Mayke de Jong has drawn attention not only to the importance of public penance in a political context, but has also questioned assumptions regarding the distinction between public and private penance.6 While de Jong focused on the Merovingian and Carolingian period, Sarah Hamilton has now offered us a challenging and stimulating study of the practice of penance in the tenth and eleventh century. In this book she used a rich variety of sources, such as the legal collections compiled by Regino of Prüm and Burchard of Worms, penitentials, conciliar legislation, sermon literature, episcopal capitula, monastic legislation and narrative sources, to reconstruct the history of penance in the tenth and eleventh centuries. She emphasizes the rituals of penance and the highly political context of such rituals through a careful analysis of liturgical material, giving attention not only to differences between texts, but also to variant readings in the manuscript tradition of a single text.7 Her approach shows nicely how much can be done with these texts which have been neglected since the days of Josef Andreas Jungmann, who was writing in the early 1930s. Although Hamilton uses a great variety of sources, it seems somewhat odd that she devotes relatively little of her attention to a discussion of the handbooks composed for confessors, the texts which we nowadays call penitentials. One of the reasons why she did not really concentrate on penitentials, is undoubtedly that we still know so little about the texts composed in the tenth and eleventh centuries, as she acknowledges when writing about the Italian penitentials which were 3 4

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Althoff, Macht der Rituale, pp. 58–9; Koziol, Begging Pardon, p. 182. See R. Meens, ‘The Frequency and Nature of Early Medieval Penance’, in P. Biller and A.J. Minnis (eds), Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages, York Studies in Medieval Theology 2 (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 35–61 and D.S. Bachrach, ‘Confession in the Regnum Francorum (742–900)’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 54 (2003), pp. 3–22. The work of J.A. Jungmann, Die lateinischen Bussriten in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Innsbruck, 1932) can only be used with extreme care, since many texts and manuscripts have in the meantime been re-dated. Further see C. Vogel, ‘Les rites de la pénitence publique aux Xe et XIe siècles’, in P. Gallais and Y.I. Riou (eds), Mélanges René Crozet (Poitiers, 1966), pp. 137–44. Mayke de Jong, ‘Power and Humility in Carolingian Society: The Public Penance of Louis the Pious’, EME 1 (1992), pp. 29–52; eadem, ‘What was Public about Public Penance? Paenitentia publica and Justice in the Carolingian World’, in La Giustizia nell’alto medioevo II (secoli IX–XI), Settimane di Studio 44 (Spoleto, 1997), pp. 863–904; eadem, ‘Transformations of Penance’, in F. Theuws and J.L. Nelson (eds), Rituals of Power: From Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, Boston and Cologne, 2000), pp. 185–224. S. Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, 900–1050 (Woodbridge, 2001).



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freshly composed in this period: ‘Until we know more about the provenance and purpose of these manuscripts, we cannot study the differences in these ordines and the reasons behind them.’ Another reason for her neglect of penitentials seems to be that Hamilton has serious doubts about the role of these texts in penitential practice. She speaks of ‘a move away from penitentials in the tenth century’ in northern Europe, a move that is exemplified by a change of context. For the ninth century she is willing to admit that such texts were used in a pastoral context, but in the tenth century she sees ‘an abrupt change’ toward the use of the majority of these texts in a juridical or episcopal context. 8 Whilst she concedes that some new texts were composed, particularly in Italy and Anglo-Saxon England, these seem to reflect an interest in canon law or ecclesiastical reform, rather than being inspired by pastoral concerns. Penitentials were ‘ceasing to be seen as pastoral texts and were coming to be considered rather as texts to be used in a more formal context, either that of the cathedral school or the episcopal court and synod’. Thereby the function of penitentials changed; their purpose was to assert ‘control over the diocesan clergy’ rather than providing Christians the opportunity to confess their sins and to cleanse their souls. Penitential collections thereby became ‘dry, prescriptive texts which seem remote from the practice of penance in this period’, texts moreover ‘which were not widely available to the more general clergy’. 9 Although Hamilton’s conclusions are partly based on my own findings regarding the manuscript tradition of the ‘tripartite penitentials’, I am not so confident about this ‘move away from [the use of ] penitentials’ in a pastoral context.10 My point of departure, therefore, starts with this question: is there convincing evidence for concluding that penitentials were no longer used by priests hearing confession in the normal process of pastoral care? Can we say that such texts were used less and less as an aid for the priest-confessor, and began to function more and more as a means for instructing priests or as a law book functioning in the episcopal court? If this is true, then we might ask what it means when we say that we are dealing with ‘dry, prescriptive texts which seem remote from the practice of penance’. Is it really necessary for our texts to have been used by a priest-confessor actually hearing confession with a penitential on his lap, so to speak, for these texts to be useful as a historical source for reconstructing the practice of penance in the period we are interested in? Does an increase in episcopal control over processes of penance and a growth in the importance of 8 9 10

Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, pp. 47–8. Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, p. 50. R. Meens, ‘The Frequency and Nature of Early Medieval Penance’.



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episcopal courts and synods, really diminish the value of penitential texts as a historical source?

Penitentials in the tenth and eleventh centuries Before turning to these matters, let us first look at the evidence for penitentials in the period under discussion. The copying and composing of penitential handbooks began slowly in the seventh and early eighth centuries, in the wake of their introduction from the insular world, but from the end of the eighth century onwards we can observe the prolific production of these texts. 11 The penitential traditions going back to Columbanus (d. 615) and Theodore of Canterbury (d. 690) continued to be influential, especially as they were combined with insular material in the ‘tripartite penitentials’. 12 The Paenitentiale Oxoniense II, written in the first half of the eighth century, but whose only surviving complete manuscript witness stems from the tenth century, proved also to be a formative influence on the production of new texts in this period.13 The penitentials attributed to Bede and Egbert were being composed at the end of the eighth century probably both somewhere in the Rhineland, although Egbert’s penitential might have an Anglo-Saxon background. Very early these texts were combined in various stages to result, in the second half of the ninth century, in the socalled ‘mixed’ Pseudo-Egbert penitential, which used to be called the ‘double penitential’.14 As a result of the critique issued at the Carolingian reform councils new penitentials were composed in the mid-ninth century by Carolingian bishops, such as Halitgar of Cambrai and Hrabanus Maurus, which attempted to bring the penitential tradition into line with well-established conciliar traditions. Raymund Kottje has 11

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For a general introduction, see C. Vogel, Les ‘Libri Paenitentiales’, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental 27 (Turnhout, 1978); R. Kottje, ‘Busspraxis und Bussritus’, in Segni e riti nella chiesa altomedievale occidentale, Settimane di studio 33 (Spoleto, 1987), pp. 369–95; A. Frantzen, The Literature of Penance in Anglo-Saxon England (New Brunswick, 1983). R. Meens, Het tripartite boeteboek. Overlevering en betekenis van vroegmiddeleeuwse biechtvoorschriften (met editie en vertaling van vier tripartita) (Hilversum, 1994). For this text, see L. Körntgen, Studien zu den Quellen der frühmittelalterlichen Bußbücher, Quellen und Forschungen zum Recht im Mittelalter 7 (Sigmaringen, 1993); R. Meens, ‘Willibrords boeteboek?’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 106 (1993), pp. 163–78 and idem, ‘Christentum und Heidentum aus der Sicht Willibrords? Überlegungen zum Paenitentiale Oxoniense II ’, in M. Polfer (ed.), L’évangélisation des régions entre Meuse et Moselle et la fondation de l’abbaye d’Echternach (Ve–IXe siècle), Publications de CLUDEM 16 (Luxemburg, 2000), pp. 418–28. For these texts, see A. Frantzen, ‘The Penitentials Attributed to Bede’, Speculum 58 (1983), pp. 573–97; R. Haggenmüller, Die Überlieferung der Beda und Egbert zugeschriebenen Bußbücher (Frankfurt a.M. and Berne, 1991) and R. Haggenmüller, ‘Zur Rezeption der Beda und Egbert zugeschriebenen Bußbücher’, in H. Mordek (ed.), Aus Archiven und Bibliotheken. Festschrift für Raymund Kottje zum 65. Geburtstag (Frankfurt a.M. and Berne, 1992), pp. 149 –59.




11

shown that these Carolingian reform penitentials were clearly a major influence in the Carolingian period, but that their existence did not stamp out the older traditions.15 Measured against the ninth century there seems to have been a decline in the production of new texts in the two following centuries. In England three penitentials written in Old English were produced, while the Paenitentiale Cantabrigiense is possibly also an English composition of the tenth century.16 In Italy, after the introduction of Halitgar’s work and the composition of the Paenitentiale Vallicellianum I in the second half of the ninth or in the beginning of the tenth century, five new texts were composed.17 It has also been argued that the socalled Paenitentiale Pseudo-Theodori, traditionally held to be a text emanating from the Carolingian reform period, was possibly written in England in the tenth century.18 Preliminary research, however, suggests that this is in fact a ninth-century text, possibly even from as early as the first half of that century.19 From the West Frankish realm, however, we have evidence of only a few texts being freshly composed in this later period: the penitential attributed to Fulbert of Chartres and the Arundel penitential are generally considered to be compositions from this region.20 From the East Frankish realm we have, of course, the Decretum of Burchard of Worms, which comprises an extremely rich and influential penitential as its nineteenth book. 21 The composite Paris penitential which was composed in the eleventh century, probably originated in the middle realm: either in north-east France or the adjacent 15

16

17

18

19 20

21

R. Kottje, Die Bussbücher Halitgars von Cambrai und des Hrabanus Maurus. Ihre Überlieferung und ihre Quellen, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters 8 (Berlin and New York, 1980); see also R. Kottje, ‘Einheit und Vielfalt des kirchlichen Lebens in der Karolingerzeit’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 60 (1965), pp. 323–42 and R. McKitterick, ‘Unity and Diversity in the Carolingian Church’, in R. Swanson (ed.), Unity and Diversity in the Church, Studies in Church History 32 (Oxford, 1995), pp. 59–82. For penitentials in England, see Frantzen, The Literature of Penance ; for the Cantabrigiense (formerly known as the Sangermansense), see K. Delen, A. Gaastra, M. Saan and B. Schaap, ‘The Paenitentiale Cantabrigiense: A Witness of the Carolingian Contribution to the TenthCentury Reforms in England, Sacris Erudiri 41 (2002), pp. 341–73. On the P. Vallicellianum I see G. Hägele, Das Paenitentiale Vallicellianum I. Ein oberitalienischer Zweig der frühmittelalterlichen kontinentalen Bußbücher. Überlieferung, Verbreitung und Quellen, Quellen und Forschungen zum Recht im Mittelalter 3 (Sigmaringen, 1984); Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, p. 48; the Italian penitentials (P. Vallicellianum II (2x), P. Casinense, P. Lucense and P. Vaticanum) will be analysed by Adriaan Gaastra in his doctoral thesis. See also the contribution of Roger Reynolds in this volume. H. Sauer, ‘Zur Überlieferung und Anlage von Erzbischof Wulfstans “Handbuch” ’, Deutsches Archiv 36 (1980), pp. 341–84, at p. 346, n. 8; Meens, Tripartite boeteboek, pp. 68–9. See Marjolijn Saan and Carine van Rhijn in this volume. For the penitential attributed to Fulbert of Chartres, see F. Kerff, ‘Das sogenannte Paenitentiale Fulberti. Überlieferung, Verfasserfrage, Edition’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 73 (1987), pp. 1–40; cf., however, Meens, Tripartite boeteboek, pp. 200 –5 where some doubts are expressed concerning Fulbert’s authorship. See Ludger Körntgen in this volume.



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German region (most probably from somewhere in the archdiocese of Trier).22 In the eastern and western parts of the former Frankish empire, therefore, the region which saw such a blossoming of penitential literature in the Carolingian period, only a handful of new penitentials were composed. This decline is in line with general trends in the fields of the production of texts and manuscripts in this period. 23 From this region only the nineteenth book of Burchard’s Decretum, the Corrector sive Medicus, can be regarded as an influential text – although in this case Hamilton, while allowing for its possible uses in an educational or disciplinary context, argued that Burchard’s work ‘was intended as a reference work rather than for practical use’, and that it and Regino’s work were meant to be used as ‘aids for the higher clergy, as reference aids for the administration of penance by the bishop and his cathedral clergy’.24 The penitential themes in the rest of Burchard’s oeuvre, however, seem somewhat more prominent than Hamilton is willing to admit, while the use that was being made of this text can only be established by a careful examination of the existing manuscripts. 25 The fact, however, that from the late eleventh century onwards the Corrector sive Medicus is in some manuscripts taken out of Burchard’s Decretum to function as a separate text, strongly suggests that the Corrector was used as a handbook for confessors.26

Penitential manuscripts Apart from Burchard’s work, therefore, there seems to have been a remarkable lack of new texts written in the eastern and western parts of the former Frankish empire. Partly this image may be the result of neglect by scholars. There may still be penitentials hidden in composite manuscripts from this period.27 Partly it may also result from the many new works composed during the ninth century retaining their usefulness 22

23

24

25 26 27

For the Parisiense compositum, see Meens, Tripartite boeteboek, pp. 177–219 and the edition on pp. 486–507. C. Leonardi, ‘Intellectual Life’, in T. Reuter (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History III: c.900– c.1024 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 186–211, at p. 186. Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, pp. 41 and 44; cf. p. 33: ‘The two major canonical collections of the tenth and eleventh centuries are therefore associated primarily with episcopal contexts and appear to have been composed for three purposes: for the education and for the discipline of the secular clergy, and as legal reference text for the episcopal administration.’ Körntgen in this volume. Körntgen in this volume. Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, 1979 (s. X/XI, eastern France/western Germany) and Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Scaliger 70 (s. XI, Bourges), both contain penitentials which have not yet been analysed in any detail; for the Troyes manuscript see Kottje, Bussbücher, pp. 63–5, for the Leiden manuscript see Mahadevan, ‘Überlieferung und Verbreitung’, p. 47.




13

into the later period. This is, for example, the reason advanced by Claudio Leonardi to explain the setback in manuscript production in the tenth century in general. Books were expensive to produce and there was no reason to make further copies ‘once demand had been met’. 28 To verify this argument we have to look for indications that earlier works remained in use during the tenth and eleventh centuries. If we look at the manuscript tradition of earlier penitentials, then we can observe that these were still copied in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Most of the early insular texts we know from two tenth-century Breton manuscripts containing a collection of insular canonical material.29 Another tenth-century manuscript, now kept in Oxford, also contains an interesting set of old penitential texts which I will come back to later.30 The penitential tradition going back to Theodore of Canterbury also continued to be influential in the period under discussion. The Capitula Dacheriana we know only from the two Breton manuscripts just mentioned, the Canones Cottoniani from a manuscript written around the year 1000, now in London, while the more influential versions Canones Gregorii and the Discipulus Umbrensium were copied at least ten times in the tenth and eleventh centuries. 31 Of these manuscripts five were possibly copied in Italy, while one reflects the interest in penitentials in England in this period. Nevertheless two were copied in the north of France, another one in an unidentified place probably in France, and two of the remaining ones near the Bodensee in southern Germany. For the Excarpsus Cummeani, the most influential of the tripartite penitentials composed in the first half of the eighth century, we know of only two tenth-century manuscripts from the German regions – although possibly these might have been written as early as the end of the ninth century – while one of the northern French manuscripts containing the penitential of Theodore also includes this 28 29

30

31

Leonardi, ‘Intellectual Life’, p. 186. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 3182 (s. X1, written by a Breton scribe Maeloc) and 12021 (s. X in., written by the Breton scribe Arbedoc), cf. L. Bieler (ed.), The Irish Penitentials, with an Appendix by D.A. Binchy, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 5 (Dublin, 1963), pp. 12, 14 and 20–4. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 311; cf. L. Körntgen, Studien zu den Quellen der frühmittelalterlichen Bußbücher, Quellen und Forschungen zum Recht im Mittelalter 7 (Sigmaringen, 1993). London, British Library, Cotton Vesp. D XV (s. X–XI) (Canones Cottoniani ); P. Theod. G: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 311 (s. X, north or north-western France); Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6241 (s. X2, Freising); Paris, BN, n.a.l. 281 (s. X/XI, northern Italy or southern France); Monte Cassino, Archivio dell’Abbazia, 372 (s. XI in., S. Nicola della Cicogna near Monte Cassino); possibly Monte Cassino, Abbazia, 554 (s. X, Italy) and Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, lat. 2231 (s. IX/X, Italy or southern France); P. Theod. U: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 320 (s. X3/4, Canterbury), London, BL, Add. 16413 (s. XI in., southern Italy); Paris, BN, lat. 1458 (s. XI1, northern France); Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, HB VI,107 (s. XI ex. south-western Germany, near Bodensee); Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, HB VI,112 (s. X, near Bodensee); Vesoul, Bibliothèque Municipale, 73 (s. X/XI, possibly France, see MGH Capitula Episcoporum I, ed. P. Brommer (Hannover, 1984), p. 98.



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text.32 Out of a total of eight manuscripts which contain the eighthcentury text known as Capitula Iudicorum, three possibly stem from the period under discussion, although one of these might be from the end of the preceding century; all three were probably copied in Italy. 33 Two of the three manuscripts containing the Paenitentiale in duobus libris, composed in the second half of the eighth or in the early ninth century, may have been copied in the tenth century, both possibly in Italy. 34 The Paenitentiale Vallicellianum I was also widely distributed in Italy in the tenth and eleventh centuries, where five of its manuscripts were made in this period, while two other manuscripts were copied there in an even later period.35 From the penitential that Halitgar of Cambrai (817–31) added as Book 6 to his reform penitential, the Pseudo-Roman penitential, we know of three manuscripts from the tenth and eleventh centuries, although it remains unclear whether these manuscripts represent the ‘original Pseudo-Roman penitential’ or are a derivative of Halitgar’s work in which it was included. Interest in this work seems to have been particularly lively in Switzerland.36 The penitentials attributed to Bede and Egbert also seem to have remained in use during the tenth and eleventh centuries, as can be ascertained from the eighteen manuscripts with these texts which survive from that epoch. While two of these stem from Italy and two from England, the rest of the manuscripts testify to an enduring interest in these works in France and Germany. 37 32

33

34

35

36

37

Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 326 (s. IX ex. or IX/X, Germany); Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, lat. 2225 (s. IX–X) and Vesoul, Bibliothèque Municipale, cod. 73 (s. X– XI, possibly France); on the particular combination of the Excarpsus Cummeani and the P. Merseburgense A in the Vienna manuscript, see R. Meens, ‘ “Aliud benitenciale”: The NinthCentury Paenitentiale Vindobonense C ’, Mediaeval Studies 66 (2004), pp. 1–26, at pp. 4–5. London, BL, Add. 16413 (s. XI in., southern Italy); Paris, BN, n.a.l. 281 (s. X/XI northern Italy–southern France); Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 5751 (s. IX ex. or IX/X, Verona/Bobbio?) Monte Cassino, Abbazia, Cod. 554 (ext 554, 508) (s. X2, Italy); Vienna, ÖNB, lat. 2231 (s. IX/ X, Italy or southern France). Barcelona, Biblioteca Universitaria, MS 228 (s. X2, northern Italy); Florence, Biblioteca MediceaLaurenziana, Ashburnham 1814 (s. XI2, copied from a northern Italian exemplar); Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, E 15 (s. XI2, Rome); Rome, Bibl. Vall., F 54 (s. XI ex., middle Italy); Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, CXLIII (159) (s. X2, northern Italy). Later Italian copies: Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, I 145 inf. (s. XII, Milan?); Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, CLXXIX (152) (s. XII/XIII, Vercelli). St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 676 (written between 1080 and 1100 in St Blasien or Schaffhausen); Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, HB VI 107 (s. XI ex., near the Bodensee); Zürich, Zentralbibliothek, MS Car. C 123 (s. X, Zürich?). MSS of Pseudo-Egbert: St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, cod. 677 (s. X med., St Gallen?); Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 294 (s. X/XI, probably Lorsch); Paris, BN, lat. 3182 (s. X2, Brittany); Oxford, Bodliean Library, Bodley 718 (s. X–XI, England, Exeter?); Cambridge, CCC, 265 (s. XI1, England). MSS of the Vorstufe of the Bede-Egbert penitential: Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, G. 58 sup. (s. IX ex. or s. X1, Bobbio); Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 12673 (s. X, Salzburg?); Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 294 (s. X/XI, probably Lorsch); P. additivum: Albi, Bibliothèque Municipale, 38 (59) (s. X1, southern France); Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, LXIII (61) (s. X med.-X2, northern Italy, Verona?);




15

The reform penitentials, composed in the ninth century to remedy the proliferation of anonymous works containing contradictory sentences, apparently were also of use in the two succeeding centuries. Twentyfour manuscripts are witness to a lively interest in Halitgar’s text, although some of these clearly show that the work was used in contexts other than that of hearing confession. 38 The two penitentials written by Hrabanus Maurus (d. 856), which had been of only limited influence in the ninth century, fared only a little better in the following two centuries, from which only three manuscripts containing his penitential to Heribald, Bishop of Auxerre survive. 39 For the penitential known as the Quadripartitus probably written somewhere in the years between 825 and 875, which we know from nine manuscripts, five codices remain from the period which interests us here: two again come from Italy, one from England, and the origin of the two remaining manuscripts has not been established yet, although one of these was apparently in Trier in the twelfth century. 40 The last penitential to be considered in this context is the Pseudo-Gregorian penitential written around the middle of the ninth century, which is only known from

38

39

40

Paris, BN, lat. 2998 (s. X/XI, southern France, Moissac?); Vesoul, Bibliothèque Municipale, 73 (s. X/XI, possibly France); Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barberini lat. 477 (s. XI in., southern France); P. mixtum: Münster, Staatsarchiv, MS VII 5201 (ca. 945, Corvey); Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 3853 (s. X2); Heiligenkreuz, Stiftsbibliothek, Hs. 217 (s. X ex., western Germany or north-eastern France?); Châlons-sur-Marne, Bibliothèque Municipale, 32 (s. XI2, western Germany, Lotharingia?); Paris, BN, lat. 3878 (s. X ex., north-eastern France, Liège?). Barcelona, Biblioteca Universitaria, 228 (s. X2, northern Italy); Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Hamilton 290 (s. X2, northeren Italy); Cambridge, CCC, 265 (s. XI1, England); Châlons-sur-Marne, Bibliothèque Municipale, 32 (s. XI2, western Germany, Lotharingia); Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ashb. 1814 (s. XI2, France); Heiligenkreuz, Stiftsbibliothek, Hs. 217 (s. X ex., western Germany); Koblenz, Landeshauptarchiv, Best. 701, 759,7 (s. XI/XII); Monte Cassino, Abbazia, Cod. 557 bis 0 (s. XI1, Monte Cassino); Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 3853 (s. X2); Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 12673 (s. X, Salzburg?); Münster, Staatsarchiv, Msc. VII 5201 (s. X1, Corvey); Paris, BN, lat. 614 A (s. X in., southern France); Paris, BN, lat. 2077 (s. X2, Moissac); Paris, BN, lat. 2843 (XI, Limoges?); Paris, BN, lat. 2998; Paris, BN, lat. 3878 (s. X ex., north-eastern France, Liège?); Paris, BN, lat. 18220 (s. X2); St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, cod. 676 (s. XI ex., St Blasien); St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, cod. 679 (s.IX/X, St Gall?); Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, cod. HB VI 107 (s. XI ex., Bodensee); Troyes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1979 (s. X/XI, eastern France, western Germany); Vatican City, Archivio S. Pietro, H 58 (around 1000, Rome); Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS CXLIII (159) (s. X2, northern Italy); Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS LXIII (61) (s. X med. or X2, northern Italy, Verona?); Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, lat. 956 (s. X ex., western Germany); Zürich, Zentralbibliothek, MS Car. C 123 (s. X, Zürich?); Zürich, Zentralbibliothek, MS Rh. 102 (s. X in., Rheinau). Cologne, Dombibliothek, 120 (s. X in., France); Salzburg, Stiftsbibliothek St Peter, Hs. a IX 32 (s. XI1, probably Cologne); St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 676 (1080 –1100, St Blasien or Schaffhausen). Monte Cassino, Abbazia, Cod. 541 (ext. 541) (s. XI in., southern Italy, possibly Monte Cassino); Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 718 (2632) (s. X–XI, England, possibly Exeter); Trier, Stadtbibliothek, 1084/115 (s. XI); Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 1352 (s. XI2, Italy); Vendôme, Bibliothèque Municipale, 55 (s. XI).



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two manuscripts, one of which was copied in France in the eleventh century.41 If we look at this manuscript transmission, it is clear that there was a sustained interest in older penitentials in the tenth and eleventh century. In particular the penitentials attributed to Theodore of Canterbury, Bede and Egbert, and those issuing from the Carolingian reform seem to have remained in use. Many copies do indeed stem from England and Italy, where, as we have seen, new texts of this kind were being composed, but a fair number of manuscripts were written in France and Germany. The selection of texts being copied – with a stress on wellknown authors and Carolingian works which emphasized their canonical character – seems to reflect an interest in authority. Anonymous works, such as the Excarpsus Cummeani, which had been of great influence in the ninth century, seem to have fallen out of favour. Such an emphasis on authority might also explain the attention paid to texts like the Capitula Iudiciorum or the Paenitentiale Vallicellianum I with their clear attribution of individual sentences to specific authorities. If we look at the uses of earlier penitentials in texts dating from the tenth and eleventh centuries, a similar picture emerges. Regino of Prüm (d. 915) had advocated the use of specific penitentials: the Roman penitential (probably Halitgar’s) and those of Theodore and Bede. 42 For his collection to be employed in the episcopal court, the Sendgericht, Regino used the penitentials attributed to Bede and Egbert in the form of the mixtum, next to the reform penitentials of Halitgar and Hrabanus Maurus.43 Burchard of Worms (d. 1025) advocated the use of the same penitentials that Regino had counselled, but when composing his Decretum he also used the Excarpsus Cummeani and the St Hubert penitential, and possibly also the Remense and the Martenianum, texts dating from the eighth and ninth centuries. 44 The Italian penitentials composed in the tenth and eleventh centuries, as Adriaan Gaastra’s analysis confirms, mainly used the Capitula Iudiciorum, the Paenitentiale 41

42

43

44

Montpellier, Bibliothèque Universitaire, H 137 (s. XI, France); Ghent, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Hs. 506 (s. IX2, ‘linksrheinisch’), see F. Kerff, ‘Das Paenitentiale PseudoGregorii III. Ein Zeugnis karolingischer Reformbestrebungen’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 69 (1983), pp. 46–63. Reginonis libri duo de synodalibus causis et disciplinis ecclesiasticis, ed. H. Wasserschleben (Leipzig, 1840), Bk I. 96, p. 26. For the identification of the Roman penitential with that of Halitgar, see L. Körntgen, ‘Fortschreibung mittelalterlicher Bußpraxis. Burchards “Liber corrector” und seine Quellen’, in W. Hartmann (ed.), Bischof Burchard von Worms, 1000 –1025 (Mainz, 2000), p. 213. R. Haggenmüller, ‘Zur Rezeption der Beda und Egbert zugeschriebenen Bußbücher’, pp. 155– 6. Cf. Körntgen, ‘Fortschreibung mittelalterlicher Bußpraxis’, pp. 199–226, at p. 208. Körntgen, ‘Fortschreibung mittelalterlicher Bußpraxis’, p. 213; cf. H. Hoffmann and R. Pokorny, Das Dekret des Bisschofs Burchard von Worms. Textstufen – Frühe Verbreitung – Vorlagen, MGH Hilfsmittel 12 (Munich, 1991), pp. 269–72 and Haggenmüller, ‘Zur Rezeption’, pp. 157–8.




