ABSTRACT
This history of penance and the penitentials will provide a context for the study of the texts and will locate penitential expectations for, and understandings of, women within the processes which constituted the christianisation of the early medieval West. The history of the penitentials has been well documented in the works of such eminent historians as Pierre Payer, Allan J. Frantzen, Cyrille Vogel, John T. McNeill.1 However, the study of the penitentials has suffered from a view among earlier historians that their content was, at best, discreditable and, at worst, prurient. Such attitudes have, until recently, prevented scholars from recognising the value of these texts as mirrors of everyday life. Unfortunately, some early scholars found the texts unworthy of consideration as reflections of actual behaviour. This attitude derived from the misconception that much of the contents of the penitentials originated in the psychological abysses of monastic minds festering from sexual deprivation. Plummer refused to believe that Bede could possibly have been associated with such an unworthy project.2 On the other hand, McNeill considered the penitentials to be valid reflections of the sins which might be disclosed in the confessional but reflected that this provided intimate insights into ‘human nature in its viler aspects’.3 In such cases the problem was that these historians refused to examine the sins tariffed in the penitentials for insights into the commonplace behaviour of women and men, and were apparently less disposed to judge sinners compassionately than the compilers of the handbooks had been.
