ABSTRACT
Strictly speaking, a “penitential” is a libellus (small book) designed for pastoral use covering every kind of misbehavior that Christians consider “sinful” (i.e., offensive to God in contrast to a breach of legal requirements), arranged within a specific theological framework, specifying detailed amounts of penance as remedies. In this sense few penitentials with Irish links have survived: four in Latin (those of Finnian (6th century); Columbanus (6th-7th century); Cummean (7th century); and the Bigotian (8th century)) and one in Irish (before late 8th century). It is clear from surviving texts that these are only a fraction of the number that were compiled or used in Ireland. The term is, however, applied more widely to cover a range of early medieval legal texts which make prescriptions, regarding sinful acts, using the pattern found in penitential libelli (e.g., the Canones Hibernenses). The term is also used more loosely for the system of Christian penance, usually with the gloss that it emerged in Ireland, which was used in the West between the disappearance of “public penance” and the appearance of individual “confession.”