17

Oxoniense II, and two pseudo-Gregorian penitentials: the Carolingian reform penitential travelling under the name of Gregory and the Theodorian Canones Gregorii.45 The use of the anonymous Oxoniense comes somewhat as a surprise since it did not carry the name of an accepted authority, a fact which the compiler of the Collection in Nine Books sought to remedy by ascribing its canons to well-established but vague sources, such as a synodus Romana or a decretum pontificum. In England three vernacular penitentials were composed which drew heavily on continental texts. Among the works being excerpted we find the penitentials attributed to Bede and Egbert as well as Halitgar’s reform manual. In the scrift boc Theodore’s work is also used, while the penitential of Cummean or the Excarpsus Cummeani seems to have been known both by the compiler of this work and by the compiler of the vernacular ‘Penitential’. 46 We can therefore conclude that both the manuscript evidence and the reception of canons in later works suggest that older works remained in use in the tenth and eleventh centuries. It therefore seems probable that manuscripts which were produced in the ninth century continued in use throughout the next two hundred years. We can, however, discern a tendency to favour texts which backed their sentences with clear references to specific authorities. Such an emphasis on penitentials written, or thought to be written, by a well-established authority, may be a sign of greater episcopal control over the production and dissemination of such texts. Do the surviving manuscripts warrant such a conclusion?

The manuscript context This is neither the time nor the place to discuss all the manuscripts containing penitential handbooks which survive from the period under discussion. One of the aims of the Utrecht research project is to look carefully at the codicological contexts of such texts, for the clues they may provide as to the purpose with which the penitential was included in the manuscript. A thorough investigation of the penitential manuscripts of this period is at the moment still lacking and therefore only some preliminary remarks will be offered here. The sample of manuscripts which I analysed on another occasion, 47 the manuscripts containing a tripartite penitential, suggested that from the ninth century onwards episcopal control grew tighter. More and more penitentials 45

46 47

See the studies by Fournier and Körntgen (Oxoniense II) and the work currently being done by Adriaan Gaastra. Frantzen, The Literature of Penance, pp. 136 –7. See above n. 4.



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appear in the context of canonistic material, while manuscripts which are clearly of a pastoral nature become rare. There is another interesting feature to be observed regarding the manuscripts from the tenth and eleventh centuries. Some of these were very carefully composed. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 311, for example, contains not only an intriguing set of extraordinary penitentials, but these are also ‘systematically rubricated and corrected as a single collection’. According to Allen Frantzen the manuscript might have been composed in such a careful way to be exported to England. 48 The bulk of very early insular texts have come down to us in two Breton manuscripts from the tenth century, again containing a careful collection of extraordinary works. 49 It has recently been shown that the manuscripts Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Cod. G. 58 sup. and Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 5751 originally belonged together and formed one codex, centred on the theme of penance. This codex began with the preface of the important Carolingian collection of canon law, the Collectio Dacheriana which stressed the importance of penance and further contained instructions and explanations of its diverse forms. The codex continued with several penitentials (among which was Halitgar’s work, the sixthcentury Paenitentiale Ambrosianum, the eighth-century Merseburgense A and Bede-Egbert), texts concerning the liturgy of penance, commutation tables, conciliar decisions, the early Spanish collection of canon law, the Epitome Hispana, and the Admonitio Generalis (789) of Charlemagne.50 Here again we find an intriguing collection of texts, although in this case, with the exception of the sixth-century Paenitentiale Ambrosianum, texts are included which were in use at the time it was composed. Such a collection resembles the so-called commonplace books that we find in England in this period. The manuscripts containing the penitential of Columbanus were similarly composed with an overt purpose in mind, although this sixth-century text only survives in more recent manuscripts. This penitential has only been preserved in a Bobbio collection of the ‘complete works’ of the monastery’s founder, of which two manuscripts in Turin now bear witness, one of them possibly dating from the beginning of the tenth century. 51 One group of manuscripts, therefore, can be characterized by an interest in old, perhaps antiquarian texts – and as such they are often the only surviving witnesses to these works. There are, of course, other 48 49 50

51

Frantzen, The Literature of Penance, p. 130. Paris, BN, lat. 3182 and 12021, see reference above n. 29. W. Kaiser, ‘Zur Rekonstruktion einer vornehmlich bußrechtlichen Handschrift aus Bobbio (Hs. Vat. lat. 5751 1–54v + Hs. Mailand, Bibl. Ambr. G. 58 sup. ff. 41r–64v)’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 86 (2000), pp. 538–53. Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale, G. V. 38 (s. IX–X or X in., from Bobbio), see Bieler, Irish Penitentials, p. 15.




19

manuscripts, suggesting a more pastoral context such as Troyes, Bibliothèque Municipale, 1979, written in France in the tenth or eleventh century, which according to Kottje contains ‘eine handbuchartige Sammlung’ and was composed for practical purposes, as is also suggested by its size (142 × 100 mm).52 A tenth-century manuscript possibly written in Salzburg is only a little bigger (160 × 115 mm) and contains the first stage of the forging of the Bede-Egbert penitential, Halitgar’s reform penitential together with baptismal tracts, episcopal capitularies, and Isidore of Seville’s De ecclesiasticis officiis. Size and contents here clearly suggest the manuscript was intended for use in a pastoral context.53 A southern French manuscript written in the tenth or eleventh century puts Halitgar’s penitential and a version of the Bede-Egbert work clearly in a pastoral setting next to texts concerning the liturgy of the sick and dying and sermons touching upon the theme of penance. 54 Although manuscripts suggesting a pastoral context clearly do survive from this period, in general there seems indeed to have been some shift towards the inclusion of penitentials in wider collections of a legal nature. A case in point is found in three closely related manuscripts containing parts of the penitential of Halitgar of Cambrai, the penitentials written by Hrabanus Maurus and the so-called ‘mixtum-version’ of the penitential of Bede-Egbert, in combination with collections of canon law and secular laws. These manuscripts, all of them written in southern Germany in the tenth or early eleventh century, are impressive voluminous codices which probably belonged to an episcopal library. 55 Their contents have been characterized as containing one of the most comprehensive compendia of early medieval ecclesiastical and secular law, and penitential texts formed part of such compendia. 56 Some of the manuscripts of our period containing penitentials seem to reflect contemporary interests in these texts; others are seemingly inspired by an interest in rare and ancient works, and possibly reflect a 52

53

54 55

56

Kottje, Bussbücher, p. 64; see also MGH Capitula Episcoporum III, ed. R. Pokorny (Hannover, 1995), pp. 167–8. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 12673 (s. X, Salzburg?), see Haggenmüller, Überlieferung, p. 79. Paris, BN, lat. 2998 (s. X/XI, Moissac?), see Haggenmüller, Überlieferung, pp. 91–2. Heiligenkreuz, Stiftsbibliothek, 217 (s. X ex., S. Germany); Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 3853 (s. X, southern Germany, Augsburg?); Paris, BN, lat. 3878 and the fragment in Weimar, Hauptstaatsarchiv, depositum Hardenberg Fragm. 9 (s. X/XI, S. Germany). Munich, 3853, probably belonged to the ‘Dombibliothek’ in Augsburg; while Kottje suggested that the Heiligenkreuz manuscript was possibly used by Adalbert of Prague or one of his successors as ‘Handbuch der Diözesanverwaltung’, Kottje, Bussbücher, pp. 28 and 38. H. Mordek, moreover, mentions the catalogue of Lobbes which describes a very similar manuscript: Bibliotheca capitularium regum Francorum manuscripta. Überlieferung und Traditionszusammenhang der fränkischen Herrschererlasse, MGH Hilfsmittel 15 (Munich, 1995), p. 290. Mordek, Bibliotheca, p. 288: ‘das . . . zu den umfangreichsten Kompendien des frühmittelalterlichen kirchlichen und weltlichen Rechts gehört’.



20

Rob Meens

more scholarly approach. But does this mean that at this point we are dealing with ‘dry, prescriptive texts which seem remote from the practice of penance’? I am not so sure. The inclusion of penitentials in manuscripts of a legal nature might as well be a result of a better legal schooling of ordinary priests, who had more manuscripts at hand; manuscripts that were of a more specialized nature. Whereas, for example, the Bobbio Missal crams into one manuscript all the texts a priest needed to fulfil his pastoral duties, in the ninth century priests sometimes owned a sacramentary, a lectionary, a penitential, a homiliary, a canon law collection and other useful works. 57 A growing library probably led to a diversification and specialization of the manuscripts themselves. If we admit that a more scholarly approach to these texts in medieval manuscripts makes them obviously less valuable as a direct reflection of pastoral activities, what if such collections were used to edify new priests? What if bishops were indeed showing greater control over the processes of penance and confession in this period? Wouldn’t collections that were kept at the bishop’s court to be used in the classroom as well as in the courtroom, have an obvious connection to penitential practice? If such texts were indeed less a reflection of, and more a prescription for, penitential practice, would they become worthless for us as historians? As Philippe Buc has recently shown, narrative texts describing ritual acts should be used only with the greatest care by historians, for they do not describe what has happened, but rather play a role – and a crucial one at that – in the struggle over the interpretation of such events.58 I do not know of any sources from the early Middle Ages informing us directly of what happened in the contact between a contrite (or a non-contrite) penitent and a priest hearing his confession. If penitentials indeed are to be regarded more as scripts for than as scripts of this process, does that make them less valuable? As such wouldn’t they resemble liturgical ordines, describing in great detail the way a penitent was to be dealt with?

Conclusion In conclusion, we can therefore observe that after the prolific production of new penitentials in the later eighth and ninth centuries, apart from in Italy and possibly England, the two succeeding centuries saw 57

58

On the Bobbio Missal, see now Yitzhak Hen and Rob Meens (eds), The Bobbio Missal: Liturgy and Religious Culture in Merovingian Gaul, Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology 11 (Cambridge, 2004). For evidence of pastoral libraries, see R. Meens, ‘The Mad Emperor? Priests and Books in the Carolingian Era’, in Yitzhak Hen and Rob Meens (eds), Early Medieval Priests (forthcoming). P. Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (Princeton, 2001).




21

much less creativity in the compilation of new texts. The number of manuscripts also seems to have declined in the later period. The evidence, however, suggests that older texts remained in use, which might also account for this decline in new manuscript copies. If we look at the nature of the manuscripts written in the tenth and eleventh centuries there seems to be a shift towards collections of a legal character. While this does suggest tighter episcopal control, it might also reflect better legal training of local priests. These two factors possibly changed the connection of our texts with penitential practice, although further research is surely needed to confirm such a conclusion. In the end, however, even if we can establish that this change occurred, that does not make penitential handbooks insignificant as historical sources for reconstructing penitential practice in this period; for change is the game that historians are hunting for. University of Utrecht



Correcting sinners, correcting texts: a context for the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori C   R  M S

This article presents the preliminary results of an investigation into the history of the Penitential of Pseudo-Theodore. It outlines the text’s manuscript history, the scope of its contents, and its sources, arguing that it was a comprehensive, systematic collection. It also reconsiders the evidence for when and where it was composed, suggesting it was probably written in north-eastern France or the eastern Rhineland in the 820s or 830s. The Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori is a substantial handbook of penance which has been largely ignored by current scholars. Since the days of Walther von Hörmann, who in 1908 wrote the first, and last, article about this text, it has generally been accepted to be a penitential of Frankish provenance, composed between 830 and 847.1 Since 1908, no further research on the Paenitentiale as a whole has been undertaken, and generally Von Hörmann’s ideas about the text have been followed without question. Where the Paenitentiale has been mentioned, the text is mostly dismissed as not very interesting, for reason of its few known manuscripts, its lack of originality and/or the supposition that it was not incorporated into later collections of canon law.2 Such a judgement of the text seems rather harsh, not only because there are more manuscripts than has been previously thought (see 1

2

Walther von Hörmann, ‘Über die Enstehungsverhältnisse des sogen. Paenitentiale pseudoTheodori’, Mélanges Fitting 11 (Montpellier, 1908), pp. 3–21. Von Hörmann, ‘Enstehungsverhältnisse’, at p. 3 states that the text appears to have had ‘wenig Verbreitung und Einfluß’. According to Pierre J. Payer, the work shows at best a few new variations on old themes: Sex and the Penitentials: The Development of a Sexual Code, 550–1150 (Toronto, Buffalo and London, 1984), p. 61. Raymund Kottje thinks that the Paenitentiale pseudoTheodori (like the Quadripartitus) has been of little importance – ‘wie man aus der erhaltenen handschriftlichen Überlieberung schließen kann, ganz abgesehen davon, daß Zitate aus ihnen in späteren kanonistischen Sammlungen bisher nicht festgestellt werden konnten’: Die Bußbücher Halitgars von Cambrai und des Hrabanus Maurus. Ihre Überlieberung und ihre Quellen, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters 8 (Berlin and New York, 1980), p. 4.

Early Medieval Europe   () 23– 40 © Blackwell Publishing Ltd ,  Garsington Road, Oxford OX DQ, UK and  Main Street, Malden, MA , USA

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Carine van Rhijn and Marjolijn Saan

below), but also for the reason that there was at least some interest in the text during the Middle Ages. In a twelfth-century manuscript containing Burchard’s Decretum, for instance, Book 19 of this text (the Medicus sive Corrector) has been entirely substituted with the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori.3 In late Anglo-Saxon England, the text also seems to have interested Wulfstan of York, who owned a more or less complete version.4 The mere fact that this kind of Nachleben for the Paenitentiale has been entirely overlooked by earlier scholarship is symptomatic of the way in which the text has been generally regarded. At the same time it casts doubt on previous assessments of the handbook, for how solid is the date of the text as proposed by Von Hörmann, and is there really nothing more specific that can be said about its provenance and the context for its composition? This article will address a few, very basic, questions concerning pseudo-Theodore’s handbook, such as its composition, its date, and its possible historical context and provenance. Such a limited range of subjects is a matter of choice as much as of necessity. Given the current state of research on the Paenitentiale, it seems at present more useful to explore basic questions than address more far-reaching, albeit no less interesting or important, issues for which one would need to build upon such foundations. Important matters such as the manuscript contexts in which the text may be found, or the variations between the various versions of the text, or even the question of reception on both sides of the English Channel will therefore be left aside here. In what follows, a number of hypotheses will be offered which should help to give this text the place among other handbooks of penance it deserves.

Manuscripts and composition Four manuscripts said to contain the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori were known in Von Hörmann’s day, of which one has vanished and two contain a more or less complete text. 5 The most recent edition was 3

4

5

Durham, Cathedral Library, B. IV.17, fols 138r–147v. This manuscript of the Paenitentiale was first identified by Rudolf Pokorny: ‘Capitula de eruditione presbyterorum. Eine neue Quelle der Falschen Kapitularien des Benedictus Levita’, Deutsches Archiv 58 (2002), pp. 451–66, at p. 454. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 190, fols 12–94, which is a copy of a manuscript owned by Wulfstan himself. If, and how far, the Paenitentiale influenced Wulfstan’s writing will be a subject for future research. Various Wulfstan manuscripts, however, contain fragments of the Paenitentiale : see Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1999), p. 221 and n. 231, and Table 4.4; H. Sauer, ‘Zur Überlieferung und Anlage von Erzbischof Wulfstans “Handbuch”’, Deutsches Archiv 36 (1980), pp. 341–84. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 190, fols 12–94; London, British Library, Harley 438 (which is an apographum of Cambridge, CCC, 190); Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 8558– 8563, fols 80r–131v. According to Wasscherschleben, there may also have been a Paris manuscript, which he, however, had not been able to find: F.W.H. Wasscherschleben, Die Bußordnungen der abendländischen Kirche (Halle, 1851; repr. Graz, 1958), at p. 87. The more or less complete versions of the text are contained in the Cambridge and the Brussels manuscripts.



A context for the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori

25

made by F.W.H. Wasscherschleben in 1851, who took Benjamin Thorpe’s 1840 edition of the early eleventh-century Cambridge manuscript (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 190) as his basis, adding the variants from the tenth-century Brussels manuscript. 6 In the past few years, however, several more manuscripts containing the whole, or a substantial part of the text, have come to light. Seven manuscripts containing some version of pseudo-Theodore’s handbook of penance are now known7, no fewer than four of which are of English provenance.8 All known manuscripts of the Paenitentiale are more recent than the ninth century; the two earliest, more or less complete versions – one of which is English (the Brussels manuscript), the other one continental, probably written in northern France 9 (the Berlin manuscript) – date from the tenth century. On the basis of these seven manuscripts, a new edition of the text is now under way, for which the oldest substantially complete text (MS Berlin) forms the basis. 10 The Paenitentiale is quite substantial for a work in this genre. It contains fifty-two chapters,11 subdivided into several hundred canons, mostly taken from older penitential material. The core of the text is a combination of canons from the Excarpsus Cummeani, the penitential of the ‘real’ Theodore (version U), the Paenitentiale pseudo-Bedae, the Paenitentiale pseudo-Egberti and the Paenitentiale pseudo-Romanum. The text also contains a few quotations from the church Fathers, the Bible and early canon law, the latter of which are mostly derived from Halitgar of Cambrai’s De vitiis et virtutibus. Furthermore, the ninth-century Liber officialis by Amalarius of Metz has supplied the material for one chapter. In all these cases, it is remarkable how the compiler’s frequent tendency is to elaborate on the material he incorporates, rather than citing it literally. Pseudo-Theodore seems to have also tried to be as complete as he could on the many subjects he covers, discussing every possible variety of a particular sin. His chapter on murder ( De homicidiis),12 for 6 7

8

9 10

11

12

Benjamin Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes of England (London, 1840), pp. 277–306. The Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori has also been found in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Phillipps, 1750, fols 16r–47v; Troyes, Bibliothèque Municipale, 1979, fols 269r–309v; Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc. patr. 101, fols 112r–125v; Durham, Cathedral Library, B. IV.17, fols 138r–147v; Oxford, St John’s College Library, 158, fols 39r–95v. The English manuscripts are Brussels, Cambridge (from Worcester?), Durham and Oxford (from Worcester or York). We thank David Ganz for sharing his ideas on the provenance of this manuscript with us. Work on the edition was initiated by Marjolijn Saan, and is now continued by Carine van Rhijn. In due course this will appear as a volume of Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina. This is the number of chapters according to the Berlin manuscript, which is the basis of the forthcoming edition (see previous note). Wasserschleben’s edition contains fifty chapters. Wasserschleben, Bußordnungen, pp. 586–90. This is Book 15 in the forthcoming edition of the penitential.



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instance, is subdivided into no fewer than thirty-nine precise prescriptions, in which he covers a range of possible perpetrators (men, women, clerics) and victims (men, women, children, other relatives, pagans and clerics); a variety of motives (revenge, anger, greed, hate, purpose, accident, mere stupidity, on assignment, negligence), situations (an unwanted pregnancy, war, a brawl) and results (successful attempts, partially failed attempts, completely failed attempts); as well as mitigating circumstances (poverty, slavery, a willingness to pay compensation to the victim or his/her family). In order to be as complete as this, he has in this chapter used nearly all the sources listed above. What is more, when we survey the entire Paenitentiale, the compiler can be seen to use more or less the entire text of his main sources, and only in exceptional cases does he make use of the same canon of a given text more than once. Rather than making a selection from the material available to him, then, the compiler seems to have tried to use everything these texts offered and rearranged this material in a practical manner. If we look at the length of the Paenitentiale’s fifty-two chapters, sexual offences in particular seem to have interested our compiler. Although it is not unusual in handbooks of penance for a compiler like pseudo-Theodore, to devote about a fifth of his entire work to subjects such as incest, conjugal sex, clerical sex, fornication, adultery and sodomy,13 these chapters provide a good example of the way our compiler worked. The main subjects are divided into six large chapters on, respectively, fornication, sex and marriage, male and female clerics and sex, adultery, incest, and sodomy. These chapters are, in turn, subdivided into a minimum of eleven, and a maximum of thirty-five, sometimes elaborate, canons in which he has ordered his sources and, wherever he felt the need, added to them. For instance, a typical example of the way pseudo-Theodore ‘mixed’ his material, is c. 17 in his Chapter 14 De incestis:14 Si mater cum filio suo paruulo fornicationem imitauerit, ii annos peniteat, et in tertio iii xlmas ac legitimas ferias, et diem i in unaqueque [lege unaquaque] ebdomada ieiunet ad uesperam. If a mother has imitated fornication with her young son, she should do two years penance, and on the three quadresimal periods and legitimate feast days, and one day in each week she should fast until vespers. 13

14

Wasserschleben, Bußordnungen I.[16]–V.[20], pp. 574–86; that is, twelve pages out of fifty-one (counting from incipiunt iudicia poenitentum on p. 571). Cf. Payer, Sex and the Penitentials, p. 82. All citations from the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori given in this article follow the Berlin manuscript.




27

For this canon, pseudo-Theodore appears to have made use of two sources, namely the penitential of Theodore, version U I II, c. 20: Si mater cum filio suo paruulo fornicationem imitatur, iii annos abstineat se a carne, et diem unum ieiunet in ebd. usq. ad uesp. 15 If a mother has imitated fornication with her young son, she should abstain from meat for three years, and one day in each week she should fast until vespers. and the Poenitentiale pseudo-Bedae I, c. 26: Si mater cum filio suo paruulo fornicationem imitatur, ii annos et tres xlmas cum legitimas ferias.16 If a mother has imitated fornication with her young son, (she should do penance for) two years, and (fast) on the three quadresimal period and legitimate feast days. While pseudo-Theodore mentions neither of his sources for this canon, he does make full use of them, and seems to have been aiming at being as comprehensive as possible on the subject at hand. Similar examples, in which the compiler ‘mixed’ two or more of his sources in order to cover several variations of a specific prescription, abound in the Paenitentiale. The text may therefore be read as a well-organized collection of all the relevant material available to him, in which he regularly amended his material and tried to eliminate the variations and inconsistencies he ran up against. The author of this handbook, then, had a lot of earlier texts to work with. Still, however rich his library may have been, he hardly ever mentions the sources for his prescriptions, nor does he cite them literally in many cases. Only on a handful of occasions in the whole text does one encounter the name of an authority like the Venerable Bede,17 Gregory I18 15

16

17

18

P.W. Finsterwalder, Die Canones Theodori Cantuariensis und ihre Überlieferungsformen, Untersuchungen zu den Bussbücher des 7., 8. und 9. Jahrhunderts 1 (Weimar, 1929), p. 292. H.J. Schmitz, Die Bussbücher und die Bussdisziplin der Kirche: nach handschriftlichen Quellen dargestellt, 2 vols (Mainz, 1883), II, p. 656. Paenitentiale Pseudo-Theodori XXXV. [50], Wasserschleben, Bußordnungen, p. 621. This will be XV, c. 39b in the new edition: Et ieiunet sicut uenerabilis Beda presbyter ordinauit . . . Paenitentiale Pseudo-Theodori, Wasserschleben, Bußordnungen, p. 600, n. 13. This part of the text is absent in Wasserschleben’s edition. Since Wasserschleben copied Thorpe’s edition of the text without consulting Thorpe’s base manuscript, he was not aware of the presence of this part of the text in the Cambridge manuscript. In the new edition: XXII, c. 33, De inlusione et nocturna pollutione beatus Gregorius ita dicit . . .



28


or Innocence I.19 In cases where he mentions an authority they are, without exception, church Fathers or the proceedings of early church councils, although he mostly uses such sources without identifying them.20 Whenever the compiler mentions an authority by name, this is without fail the result of his remaining faithful to sources which in turn give the name of the authority cited. What is more, now and then the compiler seems to have deliberately omitted several attributions mentioned in the texts he was working from, although he does occasionally refer to unspecified canones. The very first chapter of the penitential is a case in point. In the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori it reads as follows:21 I. CAPITALIA CRIMINA Nunc igitur capitalia crimina explicabo. Prima superbia, sicut scriptum est: Initium omnis peccati superbia. De cuius radice oritur inanis gloria, inuidia, ira longo tempore, tristitia saeculi, auaritia, uentris ingluuies, luxuria, fornicatio, deinde adulterium, homicidium, falsum testimonium, furtum, sacrilegium, id est, sacrarum rerum furtum, et hoc maximum est furtum, periurium, rapina, ebrietas assidua, idolatria, molles, sodomitae, maledici, hereses. Ista sunt ergo capitalia crimina. Now I will explain the capital sins. The first is pride, as it is written: Pride is the beginning of all sin. From this root sprout vanity, jealousy, long-lasting anger, worldly gloominess, avarice, gluttony, pomp, fornication and hence adultery, homicide, false testimony, theft, sacrilege, that is theft of sacred objects, which is the worst kind of theft, perjury, robbery, regular drunkenness, idolatry, effeminacy, sodomy, slander, heresy. These are the capital sins.

19

20

21

Paenitentiale Pseudo-Theodori XV. [30], 3, Wasserschleben, Bußordnungen, p. 601. Wasserschleben apparently thought it unnecessary to transcribe this chapter, since it is an exact copy of the Excarpsus Cummeani XI, cc. 18–32, see Schmitz, Die Bussbücher, II, pp. 633–5. The relevant canon is Excarpsus Cummeani XI, c. 20: ‘Si quis a catholica ecclesia ad haeresim transierit et postea reversus, non potest ordinari nisi post abstinentiam longam aut pro magna necessitate. Hunc Innocentius papa nec post penitentiam clericum fieri canonum auctoritate adserit permitti.’ ‘If somebody exchanges the catholic church for heresy and, later on, returns, he may not be ordained unless he abstains for a long time or if there is an urgent necessity. Following the authority of the canons, Pope Innocent does not permit him to be made a cleric even after he has done penance.’ For instance: Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori IX, c. 1, for instance, draws upon Isidore of Seville’s Sententiae libri tres, c. 39, 20; Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori XIII, c. 33 similarly uses the first Council of Toledo, c. 17. Paenitentiale Pseudo-Theodori VII. Wasserschleben, Bußordnungen, p. 571, n. 2 provides the extended version of this canon as it can be found in the Brussels and the Berlin manuscripts.




29

The source for this chapter is the first chapter of the Paenitentiale Pseudo-Egberti:22 I. Nunc de capitalibus criminibus Nunc igitur capitalia crimina secundum canones explicabo. Prima superbia, inuidia, fornicatio, inanis gloria, ira longo tempore, tristitia seculi, auaritia, uentris ingluuies, et Augustinus adiecit sacrilegium, id est sacrarum rerum furtum; et hoc maximum est furtum, uel idolothitis seruientem, id est auspiciis et reliqua, deinde adulterium, falsum testimonium, furtum, rapinam, ebrietas adsidua, idolatria, molles, sodomita, maledici, perjuri. Ista ergo capitalia crimina sanctus Paulus et Augustinus et alii sancti computauerunt. [our emphases] Now about the capital sins. Now I will explain the capital sins according to the canons. First come pride, vanity, fornication, vanity, long-lasting anger, worldly gloominess, avarice, gluttony, and Augustine adds sacrilege, that is: theft of sacred objects, which is the worst kind of theft, and serving idolatry, like predicting the future and suchlike; hence adultery, false testimony, theft, robbery, regular drunkenness, idolatry, effeminacy, sodomy, slander, perjury. These are the capital sins as Saint Paul and Augustine and other saints enumerate them. There have been some alterations in the sins enumerated, but more interestingly, all remarks that may convey authority have been omitted in pseudo-Theodore’s version. The secundum canones is not included, nor are the names of Augustine and Paul. The prescriptions of church Fathers, church councils and popes are, hence, not recognizable as such in the text, so that they, as it were, ‘disappear’ among the penitential canons. All in all the number of attributions to respectable earlier texts or authors is so minimal, that it seems that pseudo-Theodore was not in the first place concerned with making his work look authoritative. Neither does he ever mention the penitentials he used as his sources. Meanwhile, however, the compiler did make full use of the most important works on these subjects and, as shown by the examples cited above, in a creative way. In this sense, pseudo-Theodore’s handbook may also be regarded as a carefully compiled, systematic collection of all penitential material available to him on a wide range of subjects, occasionally formulated in a new way. Needless to say that accusations of unoriginality do not do justice to the compiler at all. 22

Paenitentiale Pseudo-Egberti I. Schmitz, Die Bussbücher, II, p. 663.



30


Re-dating the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori Von Hörmann’s terminus post quem for the composition of the Paenitentiale is based on the compiler’s use of Halitgar of Cambrai’s De vitiis et virtutibus.23 This work, which has penance as its main theme, was written by Halitgar (bishop of Cambrai between 816 and 831), following a request from Archbishop Ebo of Rheims (816–35). Ernst Dümmler, in his edition of the accompanying letter from Halitgar to Ebo, dates the letter and, by implication the work, to about 830. 24 Although Dümmler himself was not very certain of this date, 25 Von Hörmann used it as the earliest possible date of composition for the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori.26 Raymund Kottje, however, does not follow this line of reasoning. In his opinion, it cannot be established whether Halitgar wrote his work before or after the Council of Paris in 829, 27 at which occasion it was decided to collect and burn handbooks of penance of dubious contents and reputation. 28 If we follow Kottje in saying that Halitgar may have written his De vitiis et virtutibus at any time during his episcopate (816–31), this has consequences for the dating of the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori. Rather than after 830, the Paenitentiale might as well have been written in the late 810s or in the 820s. For a dating post quem we are, fortunately, not only dependent on the compiler’s use of Halitgar’s work, for pseudo-Theodore has also drawn upon Amalarius of Metz’s Liber officialis. This work, which deals with all aspects of the liturgy, was dedicated to Louis the Pious. After having written an initial version in three books, Amalarius later came back to his work and wrote a longer, improved version in four books. Even later, he composed a third version. In the past, there has been some debate as to the date of the first, shorter version of the Liber 23 24 25

26 27

28

Von Hörmann, ‘Enstehungsverhältnisse’, p. 14. MGH Epistolae V, Karolini Aevi III, ed. E. Dümmler (Berlin, 1899), p. 616. MGH Epistolae V, Kar. Aevi III, p. 616, n. 1: ‘Haec ad id tempus referenda esse mihi videntur, in quo Einhardus, Ludowici imperatoris familiaris, in aula eius versabatur, quam a. 830 reliquit.’ Von Hörmann, ‘Enstehungsverhältnisse’, p. 14. Kottje, Die Bußbücher, p. 5: ‘und ebensowenig läßt es sich sagen, ob er sein Bußbuch schon vor diesem Zeitpunkt [= Council of Paris (829)] vollendet oder in Angriff genommen hatte’. Council of Paris (829), MGH Concilia II, Concilia Aevi Karolini I, ed. Albert Werminghof (Hannover, 1906), c. 32, p. 633: ‘Ut codicelli, quos penitentiales vocant, quia canonicae auctoritati refraguntur, poenitus aboleantur . . . omnibus nobis salubriter in commune visum est, ut unusquisque episcoporum in sua parroechia eosdem erroneos codicellos diligenter perquirat et inventos igni tradat, ne per eos ulterius sacerdotes imperiti homines decipiant.’ ‘That the booklets, which are called “penitentials” shall be completely abolished . . . we all think that it would be healthy, if every bishop patiently seeks out these error-ridden booklets and, when he has found them, commits them to the fire, so that in future inexperienced priests will no longer deceive the people with them.’




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officialis. Father J.M. Hanssens, who edited the text in the late 1940s, 29 maintains in an article preceding the appearance of his edition, that the first version must have seen the light in the course of 823. 30 Both Allen Cabaniss and Wolfgang Steck, however, present convincing arguments for a slightly earlier date of 820–1 or perhaps early 822 on the basis of a re-dating of the letters that precede the work. 31 The second version of the work, which now included a Book 4, appeared in 829 or even later.32 It is in particular the first version that concerns us here, as pseudo-Theodore used only the last chapter (64) of Book 3 in his work. This is a relatively short chapter, dealing with the commemoration of the dead, which was incorporated almost entirely in Chapter 40 of the Paenitentiale. With pseudo-Theodore’s use of Amalarius’s Liber Officialis liber III, then, the earliest possible date for the composition of the Paenitentiale moves slightly earlier to 820–2. The terminus ante quem Von Hörmann employs boils down to argumentation e silentio. He considers the year 847 as the last possible moment for the composition of the Paenitentiale, as it was then that the Council of Mainz met under Hrabanus Maurus and reached several important decisions on the subject of penance. A newly written handbook of penance, so Von Hörmann argues, would only have been useful after 847 if it incorporated these decisions, of which the Paenitentiale shows no trace.33 Neither does the text make use of Pseudo-Isidore, something, so he argues, that might be expected had the Paenitentiale been composed after this very influential work saw the light. 34 Such arguments may sound plausible and indeed there is something to be said for them, but on the other hand, they are far from watertight. 35 It 29

30

31

32 33 34 35

Amalarius of Metz, Amalarii episcopi opera liturgica omnia, ed. J.M. Hanssens, 3 vols, Studi et testi 138 (Vatican City, 1948–50), II. J.M. Hanssens, ‘Le texte du “Liber officialis d’Amalaire” ’, Ephemerides Liturgicae 47 (1933), pp. 113–25, at p. 117. Allen Cabaniss, Amalarius of Metz (Amsterdam, 1954), p. 52, n. 1. The year 820 as the earliest possible moment of composition is derived from the dates of four letters that precede the work, the latest of which was written in 820; Wolfgang Steck, Der Liturgiker Amalarius – eine quellenkritische Untersuchung zu Leben und Werk eines Theologen der Karolingerzeit (St Ottilien, 2000), at p. 44. Cf. Christopher A. Jones, ‘The Book of the Liturgy in Anglo-Saxon England’, Speculum 73 (1998), pp. 659–702, at p. 675, n. 69. Steck, Der Liturgiker, p. 49. A slightly earlier date is proposed by Cabaniss, Amalarius of Metz , p. 71. Von Hörmann, ‘Entstehungsverhältnisse’, p. 20. Von Hörmann, ‘Entstehungsverhältnisse’, p. 20. The same goes, to my mind, for a more recent theory on the Paenitentiale’s date in Michael Glatthaar, Bonifatius und das Sakrileg. Zur politischen Dimension eines Rechtsbegriffs, Freiburger Beiträge zur mittelalterlichen Geschichte 17 (Frankfurt am Main, 2004), at pp. 619–20: ‘Zeitlich scheint er [= pseudo-Theodore] den im Blutbad von Fontenoy (841) gipfelnden Bruderkriegen nahezustehen. Denn die Cambridger Version behandelt eingangs fast mehr noch den Verwandtentotschlag als das gegenständlich-personale Sakrileg.’ Although pseudo-Theodore does include fratricide, he does not seem to devote special attention to the subject – the only time he explicitly mentions it is in Book 15 (De homicidia), c. 21, where fratricide is only one



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may equally well be imagined that our compiler used neither of these works even if they existed at the time. After all, pseudo-Theodore was disinclined to draw upon other, contemporary texts that would have been useful for his purpose, like Carolingian conciliar proceedings and episcopal statutes. For the purpose of establishing a firm terminus ante quem, then, such arguments are not strong enough, and at the end of the day the only firm date we have is that of the oldest manuscript (MS Bamberg, a fragment dating from the late ninth century). This still leaves us with a fairly long period in which the work might have been compiled. Narrowing this period down further is not possible on the basis of the material incorporated in the Paenitentiale, but a further consideration of the nature of this work and a plausible context for its composition may be helpful here. Another, related, aspect of the text that needs to be taken into consideration in this context is the location where it might have been composed.

Groups of penitentials As has just been explained, the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori leans heavily on a number of older handbooks of penance. When it comes to characterizing the text, however, scholars have interpreted the composition of the Paenitentiale in two diametrically opposed ways. There are, so they argue, two kinds of ninth-century penitential: an old/conservative and a new/reform-minded group. Von Hörmann calls the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori reform-minded, on the basis that the author extended and ‘corrected’ various older prescriptions, in accordance with rechtsbildende Tendenzen seiner Zeit.36 Kottje agrees with Von Hörmann that the Paenitentiale is not a ‘traditional’ handbook of penance. Old-style penitentials, he argues, drew on pre-existing handbooks of penance, whereas the new style dictated a stronger dependence on early canon law and patristic writings.37 Pierre Payer, in turn, argues that the Paenitentiale

36

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example of murdering relatives: ‘Si quis forte casu fratrem aut sororem uel auunculum uel patruum uel amitam uel quemlibet propinquum occiderit nolens, x annos peniteat . . .’ Apart from that, it seems that linking the text to specific events (like the Battle of Fontenoy) on the basis of one possible resonance is overstretching the evidence that can be provided by a text like pseudo-Theodore’s, which, after all, deals with hundreds of subjects. Von Hörmann, ‘Entstehungsverhältnisse’, p. 7: ‘Schon eine flüchtige Durchsicht unseres Poenitentials verräth dem Kundigen, dass es erheblich viel Selbständigkeit in der Beurtheilung der Delikte und der Handhabung der Bussdisziplin zeigt und daher verschiedene Korrekturen und Erweiterungen des bisherigen Materials vornimmt, dass es dabei theils der zu seiner Zeit in der fränkischen Kirche geltenden Bussdisziplin gerecht zu werden versucht, ohne sich der durch Halitgar unter dem Einfluss der synodalen Reformbestimmungen versuchten Ablehnung der angelsächsischen Bussnormen anzuschliessen, theils die zeitgenössische Rechtsübung überholdend selbst reformierend wirken will.’ Kottje, Die Bußbücher, pp. 3–4.




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pseudo-Theodori belongs to the ‘old’ category that still drew heavily on earlier handbooks, whereas the penitentials by Halitgar of Cambrai and Hrabanus Maurus are typical of the ‘new’ style. 38 Now it cannot be denied that pseudo-Theodore did on occasion make some changes in, for instance, tariffs of penance 39 and indeed added some bits and pieces of his own. The overall image we get from his text, however, is not that the compiler set to work in order to heavily amend his sources – although he hardly ever cites his sources exactly to the letter, their gist remains unchanged in most cases. Furthermore, as we have seen, material drawn from the writings of early popes and church Fathers, as well as from early canon law do not constitute more than a very small part of the work. Following the division made by Payer, then, the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori cannot be considered as a text aiming at reform, but rather belongs to the long tradition upon which the compiler drew so heavily. Rather than writing a handbook based purely upon canon law and patristic works, pseudoTheodore looked to all the older material he could find and, as we have seen, eliminated such inconsistencies as existed between these texts. In this sense, his efforts are reminiscent not so much of old or new-style penitentials, but rather of, for instance, Benedictus Levita’s work, who, in the late twenties of the ninth century, tried to collect and organize all the capitulary material he could lay his hands on. 40 Moreover, it appears to be a legitimate question to ask whether this second, ‘new’, group of handbooks of penance really exists at all. In Kottje’s opinion, three texts written in the ninth century may qualify as ‘new-style’ penitentials: Halitgar’s De vitiis et virtutibus, Hrabanus Maurus’s Paenitentiale for Archbishop Otgar of Mainz (825–47) and his Paenitentiale for Bishop Heribald of Auxerre (828–57). These latter two works, Kottje admits, are not penitential handbooks in the strict sense of the word, but consist of Hrabanus’s answers to a series of questions on penance posed by Heribald and Otgar.41 Halitgar’s work, in turn, is only to a very limited extent a penitential handbook that would be useful for pastoral care. The first two books discuss respectively vices and virtues, whereas the third gives a penitential ordo.42 It is only in the last two books 38 39

40

41 42

Pierre Payer, Sex and the Penitentials, pp. 61–5. For instance: Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori XV, c. 5, where a woman who has an abortion is told to do ten years of penance instead of the three years prescribed in the source for this canon, the Excarpsus Cummeani VI, c. 23. A new edition of this work by Wilfried Hartmann and Gerhard Schmitz is now underway in both a ‘traditional’ and an electronic form, cf. . Kottje, Die Bußbücher, p. 7. PL 105, col. 652C–693B, Halitgarii episcopi Cameracensis de vitiis et virtutibus et de ordine poenitentium libri quinque.



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that we come across something that resembles a handbook of penance, in the sense that we find descriptions of actual wrongdoings. These are, however, not always followed by a description of a suitable compensation, and penance is only prescribed in about half of the cases. Often, the amount of penance that should be performed is not given. 43 In some serious cases, like incest, no punishment is prescribed at all. 44 Halitgar clearly made an effort to build his book upon the wise words of various church Fathers, popes and early canon law, exactly as the Council of Châlons (813) wished.45 The same goes for both works by Hrabanus Maurus. It is, therefore, difficult to construct a ‘group’ of penitentials out of these three works by Halitgar and Hrabanus, none of which can be easily compared with what Payer calls ‘traditional’ handbooks of penance. None of these three texts were intended as penitentials in the same way as the earlier handbooks were. From this perspective, the division Payer and Kottje make does not seem necessary, and the question whether or not the Paenitentiale would belong to one group or the other thus loses its relevance. It is sufficient to state that after a certain moment in the ninth century, no new, substantial, handbooks of penance were composed in the Frankish territories, 46 although texts about various aspects of penance were still produced, either as separate texts (like those of Hrabanus and Halitgar), or as parts of larger works (like Burchard of Worms’s Corrector sive Medicus, which is Book 19 of his Decretum). The problem is, of course, to try and pinpoint this moment, and again there is not much to go on. The kind of handbook written by Pseudo-Theodore (a description of the wrongdoing followed by its 43

44

45

46

For instance Halitgar, De vitiis et virtutibus IV, cc. 10, 12 and 14, in which Halitgar only states that the culprit should undergo penance. Halitgar IV, c. 21: ‘Nam et haec salubriter praecavenda sanximus, ne quis fidelium propinquam sanguinis sui, usquequo affinitatis lineamenta generis successione cognoscit, in matrimonio sibi desideret copulari. Quoniam scriptum est: Omnis homo ad proximam sanguinis sui non accedat, ut revelet turpitudinem ejus.’ ‘Also this we order to be wholesome to try and prevent [sin], that no christian should desire to bind himself in marriage to a blood-relative, as far as he knows the bonds of affinity of his family. For it is written: No man should approach his blood-relative, by which his depravity is shown.’ Council of Châlons (813), c. 38: ‘Modus autem paenitentiae peccata sua confitentibus aut per antiquorum canonum institutionem aut per sanctarum scriptuarum auctoritatem aut per ecclesiasticam consuetudinem sicut superius dictum est, imponi debet, repudiatis ac penitus eliminatis libellis, quos paenitentiales vocant, quorum sunt certi errores, incerti auctores . . .’ ‘You should impose the way of doing penance by confessing one’s sins, either according to the old canons, or according to the authority of the holy writings or following ecclesiastical custom, as it has been stated above, and you should repudiate and eliminate the booklets that are called penitentials, whose errors are certain and whose authors are not.’ In Italy, however, the tradition continued till much later. We thank Adriaan Gaastra for pointing this out. For the equally different situation in Spain see Ludger Körntgen and Francis Bezler (eds), Paenitentialia Hispaniae, CCSL 156A (Turnhout, 1998) and Francis Bezler, Les pénitentiels espagnols, Spanische Forschungen der Görres-Gesellschaft II 30 (Aschendorff, 1994).




35

appropriate penance) was, as Rob Meens has pointed out, mostly a phenomenon of the late eighth and early ninth centuries. 47 Handbooks composed in the Frankish lands after, say, the 820s are very thin on the ground. Moreover, their dating is often problematic. The Paenitentiale pseudo-Gregorii, for instance, also post-dates Halitgar’s work, but by how much cannot be established. As in the case of the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori, its only solid date ante quem is provided by its earliest manuscript, which in this case dates from the second half of the ninth century.48 It seems, all in all, that in the Frankish lands, the production of handbooks like pseudo-Theodore’s was confined to the first half of the ninth century. This, in turn, may mean that the Paenitentiale was one of the last works of its kind to be composed.

Pre-occupations with penance Constructing a plausible context for the composition for the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori can only be attempted on the basis of circumstantial evidence. One important foothold we get is that of the proceedings of the great councils that met in the years 813 and 829. In 813 two of the five parallel councils held in that year addressed the issue of penance. At the Council of Tours, the assembly wondered which penitentials should be used, while in Châlons the handbooks were rejected for reason of their lack of authority.49 Given the importance of penance, it is hard to believe that the latter decision extended to all handbooks. When combined with the pre-occupation with the authority of such texts, it seems likely that this canon in the first place refers to anonymous texts, while handbooks rightly or wrongly ascribed to a church Father or to some other authority might not have caused such worries. Both canons thus clearly reflect the Carolingian spirit of reform in its concern with correct texts and correct rites at the expense of handbooks of dubious content and authority. In this sense, the Council of Paris in 829 went a step further, as it was deeply concerned with the right way of doing penance, as well as with setting straight a lot of wrongs – amongst others the practice of penance following the dubious authority of the penitentials. This latter point requires some further explanation here. We know that the Council of Paris was one of four, parallel councils that met in 829; no proceedings survive for the three others held at 47

48 49

Rob Meens, Het tripartite boeteboek. Overlevering en betekenis van vroegmiddeleeuwse biechtvoorschriften (Hilversum, 1994), esp. pp. 60–8. Meens, Het tripartite boeteboek, pp. 67–8. Council of Tours (813), c. 22, MGH Concilia I, p. 289; Council of Châlon (813), c. 38, ibid., p. 281.



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Toulouse, Lyon and Mainz.50 No fewer than sixteen archbishops were invited to the four meetings, with all their suffragan bishops. 51 The aim of these meetings, as of those in 813, was correctio, but in contrast to these earlier councils, the tone in 829 was much grimmer. In the Relatio episcoporum, which was composed after the four councils as a preparation for a concluding meeting with the emperor at Aachen, we read about multifariis cladibus (the various calamaties) both inside and outside the realm, which were weakening the empire and provoking God to punish everyone.52 It was up to the ruler, together with his archbishops and the suffragans to set matters right in accordance with God’s rule so that further disasters could be averted. It is in this atmosphere that we should read the proceedings of the Council of Paris (829), including its canon that condemns handbooks of penance to the fire. Even if the conciliar proceedings do not reflect any future reality except an ideal one, we can safely assume that the assembled episcopate was very serious indeed about its decisions. What is more, the abolition of unauthoritative penitential handbooks was now clearly part of the project, as it was part of the Relatio episcoporum to be discussed with the emperor afterwards. Clearly, then, the wish to abolish such handbooks was now widely felt, although it remains an open question as to how effective this condemnation was. What is at issue here is not when the copying of old penitentials came to an end, for this continued throughout the ninth century and thereafter; in this sense many seem to have ignored the wish expressed in 829.53 More interesting in this context is the compilation of new texts in the same tradition, which, as we have seen, seems to have come to a halt in the course of the first half of the ninth century. Was the Council of Paris, which, as we have seen, ordered the destruction of the old penitentials, a watershed in this sense? Its decisions clearly exerted influence upon important authors such as Halitgar of Cambrai and Hrabanus Maurus, who, after the council, tried to follow its precepts in their writings on penance. On the other hand, anti-penitential sounds had been heard years before during the Council of Châlons 50

51

52

53

MGH Concilia II, Concilia Aevi Karolini I, ed. Albert Werminghof (Hannover, 1906), no. 50 A, p. 596: ‘Anno sexto decimo regnante domno nostro Hludowico conventus episcoporum debet fieri in quattuor locis, id est Magontiaco [ . . . ]. In Parisio [ . . . ]. In Lugduno [ . . . ] In Tolosa [ . . . ].’ The text left out between brackets contains a list of all those expected at the meeting. A full list of archbishops invited can be found in MGH Conc. II, Conc. Aevi Kar. I, no. 50 A, p. 597. MGH Capitularia regum Francorum II, eds A. Boretius and V. Krause (Hannover, 1897), pp. 31–3. On this council and its ‘penitential spirit’ see Mayke de Jong, ‘Sacrum palatium et ecclesia. L’autorité religieuse royale sous les Carolingiens (790–840)’, Annales 58:6 (2003), pp. 1243–69, at pp. 1263–4. To take only one example of many: the penitential of Theodore, version U is extant in many manuscripts from the ninth century and thereafter.




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(813), on which occasion ‘the little books, which are called penitentials’ were openly rejected for being erroneous. 54 The parallel councils of 813, however, do not mirror this sentiment, but at best express doubt, as at the meeting at Tours. The condemnation of the penitentials in 829, however, sounds much sharper: they are called uncanonical and even harmful, although this, so the council states, was in part due to the ignorance of the sacerdotes who used them.55 Judging by the abovementioned works by Hrabanus Maurus and Halitgar of Cambrai, as well as from the lack of newly written handbooks, it seems that this time, the voice of the council was heard louder than before. Even if not all the bishops took the conciliar proceedings as gospel, and perhaps felt free to act differently, these councils do show an increased interest during the first decades of the ninth century, in the correct practice of penance based on texts of unquestionable authority. Perhaps it was a similar kind of interest in these matters which inspired pseudo-Theodore to write his own work. Also in this respect, then, roughly the second quarter of the ninth century might well have been the period in which the compiler produced his work. Within such a time-frame, the twenties and thirties provide a more probable context for his work to have beeen composed than later in the century, as the church authorities’ pre-occupation with penance was at its peak during these two decades. Still, the validity of this impression also depends on the question as to where pseudo-Theodore might have worked. If he operated in some remote corner of the empire, discussions on penance conducted in 813 and 829 may have filtered through some time after the actual conciliar debates. On the other hand, if he was located not far from the centres where such debates were held, he might have been influenced a good deal earlier. Localizing the provenance of the Paenitentiale depends to a large extent on the availability of the material he used.

A possible provenance for the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori The earliest three continental manuscripts containing some version of the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori were, as we have seen, copied somewhat after its composition. The earliest manuscript, Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, Msc. Patr. 101, contains only a fragment of the

54 55

Council of Châlons (813), c. 38. See n. 41. Council of Paris (829), c. 32: ‘Quoniam multi sacerdotum partim uncuria, partim ignorantia modum paenitentiae reatum suum confitentibus secus, quam uira canonica decernant, imponunt, utentes scilicet quibusdam codicellis contra canonicam auctoritatem scriptis, quos paenitentiales vocant, et ob id non vulnera peccatorum curant, sed potius foventes palpant.’



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text, and dates from the late ninth or maybe early tenth century. 56 Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Phillip. 1750 transmits a (more or less) complete text and dates to the tenth century. This manuscript is probably of northern French provenance. 57 Troyes, Bibliothèque Municipale, 1979, was probably copied in the tenth or first half of the eleventh century in eastern France or western Germany.58 Evidently, no firm conclusions can be drawn from the geographical provenance of these three relatively late manuscripts. An English provenance for the Paenitentiale, as has been suggested in the past, seems, however, unlikely. 59 After the discovery of continental manuscripts that have no connection with Wulfstan, and given the fact that, until the eleventh century, Amalarius’s work existed in England only in an ‘abbreviated version’, the possibility that the Paenitentiale was composed in England can now, we think, be excluded. 60 However, if the extant manuscripts of the Paenitentiale cannot shed light on its region of origin, perhaps the sources used by its compiler can. The texts used for the composition of the Paenitentiale were by no means evenly spread over the Frankish empire during the ninth century, and the author must have been at a place where all of them were available. Let us therefore briefly consider the geographical distribution of three of pseudo-Theodore’s main sources: the Excarpsus Cummeani, the penitential of Theodore (version U) and Halitgar’s De vitiis et virtutibus. The first two are so fundamental to the Paenitentiale, that they have been nearly entirely incorporated into the text. If we follow the hypothesis that pseudo-Theodore may have written his handbook in the twenties or thirties of the ninth century, the localization of the early manuscripts of Halitgar’s work, in turn, may be revealing, for pseudoTheodore must, in that case, have used an early copy. Copies of De vitiis et virtutibus are scarce before around 850; after that time, the number of its manuscripts increased substantially, and the work can be seen to have spread quickly.61 The earliest four manuscripts still extant 56

57

58 59

60 61

Friedrich Leitschuh and Hans Fischer, Katalog der Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Bamberg (Bamberg, 1887–1912, 1966), pp. 481–3, at p. 482, who did not localize the script of this manuscript. Valentin Rose, Verzeichniss der lateinischen Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin, vol. 1, Die Meerman-Handschriften des Sir Thomas Phillipps. Handschriften-Verzeichnisse der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin 12.1 (Berlin, 1893), pp. 223–6, no. 106, and see n. 9 above. Kottje, Die Bußbücher, p. 63. Cf. Hans Sauer, ‘Zur Überlieferung und Anlage von Erzbishop Wulfstans “Handbuch” ’, Deutsches Archiv 36 (1980), pp. 341–84, at p. 347, n. 8, where he writes that ‘Weil das Poenitentiale Ps.-Theodori aber anscheinend nur in englischen Hss. und nur im Rahmen von Wulfstans Handbuch überliefert ist . . . halte ich es nicht für ausgeschlossen, daß es . . . erst in England . . . kompiliert wurde.’ Cf. Jones, ‘The Book of the Liturgy’, p. 676 about Amalarius in Anglo-Saxon England. Cf. Kottje, Die Bußbücher, p. 13 ff. for an overview of the extant manuscripts.




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are, not very surprisingly, from the north of the Carolingian kingdoms: one from Orléans,62 one from Wissembourg,63 and one from the Rheims area.64 A fourth manuscript cannot be localized more precisely than ‘France’.65 Also, in the later ninth century the transmission of De vitiis et virtutibus can be seen to have remained centred on, especially, northern France, with a few copies finding their way to middle and south Germany as well as to northern Italy. Of the remaining twentyfive extant copies dating from after 850, no fewer than nineteen were copied in the north of the Carolingian kingdoms. The only south German copy dates from the third quarter of the ninth century. 66 That Halitgar’s text found so little reception in ninth-century south Germany is important, for the nineteen extant manuscripts of the Excarpsus Cummeani dating from before c.850 show a concentration there. A small core of five manuscripts was, however, copied in the north: two in Mainz, one at the monastery of St Amand, one in Autun, and a fifth one somewhere in northern France. 67 Manuscripts from before the middle of the ninth century containing the penitential of Theodore (version U), in turn, are also mostly from northern France and the middle Rhine region (ten out of thirteen 68), although the text clearly knew a southern German tradition as well (three out of thirteen manuscripts are of south German provenance 69). Of course, rough sketches like these are neither precise, nor entirely watertight, but under the circumstances they give the best indication possible of where the Paenitentiale may have been composed. If we superimpose the previous three descriptions of manuscript distribution, we end up with an area comprising, roughly, northern France with the adjacent part of Germany to the east (the Mainz region) as the most likely area in which pseudo-Theodore was active – that is, if he indeed wrote during the twenties or thirties of the ninth century. Although 62 63 64 65 66

67

68

69

Now at Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Cod. lat. 2341. Now at St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 277. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat. 207. Now at Einsiedeln, Stiftsbiliothek, MS 281 (886). This is now Vatican City, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat. 407, from the area of St Gallen. The manuscripts from Mainz are now Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud misc. 263 and probably also Sélestat, Bibliothèque de la Ville, 132; the St Amand manuscript is now at Paris, BN, 2296; the Autun manuscript is now Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Phil. 1667, and the manuscript from northern France can be found at Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 572. These manuscripts are: Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Hamilton 132 (H); Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 10127/44; Cologne, Dombibliothek, 91; Cologne, Dombibliothek, 210; Paris, BN, lat. 1603; Paris, BN, lat. 3846; Paris, BN, lat. 12444; Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 554; Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, lat. 2223; Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, M. p. th. q. 32. These manuscripts are: St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 150; Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, HB IV 112; Vienna, ÖNB, lat. 2195.



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hard evidence remains unavailable on all of these points, a hypothesis of such a date and place works well.

Conclusions That the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori has never stimulated research in its own right seems, in the light of the above discussion, rather unjustified. Although such research is still in its infancy, we can already state with some confidence that this is an original, creative work that was not as uninfluential as has been previously thought. Not only are there a substantial number of manuscripts containing the text, the handbook also seems to have interested influential authors like Wulfstan of York. Establishing a possible date, context and location for the composition of this text is problematic and has, to a large extent, to be built upon shaky ground. The arguments for a date between 820–2 and c.850, however, seem at present to be more convincing than a later date: all the material the compiler used was available at that time in the northern part of the Frankish kingdoms, including the area around Mainz, and the context of high-level discussions about the authority of, and inconsistencies in, older handbooks of penance may, at the same time, have given pseudo-Theodore reason enough for his collecting, organizing and amending such older material. In the light of debates concerning the authority of handbooks of penance in the twenties and thirties of the ninth century, there seems to be a lot to say in favour of this period as the most plausible time of composition for the Paenitentiale, although this can at present be no more than a hypothesis. If the arguments explored above do indeed hold, they throw a new and interesting light on the Paenitentiale that should be taken into account in future research. It shows how, in a period of increasing discussion about the validity of penitentials that had been in use for a long time, an effort was made to produce a useful and consistent handbook that contained everything available to the compiler at that point. In a time of repeated attempts at correctio and emendatio of both the Christian Frankish population and the texts on which their religion was built, pseudo-Theodore’s effort may be interpreted as doing exactly that, albeit in his own, unique way. University of Utrecht



Bishops, priests and penance in late Saxon England C  C 

This article examines the textual and manuscript evidence for the practice of penance in late Saxon England. It also examines the significance for pastoral care of the linguistic evidence for specialized vernacular terms for penance: ‘scrift’ for ‘confessor’, ‘dædbote’ and compounds of ‘hreow’ for ‘penance’ and ‘remorse’. The linguistic and textual evidence suggests that penance was a regular part of lay piety. The manuscript evidence, on the other hand, supports recent contentions that penitentials were used by bishops and should be linked to canon law. However, the manuscript evidence cannot be properly understood unless the scant survival rate of humble priestly handbooks is taken into account. Moreover, bishops in this period were deeply involved in furthering pastoral care and their interests and concerns should not be divorced from a pastoral and local context. In conclusion, the article will argue that penitential practices were firmly rooted in the Anglo-Saxon church’s ministry for the laity. ‘Three principal things God has appointed to men for purification: one is baptism, the second is communion, the third is penance, with cessation from evil deeds and practice of good works. Baptism washes us from all our sins, communion hallows us, true penance heals our misdeeds.’ 1 These words of the vernacular homilist, Ælfric, were intended to send out a strong message to the Anglo-Saxon laity concerning the necessity of communion, baptism and penance in the life of the faithful. Contemporary historians, however, have been rather more sceptical than Ælfric concerning his church’s ability to provide such ministry to its flock. There is still much that remains obscure about the organization 1

Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies : The Second Series, ed. Malcolm Godden, EETS SS 5 (Oxford, 1979), II, 3, p. 26. ‘Preo healice ∂ing gesette god mannum to clænsunge. An is fulluht. O∂er is huselhalgung. Pridde is dædbot mid geswicennysse yfelra dæda. and mid bigencge godra weorca; Pæt fulluht us apweh∂ fram eallum synnum. Se huselgang us gehalga∂. Seo so∂e dædbot gehæl∂ ure misdæda.’ Translation (with slight modifications) from B. Thorpe, The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church, 2 vols (London, 1844–6), II, p. 49.


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of pastoral care in tenth- and eleventh-century England. 2 While the institutional framework for the provision of pastoral care in England and the role of monasteries, churches, priests and monks have been intensively studied and debated, less attention has been paid to the sacraments provided. Recent work, however, has begun to redress this balance with studies like that by Jon Wilcox probing the role of Ælfric’s own monastery in local society.3 Penance lies at the heart of the church’s mission to the laity and is therefore a key element in any discussion of how pastoral provision actually worked. The foundations for the study of penance in England were set out in Allen Frantzen’s elegant and thorough study, published in 1983, which elucidated the range of evidence for penitential practices and demonstrated elements of continuity from the pre-Viking Age period to the tenth and eleventh centuries. 4 His ground-breaking work concentrated on the textual evidence and in many ways took its pastoral context for granted. Some of these suppositions have subsequently been questioned and new work, particularly on the Continent, has opened up further research questions. Students of the continental church in the early Middle Ages have investigated the use of practical tools of penitential discipline – texts and manuscripts of penitentials – as an indicator of pastoral practice. How deeply had penance penetrated local society? Is it safe to assume that penitentials were used in the parish by the local priest? Sandy Murray has questioned the extensive use of confession and penance before the high Middle Ages. Franz Kerff, in a wide-ranging paper, discussed the variety of uses for penitentials and emphasized their role in the episcopal control of dioceses and their place in compilations of canon law designed for bishops in their scrutiny of dioceses. Meens, on the other hand, in an extensive critique of both Murray and Kerff, reasserted the importance of penance in the local church based on the evidence of both manuscripts and texts. 5 The forms which penance 2

3

4

5

For a fairly pessimistic view of priestly competence and episcopal oversight, see, for example, J. Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford, 2005), pp. 489–97. For serious doubts concerning the administration of penance, see A. Murray, ‘Confession before 1215’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser. 3 (1993), pp. 51–81. J. Wilcox, ‘Ælfric in Dorset’, in F. Tinti (ed.), Pastoral Care in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 52–62, and see other essays in this volume. See too, for the earlier period, S. Foot, ‘“By Water in the Spirit”: The Administration of Baptism in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, in J. Blair and R. Sharpe (eds), Pastoral Care Before the Parish (Leceister, 1992), pp. 171–92. Allen J. Frantzen, The Literature of Penance in Anglo-Saxon England (New Brunswick, 1983); Allen J. Frantzen, ‘The Tradition of Penitentials in Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE 11 (1983), pp. 23–56. Murray, ‘Confession before 1215’, pp. 51–81; F. Kerff, ‘Libri paenitentiales und kirchliche Strafbarkeit bis zum Decretum Gratiani: ein Diskussionsverlag’, Zeitschrift der SavignyStiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 75 (1989), pp. 23–57; R. Meens, ‘The Frequency and Nature of Early Medieval Penance’, in Peter Biller and A. Minnis (eds), Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 35–61.



Penance in late Saxon England

43

could take in the early Middle Ages have also been subject to scrutiny. The ‘Carolingian dichotomy’ between public and private penance has been questioned not only by Mayke de Jong but also by Sarah Hamilton, both stressing the problems of how normative texts can be interpreted and emphasizing in actual practice a fluidity between public and private.6 The questions posed by Murray, Kerff and Meens are matters of pressing concern for the student of the Anglo-Saxon church who, while less well equipped with penitential manuscripts, has the advantage of a wealth of vernacular religious writings with which to enter the debate. These texts, often translations from Latin, include penitentials, prayers and, above all, vernacular homilies. While the intended audience for these texts is sometimes hard to gauge, they can provide first-hand evidence of the preoccupations and interests of their compilers and authors.7 For example, both Sarah Hamilton and Brad Bedingfield have demonstrated the presence of public penance in England, working from homiletic evidence, particularly that of Archbishop Wulfstan, in conjunction with liturgical ordines found in benedictionals. Both find evidence of a dynamic Anglo-Saxon tradition which evinces interest in public penance but also allows for compromise between public and private. Hamilton’s study of Anglo-Saxon law has also demonstrated the ninth-century practice of public penance in association with certain crimes, notably oath-breaking.8 The diversity and riches of the Anglo-Saxon evidence provides plentiful material with which to assess the pastoral impact of penance in tenth- and eleventh-century England, testing out Kerff ’s hypothesis of episcopal supervision and challenging Murray’s scepticism about actual practice. The vernacular homilies indicate expectations of confession and penance while the production of Old English penitentials and confessional prayers evinces a need for intelligible working texts. To these sources must be added the manuscript witnesses of penitential and related texts which, although not as numerous as on the Continent, give direct if tantalizing evidence of use. All these sources will be utilized in this paper but the starting point for my discussion will be a particularly neglected source: the evidence of Old English terminology for penance. 6

7

8

M. de Jong, ‘What was Public about Public Penance? Paenitentia publica and Justice in the Carolingian World’, Settimane 43 (1996), pp. 863–902; eadem, ‘Power and Humility in Carolingian Society: The Public Penance of Louis the Pious’, EME 1 (1992), pp. 29–52. Sarah Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, 900–1050 (Woodbridge, 2001). See, for example, the discussion of M. McC. Gatch, ‘The Unknowable Audience of the Blickling Homilies’, ASE 18 (1989), pp. 99–115. M.B. Bedingfield, ‘Public Penance in Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE 31 (2002), pp. 223–55; idem, Dramatic Liturgy of Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2002). Sarah Hamilton, ‘Rites for Public Penance in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in Helen Gittos and M. Bradford Bedingfield (eds), The Liturgy of the Late Anglo-Saxon Church, Henry Bradshaw Society Subsidia 5 (London, 2005), pp. 65–103.



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The vernacular vocabulary of penance The Old English sources show that in the late ninth century there was already a developed vernacular vocabulary for the practice of penance. The Old English word, scrift, is found in texts from the reign of Alfred with the meaning ‘confessor’.9 This usage is found in literary texts such as the Old English translation of Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care and in Alfred’s lawcode.10 Alfred’s law is concerned with the penalties for oath-breaking and allows a criminal who has a surety to atone for his crime according to both secular and ecclesiastical law, following the requirements of secular law and ‘as his confessor prescribes for him’. Scrift for ‘confessor’ can be found in numerous Old English sermons, including those of Ælfric and Wulfstan, and those in the Vercelli Book and the Blickling Homilies,11 as this passage from a Vercelli homily illustrates: Bro∂or mine, ponne ge rihtre andetnesse to eowrum scriftum becumen, ponne sceal he eow geornlice ahsian mid hwylcum gemete o∂∂e mid hwylcum intingum syo syn purhtogen wære pe he geandette pæt he ær gefremede, 7 æfter pam gemete pære dæde, he sceal him pa hreowsunge gedeman.12 The word scrift also occurs in the compound scriftscire, an administrative region of pastoral care, a usage largely found in the works of Archbishop 9

10

11

12

My discussion of the Old English terminology for confession and penance has been made possible through The Complete Corpus of Old English in Electronic Form, ed. Antoinette di Paolo Healey, Dictionary of Old English Project, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, . An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the Manuscript Collections of Joseph Bosworth, ed. T. Northcote Toller with an addenda by A. Campbell, 2 vols (Oxford 1898–1955), I, pp. 841–2, gives the following meanings for scrift, ‘what is prescribed as a punishment’, ‘penance’, ‘a judge’, ‘a confessor’. Alfred’s Lawcode, in Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. F. Liebermann, 3 vols (Halle, 1903–16), I, p. 48, 1.8: ‘Gif pær ∂onne oper mennisc borg sie, bete pone borgbryce swa him ryht wisie, 7 ∂one wedbryce swa him his scrift scrife’; King Alfred’s West Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, ed. H. Sweet, 2 vols EETS OS 45 and 50 (London, 1871–2), at p. 105, lines 14, 19. The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, ed. D.G. Scragg, EETS OS 300 (Oxford, 1992), no. 16, pp. 266–77, at pp. 270–1, lines 93–98: ‘Ac for pan we pæs sceolon, men pa leofestan, urum dryhtne a singalice mid eallre heortan pancian pæs pe he us purh his mildheortnesse forgeaf 7 forgifan wille, pæt we hine so∂ne God ongeaton 7 wiston, pæt we ure lif mid so∂e 7 mid rihte lifigan moton 7 magon 7 cunnan, gif we willa∂ swa don swa ure scrift[as] us tæcap 7 lærap.’ The Blickling Homilies with a Translation and Index of Words together with the Blickling Glosses, ed. R. Morris, EETS OS 58, 63, 73 (Oxford, 1874, 1876, 1880, reprinted in one volume, 1967), no. 4, pp. 38–53, at pp. 42–3. ‘ “Eala”, cwæp Sanctus Paulus, “pæt bip deofles goldhord, pæt mon his synna dyrne his scrifte.”’ Vercelli Homilies, ed. Scragg, no. 3, pp. 74–5: ‘My brethren, when you come for proper confession to your confessors, then must he earnestly ask you, with what manner or with what reasons that sin was accomplished which he confesses, that he [sic] performed earlier. And according to the manner of the deed, he must then assign to him that penance.’ Translation from The Vercelli Book Homilies: Translations from the Anglo-Saxon, ed. L.E. Nicholson (Lanham, MD, and London, 1991), pp. 31–2.




45

Wulfstan of York or texts influenced by him. 13 For example, in his episcopal statutes, the Canons of Edgar, Wulfstan writes: ‘And we læra∂ pæt preosta gehwilc on syno∂e gecy∂e gif he on his scriftscire ænigne man wite Gode oferhyre, o∂∂e on heafodleahtrum yfele befealenne, pe he to bote gebigan ne mæge o∂∂e ne durre for worldafole.’14 Another cluster of words is used for confession and confessing – the noun, andetnes for ‘confession’ and the verb, andettan for this act of confession.15 Andettere, however, ‘confessor’, has a restricted usage in the Old English to mean ‘a confessor’ in the sense of a saint who is not a martyr. In this sense it is found in the Old English translations of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, and the Old English Martyrology and in other sources.16 I have found no instance of 13

14

15

16

The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. D. Bethurum (Oxford, 1957), no. 1b, line 28. Die ‘Institutes of Polity, Civil and Ecclesiastical’ Ein Werk Erzbischof Wulfstans von York, ed. Karl Jost, Schweizer anglistische Arbeiten 47 (1959), p. 84, c. 66; p. 85, c. 102. Wulfstan’s Canons of Edgar, ed. R. Fowler, EETS 266 (London, 1972), c. 6, 9, 15, pp. 2–4. ‘Episcopus’, c. 10, 12 printed in Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, ed. D. Whitelock, M. Brett and C.N.L. Brooke, 2 vols (Oxford, 1981), I, pp. 417–22. ‘Rihtscriftscir’ – V Atr, 12.1, I Cnut, 13.1, all in Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, I, pp. 240, 294. It is also found in the Law of Northumbrian Priests, 47: for Wulfstan’s influence on this text, see P. Wormald, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Holiness of Society’, in his Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West (London, 1999), pp. 225–51, at pp. 249–51. Outside works associated with Wulfstan, scriftscire is only found in an anonymous sermon for the dedication of a church, printed by R. Brotanek, Texte und Untersuchungen zur altenglischen Literatur und Kirchengeschichte (Halle, 1913), no. 2, pp. 15–27. This has been attributed to Ælfric (see Blair, The Church, p. 430, n. 14, presumably following Brotanek), but it is now not normally attributed to him. On Ælfric’s corpus, see P. Clemoes, ‘The Chronology of Ælfric’s Works’, in P. Clemoes (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons (London, 1959), pp. 212–47, at pp. 213–19; and J. Pope, Homilies of Ælfric, I, pp. 136–45, esp. p. 141, n. 1. Brotanek 2 is extant in two manuscripts, London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 489 (probably compiled for Bishop Leofric of Exeter (1046–72)) and Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat 943, fols 164r–70r (additions to the ‘Dunstan’ Pontifical). On this sermon and the Lambeth manuscript, see E. Treharne, ‘The Bishop’s Book: Leofric’s Homiliary and Eleventh-Century Exeter’ (forthcoming); for the Paris manuscript, see N.R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), no. 364, art. C and B. Ebersperger, Die angelsächsischen Handschriften in den Pariser Bibliotheken, Anglistische Forschungen 261 (Heidelberg, 1999), pp. 32–44. This compound is also found in the lawcode, II Athelstan, 26, Gesetz, ed. Liebermann, I, p. 164, but as Blair points out only with scrift as an interlineation in the Textus Roffensis, see Blair, The Church, p. 430, n. 14. Wulfstan’s Canons, ed. Fowler, 6, p. 2: ‘And we decree that every priest should make known in the synod if he knows any man in his parish disobedient to God, or who has fallen into evil cardinal sins, that he can not compel to atonement or dare not because of worldly power.’ See cc. 9 and 15, pp. 4–5, where scriftscire is used for area of a priest’s responsibility. See the Complete Corpus of Old English; for andetnes, see Vercelli Homilies, ed. Scragg, no. 3, lines 16, 17, 25, 29, 33, 36 and 43. Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. Bosworth, Toller and Campbell, I, p. 39, gives for andetnes ‘a confession, an acknowledgment, profession, giving of thanks or praise, honour, glory’; and I, p. 39, for andettere ‘a confessor’. See the Complete Corpus of Old English, The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. T. Miller, 4 vols, EETS 95, 96, 110, 110 (London, 1890–8; repr. 1959– 63), p. 34, line 22; p. 36, line 29; p. 38, line 24; p. 40, line 11. Bischof Waerferths von Worcester Uebersetzung der Dialoge Gregors des Grossen, ed. H. Hecht (Leipzig and Hamburg, 1900–7; repr. Darmstadt, 1965), p. 238, line 19; Das altenglische Martyrologium, ed. G. Kotzor, Bayerische Akad. Der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. NF 88 (1981), 5 September. On the Old English Martyrology, see now Christine Rauer, ‘The Sources of the Old English Martyrology’, ASE 32 (2003), pp. 89–109.



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its use for a priestly confessor, who is consistently called a scrift and the verb scrifan is used for the act of assigning penance, as some of the above examples illustrate.17 The Old English terminology for ‘penitent sinner’ or ‘one who confesses’ in the context of penitential discipline was dædbeta; this is found in texts from the tenth century, as for example in this Old English homily possibly produced for Archbishop Wulfstan, ‘. . . se eadiga Ambrosius cwæ∂ pæt nan bisceop ne mæg unbyndan pa dædbetan buton heora behreowsung beo wyr∂e to unbindenne’.18 This noun for a penitent making confession appears to derive from the word dædbot, meaning ‘penance’.19 The word seems to have been commonly used in a precise sense for the penance assigned by a priest. This meaning can be clearly seen in Ælfric’s pastoral letter for Archbishop Wulfsige of Sherborne: ‘Ac hi misdo∂ swi∂e deope, pæt pæt halige husl sceole fynegian, and nella∂ understandan, hu mycele dædbote seo penitentialis tæc∂ be pam, gyf pæt husel bi∂ fynig o∂∂e hæwen . . .’20 It is used with this meaning in ninth-century texts from Alfred’s circle, such as the Old English translation of Gregory’s Pastoral Care.21 The second element in this compound, bote, has a range of meanings including ‘remedy’ but it was employed in lawcodes from the codes of Ine and Alfred for ‘compensation’ for a crime. Dædbote therefore presumably signifies the compensation for a wrong action.22 17

18

19

20

21

22

Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. Bosworth, Toller and Campbell, I, p. 841 gives numerous meanings of scrifan including IV ‘to shrive, to impose penance after confession, to hear confession and then impose penance’. Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, pp. 366–73, lines 95–8: ‘the blessed Ambrose says that no bishop can absolve a penitent unless his remorse is worthy of absolution’. The Old English is a translation of Abbo of St Germain’s sermon in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 190; on this see Bethurum, pp. 345–6 who suggests that this translation by made by a member of Wulfstan’s familia for him as a basis for his own (sermon no. 15) and see Bedingfield, ‘Public Penance’, pp. 234–6. Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. Bosworth, Toller and Campbell, I, p. 192, for dædbot gives ‘an amends-deed, repentance, penitence’; and II, p. 143, ‘penitence’, ‘penance’. Ælfric, first Old English letter for Bishop Wulfsige, in Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics in altenglischer und lateinischer Fassung, ed. B. Fehr, reprinted with an introduction by P. Clemoes (Darmstadt, 1966), p. 29, c. 134. Translation from Councils and Synods, ed. Whitelock, Brett and Brooke, p. 222: ‘. . . they do very deeply amiss, that the holy eucharist should become mouldy, and they will not understand how great a penance the penitential prescribes if the eucharist is mouldy or discoloured . . .’ Gregory’s Dialogues, in Bischof Waerferths von Worcester Uebersetzung, ed. Hecht, p. 88, line 12: ‘Pa gelamp hit, pæt sum rice man bæd his ærendracan, pæt he swi∂e hra∂e to him come, forpon pe hit wæs swi∂e neah his ende, pæt he mid his gebedum for his synnum pingode, 7 pæt he pa dæde be his agnum yflum mihte him geanddettan, 7 pæt he wære alysed mid dædbote fram his scyldum, ær pon pe he eode of lichaman.’ And see p. 327, line 12. See, for example, Ine, 76, Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, I, p. 122: ‘Gif hwa o∂res godsunu slea o∂∂e his godfæder, sie sio mægbot & sio manbot gelic; weaxe sio bot be ∂am were, swa ilce swa sio manbot de∂ pe pam hlaforde sceal.’ And see also, II Edmund, 3, 7.3; I Cnut 2.5. Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, I, pp. 188, 190, 232. Compounds with bot are discussed by Carol Hough, in ‘Two Kentish Laws Concerning Women: A New Reading of Æthelberht 73 and 74’, Anglia 119 (2001), pp. 554–78, at pp. 571–3.




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Some corroboration that dædbote (and related compounds) was used specifically to refer to canonical penance itself rather than for ‘remorse’ or ‘penitence’, can be found in the fact that it is frequently paired with hreow and related words, meaning ‘remorse’, thus designating both canonical penance and the attendant emotion of remorse. 23 This pairing can be seen, for example, in this sermon found in the early eleventhcentury manuscript, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 419: ‘Ac ic halsige on godes naman and eornostlice hate, pæt ge gecyrran to gode mid gebedum and mid wæccan and mid fæstenum and mid synna andettnesse eowrum scriftan and mid hreowsunge dædbota and mid teo∂unge ealra ura æhta weoruldgestreona.’ 24 The pairing is found in the works of Ælfric and Wulfstan, sometimes placing the two words in proximity but in separate sentences as if to allude to the doublet. It is attested as early as the ninth century, in the Old English Martyrology, and in the Old English translations of Bede’s and Orosius’s Histories and Alfred’s version of the Pastoral Care.25 The careful use of the compound dædbote for ‘penance’ with its use of a common legal term for compensation is also suggestive of a certain parallelism of ideas between secular and ecclesiastical law.26 This rapid survey of Old English vocabulary for penance suggests that by the end of the ninth century, a developed terminology for penitential practice had already evolved. It is notable that this language is used consistently across a number of sources from different periods and provenances, from Alfred’s court circle and possibly ninth-century Mercia (if the composition of the Old English Martyrology may be attributed to that region) through into the tenth and eleventh centuries 23

24

25

26

Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. Bosworth, Toller and Campbell, I, p. 558 gives for hreow, ‘sorrow’, ‘regret’, ‘penitence’, ‘penance’, ‘repentance’. Ker, Catalogue, no. 68, art. 3. Printed in Wulfstan, Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen über ihre Echtheit, ed. Arthur Napier (repr. Zurich, 1967), no. 45, pp. 226– 32, at p. 227. ‘Moreover, I beseech in God’s name and earnestly command that you turn to good with prayers and vigils and with fasting and with confession of your sins and with sorrow of penance and with tithes of all your possessions of worldly riches.’ Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 419 is a companion volume to Corpus 421; together these contain twentythree homilies copied by one scribe in the first half of the eleventh century with further homilies added later in the eleventh century. Pope suggests that the collection was initially made at Canterbury before it was transmitted to Exeter, see Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series. Text. ed. M. Godden, EETS SS 5 (Oxford, 1979), pp. lxxi–ii and Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection, ed. J. Pope, 2 vols, EETS 159 (Oxford, 1967), I, pp. 80–3. Bischof Waerferths von Worcester Uebersetzung, ed. Hecht, p. 327, line 12; p. 88, line 8. Old English Version, ed. Miller, p. 436, line 27. Das altenglische Martyrologium, ed. G. Kotzor, April 25. The Old English Orosius, ed. J. Bately, EETS SS 6 (Oxford, 1980), p. 38, line 20; p. 135, lines 1–2. Carol Hough, ‘Penitential Literature and Secular Law in Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 11 (2000), pp. 133–41 argues against a close relationship between penitential practice and secular law before the eleventh century. See Hamilton, ‘Rites for Public Penance’, at pp. 83–7 on public penance in Anglo-Saxon law.



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in the works not only of the major writers, Ælfric and Wulfstan, but also in anonymous homilies.27

Vernacular texts relating to penance One of the earliest of the four significant corpora of vernacular preaching, the Blickling Homilies, gives apparently unambiguous evidence of penitential pastoral practice.28 This collection of nineteen sermons survives in a manuscript, Princeton University Library, Scheide Collection 71, dating from the late tenth or early eleventh century, of unknown provenance.29 It is an original compilation put together for use over the church year, drawing on existing vernacular sermons. The homily for the third Sunday of Lent, states: Pa mæssepreostas pe Godes cyricena lareowas beop, pa sceolan heora scrift-bec mid rihte tæcan & læran, swa swa hie ure fæderas ær demdon. Ne wandige na se mæssepreost no for rices mannes ege, ne for feo, ne for nanes mannes lufon, pæt he him symle rihte deme, gif he wille sylf Godes domas gedegan; ne sceal he eac beon to georn deadra manna feos, ne to lyt pancian heora ælmessan, forpon po hie wonap pæt he heora senna alysan mæge. & pa lareowas sceolan synnfullum mannum eadmodlice tæcan & læran, pæt hie heora synna cunnon onrihtlice geandettan; forpon pe hie beop topon mislice & sume swipe unsyferlice, pæt se man wandap pæt he hi æfre asecgge, buton se mæsse-preost hie æt him geacsige. 30 The emphasis in this passage is upon the proper duty of priests in teaching confessional and penitential practice. Like a number of other texts it emphasizes sincere and full confession, but the references to the priestly use of scrift bec and to impartial allocation of penance surely indicate the use of a penitential or some sort of handbook. The homily as a whole translates and reworks a homily by Caesarius of Arles on 27

28

29 30

See, for example, Vercelli Homilies, ed. Scragg, no. 16, lines 43, 44; Blickling Homilies, ed. Morris, no. 2, p. 25, lines 17–18; no. 3, p. 35, line 36; no. 6, p. 76, line 5; and no. 8, p. 101, line 7. See too Frantzen, Literature, pp. 150–74, on vernacular preaching, and see M. Godden, ‘An Old English Penitential Motif’, ASE 2 (1973), pp. 221–39. Ker, Catalogue, no. 382. Blickling Homilies, ed. Morris, no. 4, pp. 42–3: ‘The mass priests, who are teachers of God’s Church, shall rightly teach their penitentials, and give instruction according as our fathers have previously determined. Let no priest neither for fear of a rich man, nor for reward, nor for any man’s favour, be afraid of always deciding rightly if he desire to escape God’s judgements. And he must not be too desirous of dead man’s wealth, nor be too thankful for their alms because they think that he can absolve their sins. And teachers must humbly teach and instruct sinful men, so that they know how to confess their sins aright – because they are so very various, and some so very impure, that a man will avoid ever telling them except the priest ask him concerning them.’




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tithing, supplementing it with excerpts from the Visio Pauli. In this passage, however, no source has been detected. 31 While it is possible that a patristic or Carolingian source may yet be uncovered, the important point is that this homily is a deliberate compilation from at least two sources, and perhaps an original composition in places, suggesting that these words of admonition to the clergy were intentionally and not mechanically incorporated. Ælfric’s homilies do not provide such unambiguous evidence of confession and the use of penitentials. His Catholic Homilies were written in the early 990s to be preached in a two-year cycle over the liturgical year by priests, and generally have a lay, if elite, audience in mind. While Ælfric was a monk, his experience at Cerne Abbas and later at Eynsham, where he was abbot, did not divorce him from pastoral work and the Catholic Homilies were dedicated and despatched to Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury.32 Ælfric’s aim in the Catholic Homilies was to provide correct teaching. Pastoral discipline takes a second place to doctrinal and spiritual instruction and his actual writing on penance is diffuse. He is not concerned with public penance but solely with private. 33 He emphasized above all the need for true contrition and for full confession (since the shame of admitting one’s sins would only be worse on the Day of Judgement).34 This emphasis on interiority is also matched in his attitude to the confessor whom he sees as a spiritual mentor instructing the penitent.35 Grundy has shown how Ælfric was influenced by Augustine’s theory of grace; his writings on penance emphasize God’s unceasing mercy and the role of the Holy Spirit in forgiveness. 36 Penance was one of the three means of obtaining forgiveness for sins, as the passage quoted at the opening of this article shows. In some ways, Ælfric’s attitude to penance is quite functional: it is the means for the absolution of sin, so that when, for example, he chastises laymen for incontinent sexual behaviour, he tells them that this must be atoned for by penance: ‘Pis is læwedra manna regol æfter boclicere gesetnysse. Se ∂e pis tobrece. bete swa him his scrift tæce.’37 At end of his sermon for the Sunday preceding Shrove Tuesday, he 31 32

33 34 35 36

37

Gatch, ‘The Unknowable Audience of the Blickling Homilies’, pp. 99–115. For the date and purposes of the Catholic Homilies, see Godden, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: Introduction, pp. xxi–xxxvi; on Ælfric and pastoral care, see Wilcox, ‘Ælfric in Dorset’. Bedingfield, ‘Public Penance’, pp. 224–5, 252. Homilies of Ælfric, ed. Pope, 19, II, pp. 560–609. Homilies of Ælfric, ed. Pope, 19, 28, II, pp. 560–609, 775–9. L. Grundy, Books and Grace: Ælfric’s Theology (London, 1991), pp. 115–47 and 194–211. For Ælfric on the Holy Spirit and forgiveness, see, for example, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, I, p. 16. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies II, 6, p. 56. ‘This is the rule for laymen, according to the written institute; let him who breaks it make atonement according as his confessor shall teach him.’ Translation from Thorpe, The Homilies, II, p. 95.



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concludes the sermon with these words: ‘Nu genealæc∂ clæne tid. 7 halig: on ∂ære we sceolon ure gimeleaste gebetan; Cume for ∂i gehwa cristenra manna. to his scrifte: 7 his digelan gyltas geandette; 7 be his lareowes tæcunge gebete: 7 tihte ælc o∂erne to gode mid godre gebisnunge.’38 These final words have no parallels in Ælfric’s sources for this sermon and must represent his own pastoral admonition appended to a spiritualizing sermon concerned with the nature of sin, temptation and repentance. The call to confession and penance is deliberately placed at the beginning of Lent, presumably to prepare the laity to take communion at Easter.39 Ælfric’s concern for pastoral practice was demonstrated in his pastoral letters for Bishops Wulfsige of Sherborne and Archbishop Wulfstan of York which contain a number of references to confession and penance. Following continental models, Ælfric also listed a penitential as one of the books necessary for a priest to own: ‘He sceal habban eac pa wæpna to pam gastlicum weorce, ærpanpe he beo gehadod, pæt synd pa halgan bec: saltere and pistolboc, godspellboc and mæsseboc, sangbec and handboc, gerim and passionalem, penitentialem and rædingboc.’40 It is also remarkable that one manuscript of his Catholic Homilies I and II, prepared under his direction, includes an extra sermon on repentance, the De Penitentia.41 The augmented collection in this manuscript, Cambridge, University Library, Gg. 3. 28, was apparently put together for pastoral use, perhaps for a priest, since it contains Ælfric’s translations of the Creed and Pater Noster and other prayers, his letter for Wulfsige, and the De temporibus anni.42 It may be that Ælfric felt that his collection of homilies required further supplementation, particularly with regard to Lenten discipline and penance. The De Penitentia is repeated in the homily for Ash Wednesday in his Lives of the Saints, a sermon which Ælfric intended to be preached 38

39 40

41 42

Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, I, 10, p. 265. ‘Now is a pure and holy time drawing nigh, in which we should atone for our remissness: let, therefore, every Christian man come to his confessor, and confess his secret sins, and amend by the teaching of his instructor.’ Translation from Thorpe, The Homilies, I, p. 165. For this practice, see B. Poschmann, Penance and the Anointing of the Sick (New York, 1964), p. 139. Æfric’s First Old English Letter for Bishop Wulfsige, c. 52, ‘He shall have also the weapons for that spiritual work, before he is ordained, namely, the holy books: a psalter and a book with the epistles, an evangeliary and a missal, songbooks and a manual, a computus and a passional, a penitential and a reading book.’ Translation and text from Councils and Synods, ed. Whitelock, Brett and Brooke, pp. 206–7. And a similar list can be found in Ælfric’s first Latin Letter to Wulfstan, c. 137 and in the second Old English Letter to Wulfstan, c. 157. See also c. 134 and Ælfric’s second Latin Letter to Wulfstan, c. 46, and his second Old English letter, c. 89. All printed in Hirtenbriefe, ed. Fehr. On Ælfric’s pastoral letters, see J. Hill, ‘Monastic Reform and the Secular Church: Ælfric’s Pastoral Letters in Context’, in C. Hicks (ed.), England in the Eleventh Century (Stamford, 1992), pp. 103–17. On this homily, see Godden, ‘An Old English Penitential Motif’, pp. 227–9. On this manuscript see K. Sisam, Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), pp. 165–71 and P. Clemoes (ed.), Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The First Series, pp. 24–5.




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on the preceding Sunday.43 The fuller treatment he gives here may perhaps again hint that he felt that penance and confession required more extensive preaching than he had provided in his Catholic Homilies. Here he describes the ceremony of placing ashes upon the heads of the faithful by the priest and uses the service as an occasion to exhort the laity to attend church on Ash Wednesday and to adhere faithfully to the abstentions required by Lent. 44 He closes the sermon with the words: ‘We sædon nu pis spel. For∂an pe her bi∂ læs manna on wodnes daeg. ∂onne nu to dæg beo∂. and eow gebyra∂ pæt ge beon gescrifene. On ∂issere wucan. O∂∂e huru on ∂ære o∂re.’45 Ælfric illustrates the dangers of failing to make the proper observances by two stories about the dismal ends of laymen who scorned church attendance on Ash Wednesday and who made no attempt at fasting or sexual abstinence in Lent. Both these stories concern individuals in the entourage of bishops and were presumably handed down to Ælfric through sacerdotal tittle tattle providing a further indication that his world was not uninformed by the realities of lay behaviour. 46 They confirm the practical application of Ælfric’s remonstrances, seen also in the collection of CUL Gg 3. 28. Repentance and atonement play a major part in Wulfstan’s emergency measures for the salvation of the English in the face of Scandinavian conquest, not only in the penitential practices of Æthelred’s lawcodes but also in his impassioned call for conversion in the Sermo Lupi, as Allan Frantzen and more recently Alice Cowen have stressed. 47 Wulfstan’s impetus probably stands behind two codes datable to 1008 and 1009, both concerned with national penance. The ‘Enham’ code of 1008 opens with a demand for repentance and confession. 48 The lawcode issued in 1009 commanded three days of supplication and penitential exercises to implore divine relief from the Viking onslaught. The whole nation was to fast for three days, walk barefoot to church for confession 43

44 45

46

47

48

On this, see Godden, ‘An Old English Penitential Motif ’, pp. 228–9; Clemoes, ‘The Chronology’, p. 221, n. 2. See Bedingfield, Dramatic Liturgy, pp. 80–2, 87–8; and ‘Public Penance’, pp. 223–5. B. Thorpe (ed.), Ælfric’s Lives of the Saints, 2 vols, EETS 76, 82 (Oxford, 1881 and 1885), I, no. 12, pp. 282–3: ‘We have told this story now, because there will be fewer men here on Wednesday, than are now to-day; and it behoveth you that you are shriven in this week or at least in the next.’ See n. 45. The stories concern Bishop Ælfstan and Bishop Ælfheah, information about the latter was provided by Æthelwold. (The former should perhaps be identified with Ælfstan of Ramsbury (?973–81) and the latter with perhaps Ælfheah of Lichfield (973x5–1002x4)). Frantzen, Literature, pp. 162–3; Alice Cowen, ‘Byrstas and bysmeras: The Wounds of Sin in the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos’, in Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference, ed. Matthew Townend (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 397–411, at pp. 397–404. Liebermann (ed.), Gesetze, I, pp. 246–7. See C.P. Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century I (Oxford, 1999), pp. 332–5 and K. Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England in the Early Eleventh Century (London, 1993), pp. 58–61.



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and to give alms and tithes of their possessions.49 Wulfstan’s active pastoral interest in penance is evinced in a number of letters authorizing penitential pilgrimages by members of the laity. 50 Wulfstan’s teaching on penance is akin to Ælfric’s in its emphasis on the teaching role of the confessor whose responsibility is much wider than confession, penance and absolution. Confessors teach the laity how to live.51 Wulfstan’s homilies give little concrete description of a confessor’s work. He did however specify confession and penance as one of the duties of a priest in his Canons of Edgar: ‘And we læra∂ pæt ælc preost scrife and dædbote tæce pam pe him andette, and eac to bote filste . . .’52 Hamilton and Bedingfield have drawn attention to Wulfstan’s interest in public penance.53 In his homily for Ash Wednesday, he describes the process of expulsion and the reconciliation of penitents on Maundy Thursday belonging to public penance, commenting: ‘And pæt is pearflic gewuna, ac we his ne gyma∂ swa wel swa we scoldan on ∂isse peode, hit wære mycel pearf pæt hit man georne on gewunan hæfde.’54 The importance of confession and penance for Wulfstan is underlined in two ways. First, Wulfstan’s common use of the term scriftscir for the jurisdiction of a confessor or priest, and second, his exhortation that the laity in church pray for their mothers and fathers, their confessors and all Christian people. 55 Wulfstan’s explicit instructions concerning public penance and his silence on the administration of private penance may help in the interpretation of homiletic evidence for penance and the use of penitentials. It is the unfamiliar which demands description, not the familiar. Repentance, confession and atonement are central to the Christian life 49

50

51

52

53 54

55

Liebermann (ed.), Gesetze, I, p. 260. See also S. Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ 978–1016 (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 216–20. On Wulfstan’s authorship of this, see C.P. Wormald, ‘Æthelred the Lawmaker’, in D. Hill (ed.), Ethelred the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference, British Archaeological Reports, British Series 59 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 47– 80; Wormald, Making of English Law, pp. 330–45. R.A. Aronstam, ‘Penitential Pilgrimage to Rome in the Early Middle Ages’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 13 (1975), pp. 65–83. See also Whitelock, Brett and Brooke (eds), Councils and Synods, I, pp. 231–7. D. Bethurum (ed.), The Homilies of Wulfstan (Oxford, 1957), no. 13, pp. 225–32, at p. 229, line 68: ‘7 libban pam life pe scrift us wisige . . .’ And see, for example, Wulfstan, ed. Napier, no. 35. Wulfstan’s Canons, ed. Fowler, 68, pp. 14–15. ‘And we decree that every priest shrive and impose penance on him who confesses to him, and also help him to make atonement . . .’ Translation from Councils and Synods, ed. Whitelock, Brett, and Brooke, I, p. 335. See above n. 8. Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, no. 14, pp. 233–5, at p. 235: ‘And that is a needful practice, but we do not observe it as well as we should in this land, and it is very necessary that one zealously have it in practice.’ Translation from Bedingfield, ‘Public Penance’, p. 223. Wulfstan, ed. Napier, no. 46, pp. 233–4: ‘Wa ∂æs mannes sawle, pe ∂a unnyttan spræca sprec∂ and pa ungemetlican hleahtras drif∂ innan cyrcan, and eac pam men, pe wyrige∂ his fæder o∂∂e his moder o∂∂e his hlaford o∂∂e his biscop o∂∂e his scrift.’




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in the teaching of both Ælfric and Wulfstan. Penance was a central plank of the Archbishop’s policy for the regeneration of the English in the face of pagan invasion. Neither Ælfric nor Wulfstan could be described as bashful men, afraid to speak out against priestly negligence or wrongdoing.56 If penance was a haphazard feature of lay life, it is impossible to think that this would not have aroused the excoriating admonitions of these two. In fact, their emphasis on the teaching role of the confessor suggests otherwise. Ælfric, as we have seen, considered a penitential an essential item of priestly equipment. If, as I have argued, penance was widely practiced in late Saxon England, where is the physical evidence? Three Old English penitential handbooks might bear witness to priestly practice. These have been helpfully analysed by Allan Frantzen. 57 The earliest of these, Scriftboc (sometimes called the Old English Confessional ) may date to as early as the reign of Alfred. 58 It draws on a number of Latin penitentials but none later than the ninth century. It is a close translation but a relatively disorganized work in four parts, including instruction for a confessor on how to interrogate penitents and to assign penance. The Old English Penitential is a translation of Books 3, 4 and 5 of Halitgar’s penitential with a penitential tariff derived from a number of sources, including Scriftboc.59 The Handbook for the Use of a Confessor forms, in Frantzen’s analysis, a third stage in the development of the penitential in England. Frantzen comments that this book also left out penances for bishops and concentrated in its tariff on murder, fornication and superstitions. He suggests that it could have been a compact guide for a confessor.60 Its editor, Roger Fowler, associated it 56

57 58

59

60

On Wulfstan’s sense of pastoral responsibility, see J. Wilcox, ‘The Wolf on the Shepherds: Wulfstan, Bishops and the Context of the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos’, in P.E. Szarmach with D. Oosterhouse (ed.), Old English Prose: Basic Readings (New York, 2000), pp. 395–418. Frantzen, Literature of Penance, pp. 133–41; Frantzen, ‘The Tradition’, pp. 40–9. Das altenglische Bussbuch (sog. Confessionale Pseudo-Egberti). Ein Beitrag zu den kirchlichen Gesetzen der Angelsachsen, ed. R. Spindler (Leipzig, 1934). This is sometimes known as the Confessionale Pseudo-Egberti. This is found in different versions (not all complete) in five manuscripts: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 121; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud misc. 482; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 190; London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A III; and Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, 8558–63. See below pp. 57–8 for discussion of these. Das altenglische Version des Halitgar’schen Bussbuches (sog. Poenitentiale Pseudo-Ecgberhti), ed. J. Raith (Hamburg, 1933). This is sometimes known as the Poenitentiale Pseudo-Ecgberhti. This text is transmitted in different versions (not all complete) in seven manuscripts: Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, 8558–63; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 190; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 121; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud misc. 482; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 265; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 201; London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A III. R. Fowler, ‘A Late Old English Handbook for the Use of a Confessor’, Anglia 83 (1965), pp. 1–29; transmitted in six manuscripts: Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 8558–63; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 265; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 201; London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A III; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud misc. 482; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 121; with fragments in Cotton Otho B X, Cambridge, University Library, Add 3206.



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with Wulfstan’s atelier partly for stylistic reasons and partly because of its manuscript associations (discussed below). The evidence of the lawcodes and manuscripts suggests that Wulfstan knew it. 61 My own examination of this text has found more numerous and more extensive indications of Wulfstan’s style and vocabulary in the text than Fowler did, strengthening his association of the Handbook to Wulfstan and his atelier. It may have been worked over by the Archbishop himself. 62 These three vernacular penitential handbooks are merely the tip of an iceberg of Old English penitential material. Old English confessional prayers, forms for absolution and directions for the use of confessors are transmitted in a number of tenth- and eleventh-century manuscripts; these have been catalogued by Ker and by Frank and Cameron. 63 They represent a significant resource for the study of both devotional and pastoral practices in England but have occasioned surprisingly little interest. The corpus includes probably the earliest manuscript witness to penance: leaves with an Old English confessional prayer dated by its script to c.910 × c.930 which were appended to a Latin manuscript of penitential and liturgical texts, London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D XX, a later book dated to the mid-tenth century. 64 The prayer is an encyclopaedic confession which includes admissions of sin for one in orders, including negligence in the office and in psalm-singing. 65 This is an example of a vernacular confession for a member of the clergy. The model of linking confessional and penitential texts in Latin to Old English ones can also be seen in a later manuscript. London, 61 62

63

64

65

Fowler, ‘A Late Old English Handbook’, p. 10, n. 18. See, for example, the use of dryhten and phrases like ‘swa he sceal deoppor for Gode’ and ‘for worlde unriht gebetan’ (Fowler, ‘Late Old English Handbook’, III, p. 19). This case will be set out in my Penance and Penitentials in Late Saxon England (in preparation). Ker, Catalogue, pp. 521–2; A. Cameron, ‘A List of Old English Texts’, in R. Frank and A. Cameron (eds), A Plan for the Dictionary of Old English (Toronto, 1973), pp. 25–306, with additions. H. Logemann, ‘Anglo-Saxon Minora’, Anglia 11 (1889), pp. 97–120, printed Old English prayers from Cotton Vespasian D XX; Cotton Tiberius C I; London, Lambeth Palace Library, 427; London, British Library, Royal 2 B V; and ‘Anglo-Saxon Minora’, Anglia 12 (1889), pp. 497–518, published prayers from Royal 2 B V and Tiberius A III. M. Förster, ‘Zur Liturgik der angelsächsischen Kirche’, Anglia 66 (1942), pp. 1–55, printed prayers from Laud misc. 482 and Cotton Tiberius A III; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 190; and Vespasian D XX. Gloria Mercatanti, Testi penitenziali minori in tardo antico inglese. Edizione e problemi (Alessandria, 1993). A study of the vernacular confessional texts is forthcoming from Angelika Schröcker, University of Munich. London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D XX, fols 87–92v. Ker, Catalogue, no. 212. Ker gives a date of s. x med and regards the hands in this manuscript as contemporary. David Dumville, Liturgy and the Ecclesiastical History of Late Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 130, 133; David N. Dumville, ‘English Square Minuscule Script: The Mid-Century Phases’, ASE 23 (1994), pp. 133–64, at p. 135: for the later addition of the vernacular prayers, contra Ker. And see Philip G. Rusche, ‘St Augustine’s Abbey and the Tradition of Penance’, Anglia 120 (2002), pp. 159–83, p. 164, n. 13. The Old English material has been printed by Logeman, ‘Anglo-Saxon Minora’, pp. 97–100. See too Mercatanti, Testi penitenziali minori; Raymund Kottje, ‘Busspraxis und Bussritus’, Settimane 33 (1987), pp. 369–95, at p. 377, n. 36. Logeman, ‘Anglo-Saxon Minora’, p. 99, lines 57 to 65.




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British Library, Cotton Galba A XIV is a complex book, a collection of prayers and texts for devotional use dating from the early eleventh century. It contains a number of hands and Dumville has hazarded that it may have been copied piecemeal for at least a quarter of a century. Its full history is obscure, chiefly because it was badly damaged in the Cotton fire of 1731. It has been associated with Winchester, particularly with Nunnaminster.66 Its chief hand, who was certainly at work in the manuscript after 1016, copied a Latin confessional text in the form of a dialogue for two priests, the confessor and penitent. This is followed by an Old English prayer for forgiveness copied in the same hand. This scribe was working in a monastery (or nunnery – Nunnaminster?) since in the prayer copied for the soul of King Æthelred, (s)he refers to the king’s almsgiving to the community. 67 This conjunction between Latin liturgy and Old English confession perhaps points to the importance of comprehension in confessional prayers and penance. 68 Vernacular devotional materials for penance and confession can also be linked to preaching. Hans Sauer’s analysis of the confessional prayers in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 320 and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud misc. 482 has emphasized their use in homilies. 69 This can be paralleled in a number of manuscripts, such as London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A III, where vernacular confessions are found with a variety of texts including sermons on penance. 70 Although a number of the manuscripts containing vernacular prayers date from the eleventh century, it is likely that some of these texts date back to the second half of the tenth century. Their production therefore parallels the composition of the Old English penitentials. Sauer has commented on the long circulation of these prayers, a conclusion underlined by the early date of those added to Cotton Vespasian D XX. 66

67 68

69

70

A Pre-Conquest English Prayer-Book (BL Cotton Galba A. XIV and Nero A. ii (ff. 3–13)), ed. B.J. Muir, HBS 103 (Woodbridge, 1988). For palaeographical analysis see Ker, Catalogue, no. 158 and D.N. Dumville, ‘On the Dating of Some Late Anglo-Saxon Liturgical Manuscripts’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 10 (1991), pp. 40–57, at pp. 46–7. Pre-Conquest Prayer-Book, ed. Muir, no. 60. On the importance of intelligibility, see H. Gittos, ‘Is there any Evidence for the Liturgy of Parish Churches in Late Anglo-Saxon England? The Red Book of Darley and the Status of Old English’, in Tinti (ed.), Pastoral Care, pp. 63–82, at pp. 78–80. H. Sauer, ‘Altenglische Beichtermahnungen aus den Handschriften CCCC 320 und Laud misc. 482: Edition und Kommentar’, in K.R. Grinda and C.-D. Wetzel (eds), Anglo-Saxonica. Festschrift für Hans Schabram (Munich, 1993), pp. 21–51, with editions of Conf. 10.2 and Conf. 1.2. Hans Sauer, ‘Zwei spätaltenglische Beichtermahnungen aus Hs. Cotton Tiberius A. III.’, Anglia 98 (1980), pp. 1–33, with edition and commentary. For Cotton Tiberius A III, see H. Gneuss, ‘The Origin and Provenance of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: The Case of Cotton Tiberius A III’, in P. Robinson and R. Zim (eds), Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, their Scribes and Readers. Essays presented to M.B. Parkes (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 13–48. See too D. Scragg, Dating and Style in Old English Composite Homilies, H.M. Chadwick Memorial Lectures 9 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 23–4 who identifies homiletic material in the manuscript as put together for or by an archbishop.



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The manuscript evidence Consideration of these vernacular prayers leads naturally into an examination of the manuscript evidence for penance in tenth- and eleventhcentury England, which gives a different avenue of approach to the question of pastoral provision from the textual evidence. The survival of contemporary copies of penitentials and liturgical materials for penance can be a weighty indicator of actual practice, as Rob Meens has shown for the continent, identifying a number of manuscripts of pastoral and perhaps priestly use.71 Manuscript witnesses can also point away from parochial use to episcopal or monastic. But caution is necessary here too: most Anglo-Saxon manuscripts have survived because they were preserved in the libraries of monasteries and cathedrals. 72 Even within this select corpus, workaday liturgical manuscripts rarely survive because they were frequently discarded once worn and made obsolete by new fashions,73 a point plainly illustrated by the paucity of extant sacramentaries and missals and also by the disproportionate preservation of pontificals and benedictionals from later Saxon England. 74 I have assembled together a list of some twenty manuscripts from tenth- and eleventh-century England containing either penitentials, penitential and confessional prayers, liturgical ordines for penance, or a combination of any of these. My scrutiny of these – which is very much continuing – has uncovered a number of patterns – monastic and devotional use, episcopal books and books linked to particular centres. Where manuscripts appear to be working liturgical books, it is difficult to determine whether they are witnesses to episcopal or priestly usage. Recent liturgical scholarship has developed some valuable criteria for distinguishing the two. First, the physical characteristics of the book are important: pointers to priestly use include modest character, small 71 72

73

74

Meens, ‘Frequency and Nature’, pp. 42–44. Only one church book list has survived, N. Barker (ed.), The York Gospels, Roxburghe Club (London, 1986), pp. 96–7; and see M. Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England’, in M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss (eds), Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies presented to Peter Clemoes (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 33–89, at pp. 56–7. Compare with the continental evidence, discussed by C. Hammer, ‘Country Churches, Clerical Inventories and the Carolingian Renaissance’, Church History 49 (1980), pp. 5–17. As Rebecca Rushworth notes, Ælfric included epistolaries in his list of books necessary for a priest yet none survive from England pre-1100, and only four fragments of mass lectionaries are extant: ‘The Prodigal Fragment: Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College 734/782a’, ASE 30 (2001), pp. 137–44, at p. 143. A rough estimate obtained from H. Gneuss, ‘Liturgical Books in Anglo-Saxon England and their Old English Terminology’, in Lapidge and Gneuss (eds), Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 91–141, gives sixteen pontificals and fourteen benedictionals as against one missal and nine sacramentaries. And see R. Pfaff, The Anglo-Saxon Bishop and his Book, Toller Memorial Lecture 1998 (Manchester, 1999). Pfaff calculates that there were roughly one hundred and twenty bishops between c.960–1100 and only nineteen pontificals and benedictionals survive.




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format, with parchment and script not of the first quality. Secondly, a priest’s book may contain and combine a number of services and liturgical prayers to create one book providing all that the priest might need: masses, readings and pastoral services like baptism. Such books might also include penitential and canonical rulings to assist the priest in his pastoral work. A good example of such a volume is the Bobbio Missal which combines masses with a penitential and with preaching materials.75 The two prime candidates for working pastoral books of penance are London, British Library, Vespasian D XX, a tenth-century manuscript of unknown provenance (the vernacular prayer of which has already been considered), and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud misc. 482. Vespasian D XX, a mid-tenth-century English manuscript of unknown provenance, contains a Latin ordo for confession, derived at least in part from Halitgar’s penitential, together with the additional Old English confessional prayer.76 Its compact size, long, narrow format, and combination of liturgical and penitential texts fit the criteria established by Rasmussen and Hen.77 The Latin text is rubricated in red, and has interlinear annotations which give the feminine Latin forms in certain prayers. These are found in the sections which concern the regular life, so the book appears to have been used within a female community. 78 The confessional prayer in this is prefaced by an instruction that the priest is to read the prayer if the penitent is literate, a further indicator of pastoral usage.79 Frantzen categorized it as a devotional book because it contains prayers for both the confessor and confessed. 80 However, a pastoral volume might include both. Further, as Hamilton has noted, a formula for the reconciliation of excommunicants occurs on folio 56r–v, a rite only performed by a bishop. She therefore suggests that this may have been a bishop’s book. 81 The eleventh-century Laud misc. 482 certainly looks like the real thing – it is a long, narrow book, combining penitential, vernacular and 75

76 77 78 79

80 81

See the pioneering article of N. Rasmussen, ‘Célébration épiscopale et célébration presbytérale: un essai de typologie’, Settimane 33 (Spoleto, 1987), pp. 581–603, at pp. 884–8, elaborated and refined by Y. Hen, ‘Knowledge of Canon Law among Rural Priests: The Evidence of Two Carolingian Manuscripts from around 800’, Journal of Theological Studies, ns 50:1 (1999), pp. 117–34, esp. pp. 128–9. And see S. Meeder, ‘The Early Irish Stowe Missal’s Destination and Function’, EME 13 (2005), pp. 179–94. I have not been able to see Y. Hen, ‘A Liturgical Handbook for the Use of a Rural Priest (Brussels, BR 100127–100144)’, in M. Mostert (ed.), Organising the Written Word, Manuscripts and Texts, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 2 (Turnhout, in press). See above n. 64. 180 mm × 130 mm, written space 152 mm × 95 mm. These interlineations with female forms can be found on folios 26–?46r. Noted by Frantzen, Literature, p. 170. The possibility of an illiterate penitent does not necessarily rule out the use of this volume in a monastery. Frantzen, Literature, p. 132. Hamilton, ‘Remedies for “Great Transgressions”: Penance and Excommunication in late Anglo-Saxon England’, in Tinti (ed.), Pastoral Care, pp. 91–2.



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liturgical texts. It provides a useful handbook for the work of a priest in ministering to the sick and dying. It contains not only parts of the Handbook for a Confessor, parts of Theodore’s penitential in Old English translation, vernacular confessional texts, and offices in Latin for the sick and dying.82 Ker noted that parts of the sequence of penitential and other texts are linked to Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, 8858–63, a manuscript connected with Wulfstan by its copy of his commonplace book.83 Sauer has analysed and edited the Old English confessional prayers, some of which it shares with Cambridge, Corpus Christi, MS 320, suggesting a use of common sources. Sauer argues that some of the Old English tests utilized in Laud misc. 482 derive from the second half of the tenth century.84 The manuscript has a Worcester provenance and was glossed in the thirteenth century by the Worcester tremulous hand. While the combination of Old English penitential texts with liturgical offices clearly point to priestly use, as Thompson has argued, the presence of the tremulous hand assigns it to Worcester Cathedral Library. Its pastoral use therefore must be linked to the cathedral clergy. Episcopal associations are significant in the catalogue of penitential manuscripts. For example, Oxford, Bodleian Library, 718 was written at Christ Church Canterbury. 85 It contains a copy of Ecgberht’s Penitential with the Statutes of Ghaerbold of Liège sandwiched in the middle, with two orders for confession and a collection of canonical material which served in the compilation of the Worcester Canon Law Collection.86 Richard Gameson has described it as a ‘comparatively handsome [book] . . . generously laid-out and spaciously written’, and he gives the outer limits for its production as the late 950s to the 990s. 87 The manuscript shares a scribe with Paris, Bibliothèque National, lat. 943, the ‘Sherborne’ or ‘Dunstan’ Pontifical and another manuscript. 88 The ‘Dunstan’ Pontifical is generally associated directly with Archbishop 82

83 84 85

86 87

88

Ker, Catalogue, no. 343: c.213 × 91 mm, written space 178 × 65 mm, 24 long lines. This has been discussed by Victoria Thompson, Death and Dying in Later Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 67–88, and ‘The Pastoral Contract in Late Anglo-Saxon England: Priest and Parishioner in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Miscellaneous 482’, in Tinti (ed.), Pastoral Care, pp. 106–20. Ker, Catalogue, no. 343, p. 419. Sauer, ‘Altenglische Beichtermahnungen’, pp. 21–51. Richard Gameson, ‘The Origin of the Exeter Book of Old English Poetry’, ASE 25 (1996), pp. 135–85, at pp. 162–3, 168–9, 172–8; the arguments for a Christ Church, Canterbury origin rehearsed by Gameson are convincing and outweigh those of P.W. Connor, Anglo-Saxon Exeter: A Tenth-Century Cultural History (Woodbridge, 1993), pp. 19–20, 37–9. See also John Blair, ‘Estate Memoranda of c.1070 from the See of Dorchester-on-Thames’, English Historical Review 116 (2001), pp. 114–23. Hamilton, ‘Penance’, pp. 90–1. See Kerff, Der Quadripartitus, pp. 20–4, 72–3. Gameson, ‘Origin of the Exeter Book’, p. 163 describing a group of manuscripts of which Bodley 781 is one; for date see p. 166. Exeter, Cathedral Library, 3507; see Gameson, ‘Origin of the Exeter Book’, p. 163.




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Dunstan himself, and one might speculate, since Bodley 718 is the work of the same scribe, that the manuscript should also be linked to the archbishop.89 This was a book which travelled: after 1067 it seems to have belonged to the Bishop of Dorchester, and finally it moved to Exeter where a scribe who is known to have worked for Bishop Leofric, inserted a copy of a papal letter concerning the see of Exeter. 90 It looks therefore very much like a collection of penitential and canonical texts for episcopal use. Two further books can be linked to Exeter Cathedral. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 190, is a manuscript of two parts. The first part was mainly copied in the first half of the eleventh century at Worcester; it contains inter alia Latin penitential texts, the Pseudo-Theodore and Ecgberht’s Penitential, two letters of Ælfric to Archbishop Wulfstan, and a version of the Worcester Canon Law Collection put together by Wulfstan. Additions were made to it in the mid-eleventh century at Exeter. The second part was also copied at Worcester in the mideleventh century with additions at Exeter in the second half of that century. It is an Old English miscellany, including Scriftboc and the Old English Penitential with other penitential texts.91 These two parts were probably combined in the eleventh century and are usually identified with the entry ‘canon on leden ond scriftboc on englisc’ in the list of books given by Bishop Leofric to Exeter. Finally, Oxford, Bodleian Library, 311, is an important collection of penitentials from the tenth century possibly copied on the Continent although containing the hand of an English scribe. Its later medieval provenance was Exeter. 92 Nine manuscripts can be linked to Archbishop Wulfstan, largely through their contents (often because of the tell-tale Worcester Canon 89

90 91 92

On the ‘Dunstan’ Pontifical see Ebersperger, Die angelsächsischen Handschriften, pp. 32–44; Dumville, Liturgical Books, pp. 82–4; Jane Rosenthal, ‘The Pontifical of St Dunstan’, in N. Ramsay, M. Sparks and T. Tatton-Brown (eds), St Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 143–63. My speculation seems to be hinted at in n. 49 of P. Wormald, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Holiness of Society’, in his Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West: Law as Text, Image and Experience (London, 1999), pp. 225–51. Connor, Anglo-Saxon Exeter, p. 37; Blair, ‘Estate Memoranda’, pp. 116–7 and n. 4. Ker, Catalogue, no. 45. Gameson, ‘Origin of the Exeter Book’, pp. 135–85, at pp. 140–2, 148–9. Ker, Catalogue, no. 307; Dumville, Liturgy, p. 133; Richard Gameson, ‘Book Production and Decoration at Worcester in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, in N. Brooks and C. Cubitt (eds), St Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence (London, 1996), pp. 194–243, p. 200, n. 17, and no. 38 dates the manuscript s. xex, linking one of its scribes with Worcester, Cathedral Library, Q 8. T.A.M. Bishop, English Caroline Minuscule (Oxford, 1971), p. xxv: the scribe of Worcester Q 8 appears in Bodley 311 where he records his name as John; his hand appears in a number of other manuscripts listed by Bishop; for Worcester Q 8 see p. 18. Connor, AngloSaxon Exeter, pp. 8, 15, 17, 20: Connor regards this manuscript as written in Francia, possibly in northern France. Rob Meens, Het tripartite boeteboek. Overlevering en betekenis van vroegmiddeleeuwse biechtvoorschriften (met editie en vertaling van view tripartite) (Hilversum, 1994), pp. 236–7; L. Körntgen, Studien zu den Quellen der frühmittelalterlichen Bussbücher (Sigmaringen, 1993), pp. 91–8.



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Law Collection or his Commonplace collection), while four others are linked to Worcester.93 For example, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 190, part one is linked to Wulfstan by its contents, including the Commonplace Book. 94 As Bedingfield has noted, this contains a version of a sermon by Abbo of St Germain for Maundy Thursday which includes a description of public penance. This seems to have been used by Wulfstan for his own Old English sermon on this topic. Part one also includes other texts relating to public penance. 95 The Old English section of this manuscript contains an anonymous Old English sermon translating an Ash Wednesday sermon. 96 Cambridge, Corpus Christi, 265, is another Worcester manuscript dating from the mideleventh century which can be linked to Wulfstan. It contains the Old English Handbook for a Confessor, the Pseudo-Theodore Penitential, Ecgberht’s Penitential, excerpts from Halitgar’s Penitential with Old English glosses, the Worcester Canon Law Collection and Theodulf ’s Capitula.97 These miscellanies of canonical, penitential, liturgical and other texts emphasize the connections between canon law, penance and episcopal oversight of disciplinary and judicial matters in the diocese. They agree with the arguments of Franz Kerff for the place of penitentials within episcopal jurisdiction, linked to the bishop’s diocesan synod, his inspection of his clergy and his role in public penance. The manuscript evidence emphasizes the extent of Wulfstan’s own interest in penance. The Old English Penitential and Scriftboc and the Handbook for a Confessor, for example, are transmitted almost entirely within collections associated with the archbishop. 98 They testify to his central role in the transmission of penitential texts, both in Old English and in Latin. His preference for penitential materials attributed to the Anglo-Saxon tradition also seems to be marked, particularly for those associated with his predecessor, Archbishop Ecgberht of York. He presumably saw himself carrying on and extending Ecgberht’s pastoral work. The other manuscripts containing penitential texts can be linked to monastic devotion such as Galba A XIV (already discussed) perhaps from Nunnaminster, Winchester.99 Old English confessional prayers were added later in the eleventh century to the Royal Psalter, a high93

94 95

96 97 98 99

Wulfstan’s Canon Law Collection, ed. J.E. Cross and A. Hamer (Cambridge, 1999); Hans Sauer, ‘Zur Überlieferung und Anlage von Erzbischof Wulfstans “Handbuch” ’, Deutsches Archiv 36 (1980), pp. 341–84; Wormald, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Holiness of Society’; Wormald, Making of English Law, pp. 216–21. Ker, Catalogue, no. 45; Wormald, Making of English Law, pp. 220–4. Bedingfield, ‘Public Penance’, pp. 235, printed by Fehr, Die Hirtenbriefe, pp. 241, 243–7. C.A. Jones, ‘A Liturgical Miscellany in Cambridge, Corpus, Christi College, 190’, pp. 235–7. Bedingfield, ‘Public Penance’, pp. 234–5 and Dramatic Liturgy, pp. 83–6. Ker, Catalogue, no. 53; Wormald, Making of English Law, pp. 211–19. See above, n. 59. See above n. 66.




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grade manuscript associated with Bishop Æthelwold; these were probably copied at New Minster, Winchester and also at Christ Church, Canterbury.100 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 320 a manuscript of the third quarter of the tenth century with tenth- and/or eleventhcentury additions in Old English can be linked to St Augustine’s Canterbury. It contains an augmented copy of Theodore’s penitential, the Gregorian Responsa, the Paenitentiale Cantabrigiense and other texts.101 Old English confessional texts were added c.1000 to this manuscript but not necessarily at St Augustine’s.102 Philip Rusche has shown how glossary and other evidence in two St Augustine’s manuscripts indicate the presence there in the early tenth century of Theodore’s penitential and Book 6 of Halitgar’s penitential.103 This brief review of some of the manuscripts containing penitential texts has failed to provide unambiguous evidence of parochial practice. The two most likely manuscripts, Cotton Vespasian D XX and Laud misc. 482, can both be linked to religious communities and to bishops. This result, although frustrating, is of a piece with the overall pattern of manuscript survival from Anglo-Saxon England. The best manuscript witness to parochial pastoral care in England is Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 422, the so-called Red Book of Darley, which looks like a working missal and priest’s handbook and dates from c.1060.104 (It contains no penitential texts.) This too has episcopal associations since it has been ascribed to the scriptoria of either Winchester or Sherborne and in the twelfth century a Latin form of excommunication was added to it. Keynes has suggested that it was commissioned from Old or New Minster, Winchester for Bishop Ælfwold of Sherborne, while Pfaff has pointed to monastic elements in the book. 105 Moreover, 100

101

102 103

104

105

London, British Library, Royal 2 B V; Ker, Catalogue, no. 249. On this manuscript, see M. Gretsch, The Intellectual Foundations of English Benedictine Reform (Cambridge, 1999). Angelika Schröcker has pointed out the importance of monastic confession in the Regularis Concordia (ed. T. Symons (London, 1953), p. 18). For the discussion and dating of this manuscript, see K.M. Delen, A.H. Gaastra, M.D. Saan and B. Schaap, ‘The Paenitentiale Cantabrigiense: A Witness of the Carolingian Contribution to the Tenth-Century Reforms in England’, Sacris Erudiri 41 (2002), pp. 341–73, where an edition of the text is provided. This penitential is also known as the Paenitentiale Sangermanense. Ker, Catalogue, no. 58; Sauer, ‘Altenglische Beichtermahnungen’. Rusche, ‘St Augustine’s Abbey and the Tradition of Penance in Early Tenth-Century England’, Anglia 120 (2002), pp. 159–83. See now, Gittos, ‘Is there any Evidence’. It is worth noting that the combination of texts within this book and its modest size fulfil the characteristics of priestly books laid down by Rasmussen and Hen. Ker, Catalogue, no. 70. R. Pfaff, ‘Massbooks’, in R. Pfaff (ed.), The Liturgical Books of AngloSaxon England, Old English Newsletter Subsidia 23 (Kalamazoo, 1995), pp. 7–34, at pp. 21– 4. Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 74–5. See too, S. Keynes, ‘Monk of Glastonbury, Abbot of Westminster (c.990–3) and Bishop of Sherborne (c.993–1002)’, in K. Barker, D.A. Hinton, and A. Hunt (eds), St Wulfsige and Sherborne, Bournemouth University School of Conservation Sciences Occasional Paper 8 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 53–94, at pp. 75–6. The excommunication is printed by Liebermann, Gesetze, I, p. 403.



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the early tenth-century additional leaves of Vespasian D XX perhaps originated as a separate booklet, hinting that this may have been a common form for working pastoral books. 106 Such handy collections may have been particularly vulnerable to the ravages of time. Episcopal and parochial uses need not be considered as in opposition. Pastoral issues were very much at the forefront of episcopal concerns in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. Ælfric’s two series of Catholic Homilies were written for Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury, and other episcopal scriptoria such as Rochester and Worcester, played a major role in the dissemination of Ælfric’s homilies. 107 The concern of bishops for the regulation of priests and parochial work can be seen in the production of episcopal statutes and related texts. Ælfric composed pastoral letters for Bishop Wulfsige of Sherborne and Archbishop Wulfstan of York which include rulings for the diocesan clergy.108 Wulfstan himself produced his own set, the Canons of Edgar, and the circulation and translation of the Capitula of Theodulf of Orléans should be added to this list.109 New collections of canon law were developed: Wulfstan’s compilation of the Worcester Canon Law Collection may also have been assisted by Ælfric and a prototype of this collection can be found in Bodley 718, a manuscript which I have tentatively associated with Archbishop Dunstan. The late tenth and early eleventh centuries saw a real revival of pastoral care, characterized by the production of Old English texts. Bishops were the initiators of this renaissance. It is highly likely that the assemblages of penitential and canonical texts found in episcopal manuscripts outlined above did have an impact on the local clergy. Ælfric’s catalogue of manuscripts which every priest should possess may have been a wish list but he was writing for those most concerned to make his rulings effective. One thinks here of Laud misc. 482, a cathedral 106

107

108

109

P.R. Robinson, ‘Self-Contained Units in Composite Manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Period’, ASE 7 (1978), pp. 231–8. On liturgical libelli, see Rasmussen, ‘Célébration épiscopale et célébration presbytérale’, pp. 586–9; and on penitential booklets see Frantzen, Literature, pp. 58 and 72. Godden (ed.), Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, II, pp. lxvii and Clemoes (ed.), Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, pp. 162–8. See also the comments on the Canterbury dissemination by Wilcox, ‘Ælfric in Dorset’, p. 61. Elaine Treharne has drawn attention to the role of monastic cathedrals in the production of vernacular manuscripts c.1050–1200, see her ‘Producing a Library in Late Anglo-Saxon Exeter, 1050–1072’, Review of English Studies 54 (2003), pp. 155–72, esp. p. 168 and see her ‘The Bishop’s Book: Leofric’s Homiliary and Eleventh-Century Exeter’ (forthcoming). I am most grateful to Prof. Treharne for allowing me to see this ahead of publication. These issues will be pursued further in my Penance and Penitentials. Hirtenbriefe, ed. Fehr. See J. Hill, ‘Monastic Reform and the Secular Church: Ælfric’s Pastoral Letters in Context’, in C. Hicks (ed.), England in the Eleventh Century (Stamford, 1992), pp. 103–17. H. Sauer, Theodulfi Capitula in England. Die altenglischen Übersetzungen, zusammen mit dem lateinischen Text, Münchener universitäts-Schriften, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Englischen Philologie 8 (Munich, 1978).




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book, which combines Old English penitential texts with Latin liturgy – a thoroughly practical book drawing in part upon texts collected by Wulfstan. This seems to represent a sort of trickle-down from archiepiscopal compilations to pastoral work, whether among the clergy or out amongst the laity. The pastoral concerns of the later tenth and eleventh centuries, however, were no sudden growth: the close relationship between penance and secular law seen in Alfred’s code and the earlier tenth-century evidence for vernacular penitential texts shows how deep-rooted penance was in Anglo-Saxon religious culture. The wealth of evidence in later Saxon England attests to an active pastoral church which perceived penance to be central to its work. Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York



Penitentials in south and central Italian canon law manuscripts of the tenth and eleventh centuries R E . R 

This article outlines the evidence for penance in pre-Gratian canon law manuscripts from southern and central Italy. It includes a handlist of those canon law collections compiled in this area between the tenth and the twelfth centuries which include penitential materials, divided into those manuscripts which were dependent on the south Italian Collection in Five Books, and those which were were not. In her recent excellent study, The Practice of Penance, 900–1050, Sarah Hamilton emphasizes the importance of canon law collections as transmitters of penitential canons and penitential discipline. 1 For her time period she rightly dwells on the penitential discipline represented in the Libri duo de synodalibus causis of Regino of Prüm and Book 19, the Corrector sive Medicus, of the Decretum of Burchard of Worms. She rarely touches, however, on penitential discipline represented in the contemporary canonical collections compiled in southern and central Italy. This lacuna is noticeable in light of her extensive analysis of Italian forms of the Pontificale Romano-Germanicum and other liturgical books that contain penitential material. While this present paper cannot go into the fine analysis of penance of Sarah Hamilton’s book, it can at least present a catalogue of the canon law collections from southern and central Italy before Gratian that do have penitential material and make a few comments about them. In the appendix attached to this article there is a list of manuscripts from the tenth to the twelfth century from southern and central Italy containing penitential materials. It should be noted that the materials * 1

Portions of the research for this article were conducted for the programme ‘Monumenta Liturgica Beneventana’ supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Sarah Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, 900–1050 (Rochester, NY, 2001).


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are divided according to those manuscripts that are not dependent on the south Italian Collection in Five Books, and those which are. This article will follow the same distinction. In the first of these two sections the manuscripts are listed in approximately chronological order. Most of the manuscripts are written in the south Italian Beneventan script or, if they are in other hands such as Romanesca, they often display symptoms of Beneventan script such as question marks, abbreviations and the like. There are, though, some manuscripts that are not in Beneventan script and bear no traces of Beneventan symptoms but that are related to south Italian texts and hence can be treated here. We turn then to the manuscripts and some of their peculiarities and characteristics. One of the oldest, or perhaps the oldest, of the manuscripts with penitential material from our region, is now in the Archivio della Badia of Monte Cassino, MS 439. In a colloquium held several years ago in Dublin, it was noted that the manuscript contains an excerpt from the Collectio canonum hibernensis.2 It was not pointed out, however, that the texts in this excerpt on monks are ordered in a similar way to the same texts in the south Italian Collection in Nine Books and Collection in Five Books. Although now at Monte Cassino, the manuscript was almost certainly written in the vicinity of Siponto. The manuscript contains an extraordinary florilegium of canonistic works, and a text entitled De remediis peccatorum attributed to Egbert of York.3 As old as this Siponto manuscript is another at Monte Cassino, MS 554, also written in the tenth century in southern Italy. This manuscript is well known for its text of the ninth-century Collectio Dacheriana, which contains penitential material. But beyond this, it includes the socalled Penitential in Two Books – also found in the perhaps north Italian manuscript Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, 2231 of the late ninth or early tenth century – with its many texts from the so-called Paenitentiale Romanum. Raymund Kottje has pointed out that the reconciliation ordo in these two manuscripts is like that of the Pontificale Romano-Germanicum and outside of that pontifical is known only in these two manuscripts.4 One of the manuscripts used by Sarah Hamilton in her study is Vatican, Archivio San Pietro, H 58. This fascinating work, begging for 2

3

4

See my ‘Transmission of the Collectio canonum hibernensis in Italy from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century’, Peritia 14 (2000), p. 25. pp. 237–40; cf. H. Wasserschleben, Die Bussordnungen der abendländischen Kirche (Halle, 1851; repr. Graz, 1958) pp. 231–3 and 249 ff., and H.J. Schmitz, Die Bussbücher und die Bussdisciplin der Kirche, 2 vols (Mainz, 1883 and Düsseldorf, 1898; repr. Graz, 1958) II, pp. 661–3. The manuscript was unknown to R. Haggenmüller, Die Überlieferung der Beda und Egbert zugeschriebenen Bußbücher (Frankfurt a.M. and Berne, 1991). Raymund Kottje, Die Bussbücher Halitgars von Cambrai und des Hrabanus Maurus: ihre Überlieferung und ihre Quellen, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters 8 (Berlin and New York, 1980), p. 18.



Penitentials in Italian canon law manuscripts

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a thorough study, is actually a Liber officialis with a vast array of texts, both canonistic and liturgical.5 The manuscript itself, was, according to Bernhard Bischoff, written in Rome c.1000,6 but it is especially interesting for its south Italian symptoms. It has distinctive south Italian interrogation marks; it contains texts like those found in the later Collection in Five Books;7 and it was long ago noted by hagiographers that the martyrology of the Liber officialis is related to those of Benevento.8 But of special interest is the penitential material. Raymund Kottje observed that the manuscript has both the letters of Ebo and Halitgar as well as Books 3–5 of Halitgar’s penitential itself. Moreover, he noted the unusal Ordo ad dandam poenitentiam, which Sarah Hamilton has studied. But perhaps the most unusual text is a little penitential that Ludger Körntgen describes as possibly the oldest penitential of the Roman church. 9 Like the Collection of San Pietro H 58 the Collection of London, British Library, Addit. 16413 contains a mélange of liturgical and canonistic texts antedating the eleventh century. The codex itself, however, was written in the early eleventh century in the Beneventan script of south Italy, and thus should be included among eleventh-century compilations. Like the Collection of San Pietro H 58 there is both penitential and canonistic material in the manuscript. Among the former are sections from five penitentials, including the Paenitentiale Egberti, Iudicium Theodori (Discipulus Umbrensium), Paenitentiale Cummeani (Praefatio), and the Capitula Iudiciorum, studied by Letha Böhringer.10 Moreover, there is a sermon on penance and the widely disseminated instruction Quotienscumque. 5

6

7

8 9

10

On this manuscript see my, ‘Excerpta from the Collectio Hibernensis in Three Vatican Manuscripts’, Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law, ns 5 (1975), pp. 1–10 and The Ordinals of Christ from their Origins to the Twelfth Century (Berlin and New York, 1978), p. 113 ff. Also Pierre Salmon, ‘Un “Libellus officialis” du XIe siècle’, Revue Bénédictine 87 (1977), pp. 257–88 and idem, ‘Un temoin de la vie chretienne dans une église de Rome au Xie siècle’, Rivista de storia della chiesa in Italia 33 (1979), pp. 65–73. See also P. Supino Martini as in n. 39 below. For Bischoff’s date see my ‘Unity and Diversity in Carolingian Canon Law Collections: The Case of the Collectio Hibernensis and its Derivatives’, in U.-R. Blumenthal (ed.), Carolingian Essays: Andrew W. Mellon Lectures in Early Christian Studies (Washington, DC, 1983), p. 135, n. 220, reprinted in R.E. Reynolds, Law and Liturgy in the Latin Church, 5th–12th Centuries (London, 1994), Nr. IV. Roger Reynolds, ‘A South Italian Liturgico-Canonical Mass Commentary’, Mediaeval Studies 50 (1988), pp. 660–70. See Henri Quentin, Les martyrologies historiques du moyen âge (Paris, 1908), p. 41. Kottje, Die Bussbücher Halitgars, p. 56; L. Körntgen, ‘Ein italienisches Bussbuch und seine Fränkischen Quellen; Das anonyme Paenitentiale der Handschrift Vatikan, Arch. S. Pietro H 58’, in Aus Archiven und Bibliotheken: Studien zum Recht und zur Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters: Festschrift für Raymund Kottje zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. H. Mordek (Freiburger Beiträge zur mittelalterliche Geschichte 3) (Bern, Frankfurt am Main, Las Vegas, 1991), pp. 189–205. L. Mahadevan, ‘Überlieferung und Verbreitung des Bussbuch “Capitula Iudiciorum” ’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 72 (1986), pp. 17– 75. On this manuscript and its contents see my ‘South and Central Italian Canonical Collections of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (non-Gregorian)’, in W. Hartmann and K. Pennington (eds), The History of Canon Law in the Age of Reform, 1000–1140 (Washington, D.C., in press since 1993).



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Because of the wealth of its material, the codex, Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Tome XVIII (sometimes incorrectly designated as Tome A 18) is one of the most celebrated of early medieval canonistic manuscripts. Details of its rich contents have been described (by Fournier, 11 and in the modern catalogue of the Tomi in the Biblioteca Vallicelliana 12), and also discrete sections (such as the early portions of the manuscript by Raymund Kottje13 and the central sections by Jean Pozzi). 14 Even in the late nineteenth century it was recognized that the codex, although written largely in a Carolingian or Romanesca hand, also contained sections in Beneventan script, a fact E.A. Lowe overlooked in his 1914 study but later noted in his new handlist of Beneventan-script codices.15 Numerous entries in Beneventan hands noted since Lowe’s description now demonstrate that at least three scribes who copied the codex could change from one script to the other without difficulty. 16 Moreover, the Beneventan script is now dated to the eleventh century. Unlike the Collection of San Pietro H 58 and the Collection of London, BL Addit. 16413, which had only blocks of canonistic materials from known compilations, the Collection of Vallicelliana Tome XVIII contains a number of rather complete collections together with excerpts from others filling the chinks. Among the best-known in the manuscript are the Concordia Cresconii, Collection in 72 Chapters, Collectio canonum hibernensis in the B or longer version, the small collection known by its incipit as Incipit de episcoporum transmigratione, and a large farraginous collection of 448 texts (although thirty of these are missing at the end of the now mutilated manuscript). 17 But sandwiched in among these is one penitential, the Penitentiale Halitgarii, sections from Books 3 through 5.18 11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

P. Fournier, ‘Un groupe de recueils canoniques italiens du Xe et XIe siècles’, Mémoires de l’Institut national de France, Académie des inscriptions et belles letters 40 (1916), pp. 214–41. Catalogo dei manoscritti della Biblioteca Vallicelliana 1, eds Anna Maria Giorgetti Vichi and Sergio Mottironi, Indici e cataloghi, ns 7 (Rome, 1961), pp. 243–52. Kottje, Die Bussbücher Halitgars, pp. 56 ff., who opts for a tenth-century date and places the codex in central Italy in the vicinity of Rome. G. Pozzi, ‘Le manuscrit tomus XVIIIus de la Vallicelliana et le libelle “De episcoporum transmigratione et quod non temere iudicentur regule quadraginta quattuor” ’, Apollinaris 31 (1958), pp. 313–50. The Beneventan Script: A History of the South Italian Minuscule (Oxford, 1914) and ‘A New List of Beneventan Manuscripts’, Collectanea vaticana in honorem Anselmi M. Card. Albareda a Bibliotheca Apostolica edita, Studi e Testi 220 (Vatican City, 1962), p. 233. For the Beneventan hands and an eleventh-century date, see E.A. Loew, The Beneventan Script: A History of the South Italian Minuscule, 2nd enlarged edition prepared by Virginia Brown, 2 vols, Sussidi eruditi 33–4 (Rome, 1980), II, p. 131; and my ‘Odilo and the Treuga Dei in Southern Italy: A Beneventan Manuscript Fragment’, Mediaeval Studies 46 (1984), p. 454, n. 25 and literature therein. On the various collections in this manuscript see my ‘Canonistica Beneventana’, in P. Landau and J. Müller (eds), Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Munich, 13–18 July 1992, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, ser. C, Subsidia (Vatican, 1997), pp. 21–40. Kottje, Die Bussbücher Halitgars, pp. 65–9.




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The eleventh-century collections described thus far were fairly disorganized. With the Collection in Nine Books we meet a compilation at least arranged into specific books, although the contents of each can be somewhat disordered.19 There is only one manuscript: Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 1349. 20 This codex, one of substantial proportions, was written in Beneventan script in the eleventh century, although there have been claims (by non-specialists in the script) that it was written as early as the ninth. The script itself is not of the Bari or Dalmatian type of Beneventan script, nor does it have characteristics of the type written in the Abruzzi. Therefore, the codex was presumably copied in the area where ‘classical’ Beneventan script was written, that is, the area south of Rome reaching down to the southern boundaries of the Campania. The manuscript, prominent in the Latin fondo of the Vatican Library, has often been described, and the preface to the collection and the capitulationes of each book were published by Maï and later entered into the Patrologia latina.21 Also, some of the penitential material was edited by Schmitz. 22 Of special interest in the Collection in Nine Books are Books 8 and 9. Book 8 bears a title reminiscent of the Collectio Dacheriana, ‘ De utilitate penitentie’, and the canons deal with general precepts regarding penance and reconciliation. Book 9 is largely a conglomeration of texts drawn from older penitentials, primarily the Paenitentiale Pseudo-Gregorii III, Capitula Iudiciorum, Paenitentiale Casinense, and Paenitentiale Vallicellianum II. That material from these penitentials is used in the Collection in Nine Books is not surprising since evidence suggests they were all known in southern Italy. First, Franz Kerff has speculated that a copy of the Paenitentiale Pseudo-Gregorii III may have been in the Collection of Vallicelliana Tome XVIII before it was mutilated. 23 This is indicated by a capitulatio (‘Item excerpta de canonibus’) in the list of 452 capitulationes, and also by the fact that the penitential appears in the manuscript, Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, 2010, the eleventhcentury codex from Farfa or Rome containing other material found elsewhere only in the Collection of Vallicelliana Tome XVIII. Second, we have already found the Capitula Iudiciorum in the Beneventan-script Collection of London, BL Addit. 16413. Third, the Paenitentiale Casinense is contained in the eleventh-century Beneventan-script codex of the 19

20

21 22 23

On this text see Adriaan Gaastra, ‘Penance and the Law: The Penitential Canons of the Collection in Nine Books’, elsewhere in this volume. See my ‘South and Central Italian Canonical Collections of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (non-Gregorian)’. A. Angelo Maï, Spicilegium Romanum (Rome, 1841) 6, pp. 396–472 (PL 138, cols. 397– 442). Schmitz, Die Bussbücher, II, pp. 209–13. Franz Kerff, ‘Das Paenitentiale Pseudo-Gregorii III. Ein Zeugnis karolingischer Reformbestrebungen’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 69 (1983), p. 55.



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Casinese dependency, San Nicola di Cicogna (Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, 372), containing the Collectio vetus gallica.24 And finally, there is the Paenitentiale Vallicellianum II, appearing in the codex, Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, C 6. This manuscript was written in the late eleventh century in Romanesca script at the abbey of Sant’Eutizio presso Norcia. The scribes at this central Italian monastery copied many south Italian texts (including the south Italian Collection in Five Books), and hence it is quite possible that the Paenitentiale Vallicellianum II was known in southern Italy. The manuscript, Monte Cassino 372, written in the beginning of the eleventh century in Beneventan script for the Casinese dependency San Nicolo di Cigcogna, is now known primarily for its text identified by Hubert Mordek as Collectio vetus gallica. Long before this identification, however, the manuscript was noted for its penitential, the so-called Poenitentiale Casinense,25 whose contents we have found reflected in several other eleventh-century canonical collections. Of all of the penitential books of the tenth through the twelfth century (and even beyond), none surpassed in popularity Book 19, the Corrector sive Medicus of Burchard’s Decretum.26 Although it is generally thought of as a northern penitential, it appears to have been popular in southern and central Italy as early as the 1030s, as we know from central Italian manuscript catalogues of this decade. 27 In the appendix to this article the large number of manuscripts from central and southern Italy with the Decretum Burchardi can be seen. As noted above, the Collectio Dacheriana was known in southern Italy as early as the tenth century, as evidenced in Monte Cassino MS 554. The popularity of this collection continued into the eleventh century, where it was combined with texts of the Quadripartitus in the manuscript Monte Cassino 541 and the related manuscript model, Vatican, BAV, Vat. lat. 1347, which was actually written in the ninth century at Rheims and corrected in Beneventan script of the eleventh century. 28 The Quadripartitus, which is one of the great penitential/canon law collections of the ninth century is also contained in a central Italian codex of the later eleventh century, Vatican, BAV, Vat. lat. 1352. Franz Kerff has stressed the multiple penitential canons from the Dacheriana 24

25 26 27

28

On which see Hubert Mordek, Kirchenrecht und Reform im Frankenreich: Die Collectio Vetus Gallica, die älteste systematische Kanonensammlung des fränkischen Gallien: Studien und Edition, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters 1 (Berlin and New York, 1975). Schmitz, Die Bussbücher, I, pp. 397–432. For this text see Ludger Körntgen in this volume. On this see my The Collectio canonum Casinensis duodecim saeculi (Codex terscriptus) A Derivative of the South-Italian Collection in Five Books: An Implicit Edition with Introductory Study, Monumenta Liturgica Beneventana 3, Studies and Texts 137 (Toronto, 2000), pp. 1–2. See my ‘Canonistica Beneventana’, pp. 21–40.




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and Halitgar’s penitentials, but there are also occasional citations from such penitentials as Ps-Egbert and the Excarpsus Cummeani.29 This Vatican manuscript is interesting also in that it contains excerpts from Book 19 of the Decretum Burchardi. A further manuscript from the south of Italy with penitential material that is not related to the Collection in Five Books is found in a codex now kept in the Biblioteca Statale of Lucca, MS 1781. Written in Beneventan script, it was clearly compiled for, and written in, ValvaSulmona. It is filled with ordines of use to a parish priest, and inserted into these is a short penitential of tariff penances. This rituale and its penitential canons have recently been edited for the first time by Neil Roy. 30 A final manuscript with penitential canons has recently been discovered at Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, MS 153. It is a palimpsest manuscript with the upper texts, written in Beneventan script, comprising Amalarius of Metz’s Liber officialis and Epistolae I-VI. The abbey’s medieval monks, known for their thoroughness in erasing texts, left little of the lower one legible, but it clearly contains prayers, canonical material such as the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua, and penitential canons. Except for the duration of penances, little of these last can be read.

The Collection in Five Books Like the Collection in Nine Books, and for much the same reasons, the Collection in Five Books has often been studied, described, and partially edited. The fullest study continues to be that by Fournier. 31 In 1970 Mario Fornasari published an edition of the first three books of the collection, which, although useful, is so badly flawed that the projected edition of the last two books, so important for the study of penitential material, was never published, and a new edition of the complete collection is necessary.32 A decade ago Book 4 of the Collection in Five Books was addressed and partially edited in a dissertation written in Rome, but this has never been published. 29

30

31

32

Franz Kerff, Der Quadripartitus: Ein Handbuch der karolingischen Kirchenreform: Überlieferung, Quellen und Rezeption, Quellen und Forschungen zum mittelalterlichen Recht 1 (Sigmaringen, 1982), pp. 95–7. Neil Roy, ‘The Ritual of Valva-Sulmona (Lucca. Biblioteca Statale 1781): A Twelfth-Century Collection of Ordines in Beneventan Script. A Diplomatic Edition with Introductory Study and Notes’ (diss. Toronto, 2001). Paul Fournier, ‘De l’influence de la collection irlandaise sur la formation des collections canoniques’, Nouvelle Revue historique de droit francais et étranger 23 (1899), pp. 27–78; and ‘Un groupe de recueils canoniques italiens du Xe et XIe siècles’, pp. 214–41. M. Fornasari, Collectio Canonum in V libris (Lib. i–iii), CCCM 6 (Turnhout, 1970); and see the critiques by Gérard Fransen, ‘Principes d’édition des collections canoniques’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 66 (1971), pp. 125–36; and Hubert Mordek, ‘Anzeigen’, Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 60 (1974), p. 477.



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The Collection in Five Books is contained, either in whole or in part, in three codices: Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia 125; Vatican, BAV, Vat. lat. 1339; and Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, B 11. It must be stressed that none of the three extant manuscripts is a copy of either of the others. Also, all of the manuscripts are of large format and would have been used for reference, not for actual penitential practice. Although it has long been known that the collection is in two forms, a long and a short (and there is disagreement as to which codex contains which form), there is a plethora of variants which make suspect any claim that one of the codices is a ‘direct’ copy of the others or even of the ‘original’ manuscript of the collection. Moreover, even though the form in the Vallicelliana manuscript is shorter than the other two, this codex contains many texts that the others lack. The disparate origins of these three extant manuscripts make it still more unlikely that any one is a direct copy of either of the others, although certainly they could have travelled. Again, like the Collection in Nine Books, the Collection in Five Books begins with a series of prefaces, one of which states that the compilation is made for the love of a certain Lupus. The preface emphasizes the penitential and medicinal nature of the work, perhaps a reference to the markedly penitential Books 4 and 5. The succeeding prefaces to the collection are simply extracts from the Paenitentiale Pseudo-Gregorii III and the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. The fourth preface states that the collection’s regulations are for the improvement of the lives of clerics, deals with the division in five books, and summarily presents material to be found in Book 1. Thereafter the capitulationes of Book 1 are given. As mentioned above, of special interest in the study of penitentials are Books 4 and 5. Book 4 begins with a short preface, which lists the subdivisions of topics, and the capitulationes. Then follow canons on the utility of penance, deathbed penance, homicide, lies and false testimony, reciprocal duties of parents and children, violence and rapine, oaths and perjury, love and hate, drunkenness, debts, pledges and usury, abstinence from meat and wine, impure foods, eucharistic abuses, fasting and ember days, alms, hospitality, prayer, and the eight capital sins. After a similar preface – giving subdivisions and capitulationes – Book 5 contains canons on marriage, seduction, widows and remarriage, concubinage, adultery and fornication, indissolubility of marriage, rights and duties of spouses, sodomy, bestiality and other sins of the flesh, unions between freemen and slaves, and incest. In the Monte Cassino and Vallicelliana codices, there is an epilogue or colophon stating that a wandering ‘frater’ has caused the collection to be compiled for the healing of wounds and the restoration of the lapsed, thereby stressing its penitential nature. Early Medieval Europe   ()



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Derivatives of the Collection in Five Books For Paul Fournier the surest sign of the significance of the Collection in Five Books in the history of canon law was its influence on later collections; and he was able to list over a dozen, each in a single codex. His conclusions have been confirmed over the years as more derivatives and excerpta have been discovered and reported. 33 The variety of this material is wide indeed and it may be classified according to several broad categories (which were detailed in the Dublin colloquium on the Collectio canonum hibernensis), although individual derivatives may fall within several categories. First, there are what may be styled as an abbreviated type of derivative. There are two forms of this type; one in which the basic sequence of canons in the Collection in Five Books is followed, the other where the canons are spread over more than five books and are at times arranged according to the divisional rubrics of the Collection in Five Books itself. Second, there are derivative collections of a farraginous type in which the canons of the Collection in Five Books are thrown together helter-skelter or combined with canons from other collections in little or no discernible order. Third, there are those collections in which material from the Collection in Five Books is combined with material from Burchard’s Decretum, especially the penitential Corrector. A fourth type consists of canons from the Collection in Five Books combined or attached to canons or collections of the Gregorian reform, especially the Collection in 74 Titles. Finally, there are derivative collections where canons from the Collection in Five Books are associated with liturgical material, either formulaic or expositional or both. Abbreviated derivatives There are six collections of abbreviations of the Collection in Five Books that contain material from the penitential Books 4 and 5. The first of these is the Collection of Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III, XII A 28, written probably in the mid-eleventh century in a central Italian hand. It is divided into five books, and each book has a list of capitulationes followed by a reduced number of texts from the Collection in Five Books, generally arranged according to that sequence. It is particularly interesting to see how many canons are maintained from Books 4 and 5: the Collection of Naples Book 4 contains 127 canons out of 444 from the Collection in Five Books; and Book 5 contains 96 canons out of the original’s 231. 33

Roger Reynolds, ‘The South-Italian Canon Law Collection in Five Books and its Derivatives: New Evidence on its Origins, Diffusion, and Use’, Mediaeval Studies 52 (1990), pp. 278–95.



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The Collection of Madrid now found in codex Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, 373 (olim A.151), is a twelfth-century manuscript with a number of sections; the derivative of the Collection in Five Books is found on the first eight quires. Like the Collection of Naples, it is in a small, handbook-sized codex, i.e., a pastoral manual; and like many canonical compilations written in Beneventan script, this codex has a mixture of Carolingian and Beneventan-script hands. It is divided into four books, each with its own list of capitulationes. There may have been a fifth book, but as the text breaks off in Book 4 it is impossible to state this with certainty. After a list of 171 capitulationes, canons from Book 4 of the Collection in Five Books follow as far as one concerning the imposition of hands on a penitent, where the text ends. The Collection of Rieti is found now in a small codex, Rieti, Archivio Capitolare, 5, written in Beneventan script in the eleventh century. It is mutilated at the beginning and end. The canons are extracts from Books 3 through 5 of the Collection in Five Books, and they generally follow the same arrangement. The Collectio Riccardiana – found in the codex Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana 300, a small handbook – was written in central Italy in the later eleventh century. It is of the second type of abbreviated derivative in which the canons from the Collection in Five Books are spread over a wide number of ‘books’, some of which are simply the divisional rubrics of the original. According to the early description of the codex by J. Lamius, the canonical collection is said to be of seventeen books or parts.34 In the codex itself the ‘books’ are not so numbered, but the canons collected under the divisional rubrics can be styled as books or parts. The arrangement of the canons in this collection does not follow the order of canons in the Collection in Five Books as closely as, for example, the Collection of Naples; and canons from later books of the Collection in Five Books, particularly the penitential canons, are inserted into sequences of canons from earlier books. Nonetheless, the collection is not a farraginous one in the line of the Collection of Vallicelliana Tome XXI, to be considered below. Canons from all of the books of the Collection in Five Books are included in the Collectio Riccardiana, but there are particularly heavy borrowings from Book 5. Collectio Angelica (Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, 1447) Although the Collectio Angelica is considered here as a derivative of the Collection in Five Books, it has been noted that it may be related to one of the sources of the Collection in Five Books or a derivative of a now 34

J. Lamius, Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum qui in Bibliotheca Riccardiana Florentina adservantur (Livorno, 1756), p. 129 ff.




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lost ‘longer’ redaction of this manuscript. 35 The collection itself, written over a palimpsest manuscript of the eleventh century, was copied in the late eleventh or early twelfth century in central Italy. It originally contained at least thirteen books; since the codex has been mutilated at both the beginning and end, it is not certain if there were more. The title for each book generally reproduces several of the divisional rubrics in the Collection in Five Books. Canons from Books 6 through 10 in the Collectio Angelica are from Book 4 of the Collection in Five Books; and canons from Book 12 in the Collectio Angelica are from Books 4 and 5 of the Collection in Five Books. In the manuscript collection of membra disiecta in the Rijksarchief in Maastricht, there are two bifolia containing an excerptum from the Collection in Five Books or a related collection and numbered as R.A. Limburg 18.A. Collectie Handschriften Cat. nr. 196. 36 The size of the bifolia is rather small, like many of the collections deriving from the Collection in Five Books, and the script is an Italian Romanesca of the second half of the eleventh century. In the second bifolium there are penitential canons drawn from Book 4 of the Collection in Five Books on baptism of infants, infanticide, contraception and abortion, and oaths. Farraginous collections The first farraginous derivative of the Collection in Five Books, the Collection of Vallicelliana Tome XXI, is found within a miscellaneous manuscript, Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Tome XXI. 37 The text of the derivative was printed in part in the modern catalogue of the Tomi of the Vallicelliana, but regrettably the cataloguers failed to recognize the source of the texts and thus reproduced largely those that were rubricated or capitalized, passing over in silence many that are found in the Collection in Five Books as separate canons. Supino Martini dated the section of the codex with the derivative material to the late eleventh or early twelfth century and lists it among manuscripts ‘non localazzati’. 38 But many palaeographical features of the quires on which the collection appears, 35

36

37

38

Reynolds, ‘The South-Italian Canon Law Collection in Five Books and its Derivatives’, pp. 278–95. On this manuscript fragment and its contents see my ‘The South Italian Collection in Five Books and Its Derivatives: Maastricht Excerpta’, Miscellanea Beneventana: Juridica, Mediaeval Studies 58 (1996), pp. 273–84. On this manuscript and its collection see my ‘The South-Italian Collection in Five Books and its Derivatives: the Collection of Vallicelliana Tome XXI ’, in S. Chodorow (ed.), Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law: San Diego, University of California at La Jolla, 21–27 August 1988, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, ser. C, Subsidia 9 (Vatican, 1991), pp. 77–92. See Paola Supino Martini, Roma e l’area grafica romanesca (secoli X–XII), Biblioteca di Scrittura e civiltà l (Alessandria, 1987), p. 72 ff., where she treats it under San Pietro.



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as well as peculiarities of the ‘litanies’ that precede it, all point to Sant’Eutizio presso Norcia or a closely related house. It is clear that the excerptor drew most heavily from Book 4 of the Collection in Five Books, and hence, like many of the other derivatives, it is heavily penitential in character. Collection of Veroli This collection from Veroli, now in the codex Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, B 32, was written in Beneventan script between c.1059 and 1070. Preceding the collection, the codex contains a martyrology, the Institutio canonicorum of 816/817, and several papal texts. The collection itself is a farraginous one, drawing texts from the Collectio canonum hibernensis and the Collection in Five Books, including Book 5. Derivatives of the Collection in Five Books combined with Burchard’s Decretum One of the most interesting features of the derivative texts is how compatible the Collection in Five Books was with the Corrector of Burchard of Worms. The two works seem to have had a mutual affinity, not only because they were both penitential in character, but also because they were complementary; that is, the Collection in Five Books had early Greek patristic material not available in other Latin sources as well as a wide range of conciliar, synodal and other authoritative texts, while the Corrector gave an explicit list of sins together with a clear statement of penalties. The fact that there are only three known complete or nearly complete manuscripts of the Collection in Five Books compared with twenty-five derivative texts, shows that it was considered more useful in combination than alone. Collectio Toletana This compilation is a good example of how the Collection in Five Books took on a utility when combined with the Corrector that makes the derivative collections the vade-mecums the Collection in Five Books never was in its own right. The codex (Toledo, Archivo y Biblioteca Capitulares, 22–32) is small, and the repairs to the top outside corner of many folios show how the parchment has been worn away by frequent thumbing. The volume was, indeed, made for pastoral use. The collection of canons was first brought to the attention of modern scholars by Antonio García y García in 1965, and again in more detail in 1967. 39 He pointed out that the 39

Antonio García y García, ‘Los manuscritos jurídicos medievales de la cathedral de Toledo’, Traditio 21 (1965), p. 512; and ‘Canonistica Hispanica (II)’, Traditio 23 (1967), pp. 504–5.




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manuscript, which had been catalogued among the theological material in the Cathedral of Toledo, was in fact a rare penitential collection using Burchard’s Corrector and other well-known texts, which he did not identify but can now be shown to be from the Collection in Five Books.40 Of the 376 canons of the Collectio Toletana, 232 are from the Collection in Five Books. By far the greatest number, 108, come from Book 4, and Book 5 contributes 45. Burchard’s Decretum, on the other hand, supplies 142 canons, of which 135 are from the Corrector. The overall character of the Collectio Toletana is clearly penitential. The complete absence of canons from Book 1 of the Collection in Five Books shows the compiler to have been little interested in matters of ecclesiastical administration. He is chiefly concerned with the nature of penance, sexual offences of various types, oaths and perjury, murder and manslaughter, fasting, theft, baptism, tithes, and pagan superstitions. Many canons refer specifically to the conduct of clerics and a few are directed to monks. Collection of Vallicelliana F 2 This collection is in a codex copied by a central Italian hand in the second half of the eleventh century over a lower Beneventan-script palimpsest of the eleventh century. It deals in a somewhat disorganized way with abortion, infanticide, baptism and confirmation, perjury, traditores, sacrilege, and so forth, down through sodomy and public penance. The sources used by the compiler include the Collection in Five Books, Collectio canonum hibernensis, and Burchard’s Corrector. Like the Collectio Toletana, it is heavily penitential, again demonstrating the complementarity of the penitential sections of the Collection in Five Books and Burchard’s Corrector. Collection of Vallicelliana F 8 The manuscript in which this collection is found (Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, F 8) contains a mélange of texts in different hands. Folios 179–226 are in Beneventan-script hands of the second half of the eleventh century and contain the canonical collection. There is, first, a list of 273 capitulationes, and these are followed by 263 canonical texts. The first of these are drawn from Burchard’s Corrector. There are also texts deriving from the Collectio canonum hibernensis and the Collection in Five Books, especially Book 5. 40

On this collection see the Licenciate in Medieval Studies report of John Douglas Adamson, The Collectio Toletana: An Eleventh-Century Italian Collection of Canon Law (Toronto, 1987), and our forthcoming joint implicit edition of the collection.



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Collection of Vallicelliana F 92 It has long been known that this manuscript (Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, F 92) contains the Paenitentiale Vallicelliana II and was written at Sant’Eutizio presso Norcia in the late eleventh century. 41 The beginning of the canonical collection itself, apart from the Paenitentiale Vallicelliana II, is mutilated, but the texts, which start on folio 161r, begin with canons from the Corrector of Burchard. With folio 177v there comes a rather disordered group of canons drawn from the Collection in Five Books, especially Books 3 and 5. Besides its noticeable penitential characteristics, the Collection of Vallicelliana F 92 is heavily monastic. Collection of Santa Croce This collection is in the manuscript, Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 4.4, written in central Italy in the eleventh century, whose provenance is the Florentine convent of Santa Croce. The collection, from folios 1–42, begins with a series of canons drawn from the Collection in Five Books, especially the penitential canons of Book 5. There are also several canons from Burchard’s Decretum, but these are from Books 1 and 2, not the Corrector. Collection of Vat. Lat. 4977 The manuscript, Vatican, BAV, lat. 4977, was written late in the eleventh century or early in the twelfth by a variety of hands and bound somewhat haphazardly. It contains a mélange of canonistic texts. The first and third sections contain extracts from papal and synodical decisions reported in the Collectio Dionysio-Hadriana. But between these two, a farraginous short collection has been entered containing canons from the Collection in Five Books and Burchard’s Decretum. The canons from the Collection in Five Books are from Books 1 and 2, and hence deal largely with administrative, not penitential themes. Except for one canon deriving from the Corrector, those drawn from Burchard’s Decretum are much the same. Collection of Monte Cassino 216 A final collection with a mixture of canons from the Collection in Five Books and Burchard’s Decretum is found in one of the youngest canonistic manuscripts written in Beneventan script, Monte Cassino, 41

See Fournier, ‘Un groupe de recueils canoniques italiens du Xe et XIe siècles’, p. 313.




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Archivio della Badia, 216. The codex was produced in the late twelfth century, and for the complexity of its codicological structure and palaeographical features it is one of the most unusual canonistic codices in the script.42 The first part of the collection consists largely of excerpts drawn from the Collection in Five Books, Books 4 and 5, but penitential material from the Corrector of Burchard is also introduced. Extracts from the Collection in Five Books as appendices to the Collection in Seventy-Four Titles It is perhaps surprising that Beneventan-script codices, which were the primary vehicle for the Collection in Five Books and its derivatives, should also be a vehicle for one of the earliest and most popular collections of the Gregorian reform period, the Collection in Seventy-Four Titles. In a number of codices of the Collection in Seventy-Four Titles, material from the Collection in Five Books has been added. Indeed, in two codices material is added as a full-blown appendix and considered as such in the capitulationes of the Collection in Seventy-Four Titles.43 These two manuscripts are Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, 522, a codex written in the twelfth century most probably at Monte Cassino; and Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 16.15, a manuscript also written in the twelfth century, not in Beneventan but in a Carolingian script. In both manuscripts material from the Collection in Five Books, Book 4, on perjury and false testimony is used. There are also canons from Burchard’s Decretum but not from the penitential Corrector. In two other manuscripts of the Collection in Seventy-Four Titles, there are texts from Books 4 and 5 of the Collection in Five Books, although they do not function as appendices in the sense of our earlier two manuscripts. The first of these other codices is Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, F 54, written in a variety of Carolingian and Beneventan hands of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Hubert Mordek has reported that this manuscript contains a text of the Poenitentiale Vallicellianum I, which also appears in the codex Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, E 15, written in the eleventh century in Rome or southern Italy with its Beneventan script additions. 44 But there are other extracts in Vallicelliana F 54 described by John Gilchrist as a penitential. 45 These canons are indeed taken from the penitential Books 4 and 5 of the 42 43

44 45

See my The Collectio canonum Casinensis duodecim saeculi (Codex terscriptus). See my ‘The South Italian Collection in Five Books and its Derivatives: The South Italian Appendix to the Collection in Seventy-Four Titles’, Miscellanea Beneventana, Mediaeval Studies 63 (2001), pp. 351–63. Mordek, Kirchenrecht, p. 131, n. 154. John Gilchrist, Diversorum patrum sententie sive Collectio in LXXIV titulos digesta, Monumenta Iuris Canonici Series B: Corpus Collectionum 1 (Vatican City, 1973), p. xlviii.



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Collection in Five Books. The second of these codices with the Collection in Seventy-Four Titles is Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, 2010 of the late eleventh century from Farfa or Rome. From folio 172r there is a string of canons from the Collection in Five Books, again drawn largely from the penitential Books 4 and 5. Derivatives of the Collection in Five Books and liturgical texts That the Collection in Five Books was not only a compilation of canon law but a vast florilegium of patristic texts has often been noted by scholars, but its place as a liturgical florilegium has been insufficiently appreciated. There are a number of codices containing liturgical texts with material drawn from the Collection in Five Books. Only one, however, contains material from the penitential texts. This is a Missal-Ritual now found in Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, E 62, written in the early twelfth century, perhaps in a dependency of Farfa in Narni. Following texts that are typical of missals, rituals, and even pontificals, there is a new quire written in a hand much like that of the liturgical portion of the codex, inscribing what has been called a penitential. This, published by Wasserschleben,46 is a brief text of fifty-two canons drawn largely from the liturgical Book 3 and the penitential Book 4 of the Collection in Five Books, and deals with homicide, clerical formation, perjury, abstinence, menstruous women, fornication, theft, oaths, Lent and fasting, the Mass, and accusations. To conclude: in our overview of the manuscripts and collections of south and central Italy, we have seen that the major and many minor collections from north of the Alps were represented. Among the major penitential collections were the Dacheriana, Quadripartitus, Halitgar, and Burchard. Among the lesser-known were Egbert and Pseudo-Egbert, the Paenitentiale in Two Books, the Iudicia Theodori, Pseudo-Cummean, and the Capitula Iudiciorum. Also, worked into such compilations as the Collection in Nine Books and Collection in Five Books were texts like Pseudo-Gregorii III. Thus, in central and southern Italy, there was an abundance of penitential canons from the north. The peculiarities of this penitential material from south and central Italy, the ways in which it was used, and which canons were omitted, added or transformed, still requires detailed investigation. Such an investigation will further illuminate the penitential discipline studied so well by Sarah Hamilton in the penitential ordines. Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto 46

Wasserschleben, Die Bussordnungen, pp. 550–66.




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Appendix Penitentials in south and central Italian pre-Gratian canon law manuscripts Penitentials or penitential material independent of the Collection in Five Books Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, 439 (s. X, vic. Siponto) De remediis peccatorum Egberti Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, 554 (s. X, southern Italy) Collectio Dacheriana, Paenitentiale in II libris Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, San Pietro H 58 (c.1000, Rome) Paenitentiale Halitgarii and anonymous ancient Roman Paenitentiale Körntgenianum London, British Library, Addit. 16413 (s. XIin, southern Italy), extracts from the Paenitentiale Egberti, Iudicium Theodori (Discipulus Umbrensium), Paenitentiale Cummeani (Praefatio), and the Capitula iudiciorum Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Tom. XVIII (s. XI, southern Italy) Paenitentiale Halitgarii Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, 372 (s. XIin, southern Italy) Paenitentiale Casinense Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 1349 (s. XI, southern Italy) Collection in Nine Books containing a penitential section in L. 9 with canons from the Paenitentiale Pseudo-Gregorii III, Capitula iudiciorum, Paenitentiale Casinense, and Paenitentiale Vallicellianum II Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, 541 (s. XIin, southern Italy) Collectio Dacheriana, Quadripartitus Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 1347 (s. IXmed-3/4 [Rheims], s.XIin [southern Italy]) Collectio Dacheriana, Quadripartitus Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 1352 (s. XI2, central Italy) Quadripartitus and excerpts from Decretum Burchardi, L. 19 Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, C 6 (s. XI ex, Sant’Eutizio) Paenitentiale Vallicellianum II Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, 153 (s. XI, southern Italy) Unidentified penitential canons Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, B 58 (s. XI, central Italy) Paenitentiale with excerpts from Decretum Burchardi, L. 19 Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, E 15 (s. XI, central/southern Italy) Paenitentiale Vallicellianum I Lucca, Biblioteca Statale, 1781 (s. XII, Valva-Sulmona) Rituale with penitential canons



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Central and south Italian manuscripts with the Decretum Burchardi Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, 2239 (Cat. 1107) (s. XI, Italy) Bologna, Collegio di Spagna, 37 (saec. XII1/2; Italy) Firenza, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Calci 9 (olim 60) (s. XI 1/4; Tuscany, provenance Pisa) Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 16.21 (s. XI–XII; central Italy, Fontibene) Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 7.1 (s. XI; Santa Croce) [abridgement] Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. soppr. C.I.2777 (Badia Fior.) (s. XI–II, Italian: provenance San Giustina Padua) [excerpt] Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. soppr. F.IV.255 (Vallombrosia) Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, 240 (s. XI–XII) Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare, Feliniana, 124 (s. XI2, central Italy) Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare, Feliniana, 597 (s. XI4/4; central Italy) Manchester, John Rylands Library of the University of Manchester, 96 (s. XII1/4; central Italy, Tuscany?) Mantua, Biblioteca Comunale, D.IV.15 (461) (s. XIin; San Benedetto Polirone) Modena, Biblioteca Capitolare, O.II.15 (post a. 1052, central Italy) Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, 44 and 45 (s.XI, southern Italy) Munich, Universitätsbibliothek, 2° 292 (s. XI2, middle Italy: Porto, Rome) Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III, Vind. lat. 23 (olim Wien 2044) (s. XII1/4, central Italy, provenance San Giustina, Padua) [fragment] Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, 678 (s. XI; central Italy [Umbrian/ Roman]; provenance St-Aubin, Angers) Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 3862 (Colbert 898) (s. XII2/4, central Italy) Parma, Biblioteca Nazionale Palatina, Parm. 3777 (s. XI; Italy) Pistoia, Archivio Capitolare del Duomo, C.125 (olim C.XII) (s. XII 1/4; Pistoia) Pistoia, Archivio Capitolare del Duomo, C.140 (olim C.XIII) (s. XII1/4; Pistoia) Prato, Biblioteca Roncioniana, Q.VIII.4 (3) (s. XII1/4; Pistoia) Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, A 20 (s. XII1/4; Umbrian/Roman) Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emmanuele II, Sessor. CXLVII (2034) (s. XII, central Italy) [excerpts] Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emmanuele II, Varia 398 (3949) (s. XI, central Italy) [excerpt] Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 1356 (s. XI–XII; middle Italy) [fragment] Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 3809 (s. XI2; central Italy) Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 4227 (s. XI) [Book 19] Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 4880 (s. XI–XII; middle Italy) Early Medieval Europe   ()



83

Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 4980, fols 1–75 (s. XII in; Italy) [fragment] Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 4980, fol. 76 (c.1100) [fragment] Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 4981 (s. XIII, southern Italy) Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 7790 (s. XIIin; middle Italy) Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 14731 (olim Caiazzo) (s. XIex; Caiazzo) Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Arch. San Pietro B. 41 (XII1/2; Italy) [fragment] Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barb. lat. 1450 (s. XI; central Italy, provenance San Salvatore di Montamiata)

Penitentials or penitential material of the south Italian Collection in Five Books and its derivatives The Collection in Five Books Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, 125 (s. XImed, Monte Cassino), Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 1339 (s. XI3/4, Farfa?), and Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, B 11 (s. XI4/4, Sant’Eutizio) Collection in Five Books, Preface and Books 4–5 with penitential material

Abbreviated derivatives Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III, XII A 28 (s. XI med, central Italy) Collection of Naples including material from Books 4 and 5 of the Coll 5L Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, 373 (olim A.151) (s. XII, southern Italy) Collection of Madrid including material from Book 4 of the Coll 5L Rieti, Archivio Capitolare, 5 (s. XI, southern Italy) Collection of Rieti including material from Books 4 and 5 of the Coll 5L Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, 300 (s. XIex, central Italy) Collectio Riccardiana, including material from Books 4 and 5 of the Coll 5L Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, 1447 (s. XI/XII, central Italy) Collectio Angelica including material from Books 4 and 5 of the Coll 5L Maastricht, Rijksarchief, Limburg R.A. Limburg 18.A. Collectie Handscriften Cat. nr. 196 (s. XI2/2, central Italy) material from Book 4 of the Coll 5L

Farraginous collections Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Tome XXI (s. XI/XII, Sant’Eutizio) Collection of Vallicelliana Tome XXI including material from Book 4 of the Coll 5L Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, B 32, (c.1059 × 1070, southern Italy) Collection of Veroli including material from Book 5 of the Coll 5L © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 


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Derivatives of the Collection in Five Books combined with Burchard’s Decretum Toledo, Archivo y Biblioteca Capitulares, 22–32 (s. XI/XII, central Italy), Collectio Toletana including material from Books 4 and 5 of the Coll 5L and Burchard’s Corrector Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, F 2 (s. XI2/2, southern and central Italy) Collection of Vallicelliana F 2 including material from Books 4 and 5 of the Coll 5L and Burchard’s Corrector Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, F 8 (s. XI2/2, southern Italy) Collection of Vallicelliana F 8 including material especially from Book 5 of the Coll 5L and Burchard’s Corrector Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, F 92 (s. XIex; Sant’Eutizio) Paenitentiale Vallicellianum II and material from Book 5 of the Coll 5L and Burchard’s Corrector Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 4.4 (s. XI, central Italy) Collection of Santa Croce containing material especially from Book 5 of the Coll 5L Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 4977 (s. XI/XII, central Italy) Collection of Vat. Lat. 4977, including material from the Coll 5L (but not from Books 4 and 5) and one canon from Burchard’s Corrector Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, 216 (s. XIIex) Collectio Casinensis including material from Books 4 and 5 of the Coll 5L and Burchard’s Corrector

Extracts from the Collection in Five Books as appendices to the Collection in Seventy-Four Titles Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, 522 (s. XII, Monte Cassino) The Coll 74T + material from Book 4 of the Coll 5L as an appendix Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 16.15 (s. XII, central Italy) The Coll. 74T + material from Book 4 of the Coll 5L as an appendix Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, F 54 (s. XI/XII, southern and central Italy) Coll 74T + material from Books 4 and 5 of the Coll 5L and the Paenitentiale Vallicellianum I Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, 2010 (s. XI, Farfa/Rome?) Coll 74T + material from Books 4 and 5 of the Coll in 5L

Derivatives of the Collection in Five Books and liturgical texts Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, E 62 (s. XIIin, a dependency of Farfa in Narni?) Missal-Ritual of Vallicelliana E 62 including material from Book 4 of the Coll 5L



Penance and the law: the penitential canons of the Collection in Nine Books A . H . G 

This article examines the south Italian tenth-century Collection in Nine Books, one of the first Italian compilations of canon law to incorporate a penitential handbook. It places this work in the context of other tenthcentury collections, investigating its sources, and the way in which its compiler chose to include penitential canons. It therefore contributes to the current debate about the purpose and function of penitentials as a genre in this period, arguing that they were probably intended to support the efforts of bishops to educate priests in the administration of penance.

Introduction Early medieval texts containing a list of sins with an accompanying penance, the libri paenitentiales or ‘penitentials’, are normally considered handbooks for confessors, to be used in the context of hearing confession. Recently this traditional view has been questioned in discussions focusing on how and by whom these texts were actually used. Franz Kerff was the first scholar to query the traditional notion that penitentials were exclusively used in pastoral care. 1 From the fact that penitentials often appear in legal manuscripts or were part of canon law collections, he arrived at the conclusion that these texts chiefly served as penal codes in the episcopal law court and in diocesan synods. The satisfactions prescribed in such texts, therefore, were not penances for the remission of people’s sins, but rather disciplinary punishments inflicted upon criminal offenders. His conclusions provoked other scholars to re-evaluate the role of penitentials in daily pastoral practice. 2 1

2

F. Kerff, ‘Libri Paenitentiales und kirchliche Strafgerichtsbarkeit bis zum Decretum Gratiani. Ein Diskussionsvorschlag’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 75 (1989), pp. 23–57. Cf. R. Meens, ‘Frequency and Nature of Early Medieval Penance’, in P. Biller and A.J. Minnis (eds), Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages, York Studies in Medieval Theology 2 (York, 1998), pp. 35–61. F. Kerff, ‘Libri Paenitentiales und kirchliche Strafgerichtsbarkeit’, pp. 23–57.


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Raymund Kottje objected to such notions of penance and argued that the penitentials were intended for pastoral care. 3 Only with the compilation of Halitgar of Cambrai’s penitential and Regino of Prüm’s Libri duo de synodalibus causis in the ninth and tenth centuries, were penitentials incorporated into the corpus of canon law. Rob Meens discarded Kerff ’s views on the basis of the manuscript evidence, but admitted that the number of pastoral manuscripts containing penitentials markedly declined in the tenth century. Sarah Hamilton also claimed that from the tenth century onwards penitential books, apart from the Anglo-Saxon and Italian ones, largely ceased to play a role in pastoral care but increasingly functioned as reference works in a legal and educational context. 4 The fact that penitentials found their way into early medieval canon law reveals the growing importance of these texts in episcopal jurisdiction. In the light of this recent debate it is worth focusing on the Italian evidence. Italy saw a remarkable production of new penitentials in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, precisely the period in which the number of newly compiled penitentials decreased in northern Europe and their function changed from pastoral texts to law codes. Moreover, Italian penitentials found their way into both liturgical and canon law manuscripts. While Paul Fournier studied the Italian evidence in some detail in the early years of the twentieth century, thanks to recent work done by scholars like Ludger Körntgen, Günter Hägele, and Roger Reynolds, our knowledge of the Italian penitentials has greatly increased.5 This article deals with 3

4

5

R. Kottje, ‘“Buße oder Strafe?” Zur “Iustitia” in den “Libri Paenitentiales”’, in La giustizia nell’alto medioevo (secoli V–VIII) I, Settimane di studio 42 (Spoleto, 1996), pp. 443–68. Kottje particularly rejects Kerff’s equation of punishment and penance. See also L. Körntgen, Studien zu den Quellen der frühmittelalterlichen Bußbücher, Quellen und Forschungen zum Recht im Mittelalter 7 (Sigmaringen, 1992), pp. 164–8; Meens, ‘Frequency and Nature of Early Medieval Penance’, pp. 35–61; R. Meens, Het tripartite boeteboek. Overlevering en betekenis van vroegmiddeleeuwse biechtvoorstellingen, Middeleeuwse studies en bronnen 41 (Hilversum, 1994), pp. 220 –66. S. Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, 900–1050, Royal Historical Society, Studies in History, n s (Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 38–53. Schmitz studied and edited the Italian P. Vallicellianum I, the P. Casinense, and the P. Vallicellianum II in order to demonstrate the existence of a Roman group of penitentials, see H.J. Schmitz, Die Bussbücher und die Bussdisciplin der Kirche. Nach handschriftlichen Quellen dargestellt I (Mainz, 1883; repr. Graz, 1958) (hereafter cited as Schmitz I), pp. 167–239. Paul Fournier convincingly refuted Schmitz’s thesis and demonstrated that the Italian penitentials were in fact compiled from insular and Frankish exemplars. See P. Fournier, ‘Études sur les péniteniels’, Revue d’histoire et de littérature religieuse 6 (1901), pp. 289–317; 7 (1902), pp. 59– 70 and 121–7; and 8 (1903), pp. 528–53. See also G. Hägele, Das Paenitentiale Vallicellianum I. Ein Oberitalienischer Zweig der frühmittelalterlichen kontinentalen Buβbücher, Quellen und Forschungen zum Recht im Mittelalter 3 (Sigmaringen, 1984), pp. 93–5; Körntgen, Studien zu den Quellen; and idem, ‘Ein Italienisches Bußbuch und seine Fränkischen Quellen. Das anonyme Paenitentiale der Handschrift Vatikan, Arch. S. Pietro, H 58’, in H. Mordek ed., Aus Archiven und Bibliotheken. Festschrift für Raymund Kottje zum 65. Geburtstag, Freiburger Beiträge zur mittelalterliche Geschichte. Studien und Texte 3 (Freiburg, 1992), pp. 189– 205. The south Italian Collection in Five Books, a collection that contains a lot of penitential



The Collection in Nine Books

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penitential material in its canonistic context. What did their incorporation into canon law material mean for the penitentials? To answer this question, I will confine myself to one example, namely to the Collection in Nine Books, one of the first Italian collections to incorporate a penitential handbook. First, the compilation itself is examined, setting out its sources, summarizing its contents, and investigating the way in which the compiler treated its sources. Then the purpose, or the intended function of the compilation is discussed. By first examining the penitential canons of this collection I hope to shed light on how they were used by Italian canonists. Since the manuscript context also creates problems as to which genre the penitentials belonged, I will consider this issue first.

Penitentials; a genre? The term penitentials is often used to denominate lists of sins and their appropriate penances, sometimes accompanied by liturgical directions for priests-confessors. The canons of penitentials, which are also called tariffs, usually adopt the following shape: ‘if someone has committed then he has to do penance for <seven years>’. The penances that were deemed necessary for the remission of sins usually consisted of a period of fasting, but sometimes comprised pilgrimage, almsgiving, genuflections, and the singing of psalms. 6 At first glance, a definition of what a penitential is seems straightforward, but situated halfway between liturgical and canonical texts, the penitentials constitute a genre marked by its flexibility. Hence penitentials were copied in both liturgical manuscripts, as part of elaborate liturgical ordines, and canon law manuscripts, as part of canon law collections. The flexibility of the genre lies at the root of recent discussions about the function of penitentials. A single text, such as the early tenthcentury, north Italian Paenitentiale Vallicellianum I, can be found in

6

material, is studied by R.E. Reynolds, ‘The South-Italian Canon Law Collection in Five Books and its Derivatives: New Evidence on its Origins, Diffusion, and Use’, Mediaeval Studies 52 (1990), pp. 279–81. Books 1–3 of this collection are edited in Collectio canonum in V libris (libri I– III), ed. M. Fornasari, CCCM 6 (Turnhout, 1970). On this edition see G. Fransen, ‘Principes d’édition des collections canoniques’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 66 (1971), pp. 125–36. A difference between penitentials and canon law collections is that penitentials only deal with a limited number of topics. Whereas canon law collections usually treat a wider variety of topics (and are far more concerned with matters like episcopal jurisdiction, proper ordination of clerics, papal primacy and ecclesiastical property), penitentials focus upon crimes and vices such as homicide, fornication, perjury, avarice, slander, etc. Even this distinction does not hold true for all texts, as for instance the Iudicia Theodori (the collected judgements of Theodore of Canterbury (d. 690) which are transmitted in five different recensions), are not only concerned with ‘penitential’ topics, but also with a wide range of matters regarding the administration of the church.



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both liturgical and canonical manuscripts. 7 However, the manuscript context sometimes affected the form and outlook of the penitential. From the late ninth century onwards, penitentials began to appear as questionnaires; that is, as lists of questions integrated into liturgical ordines of penance.8 Different versions of such lists, sometimes with the penances entirely omitted, circulated across Europe. An Italian example is the interrogatory penitential of the tenth-century manuscript, Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 5768, a liturgical rituale written in Bobbio.9 Although it is uncertain whether this questionnaire is of Italian origin, it is nevertheless found in numerous Italian manuscripts.10 Perhaps the best-known example of an interrogatory penitential is the Corrector sive Medicus, Book 19 of Burchard of Worms’s early eleventh-century Decretum. As the canons of such interrogatories could be addressed to confessants directly, penitentials in the second category, those found in canonistic manuscripts, are first and foremost directed towards the priest and bishop, as will be seen below. The incorporation of penitential canons into canon law is all the more significant given the critique that penitentials met during the Carolingian reforms. Halitgar of Cambrai (

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