Page 197 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

Irish Monasticism and the Penitential
Irish monasticism became well known for its ascetic practices. Much emphasis was placed on careful examination of conscience to determine if one had committed a sin against God. To facilitate this examination, penitentials were developed that listed possible sins with appropriate penances. Penance usually meant fasting—consuming nothing but bread and water—for a certain number of days each week. Although these penitentials were eventually used throughout Christendom, they were especially important in Irish Christianity. This excerpt from the Penitential of Cummean, an Irish abbot, was written about 650 and demonstrates a distinctive feature
of the penitentials, an acute preoccupation with sexual sins.
The Penitential of Cummean
A bishop who commits fornication shall be degraded and shall do penance for twelve years.
A presbyter or a deacon who commits natural fornication, having previously taken the vow of a monk, shall do penance for seven years. He shall ask pardon every hour; he shall perform a special fast during every week except in the days between Easter and Pentecost.
He who defiles his mother shall do penance for three years, with perpetual pilgrimage.
So shall those who commit sodomy do penance every seven years. . . .
He who is willingly polluted during sleep shall arise and sing nine psalms in order, kneeling. On the following day, he shall live on bread and water.
A cleric who commits fornication once shall do penance for one year on bread and water; if he begets a son he shall do penance for seven years as an exile; so also a virgin.
He who loves any woman, but is unaware of any evil beyond a few conversations, shall do penance for forty days.
He who is in a state of matrimony ought to be continent during the three forty-day periods and on Saturday and on Sunday, night and day, and in the two appointed week days [Wednesday and Friday], and after conception, and during the entire menstrual period.
After a birth he shall abstain, if it is a son, for thirty-three [days]; if a daughter, for sixty-six [days]. . . .
Children who imitate acts of fornication, twenty days; if frequently, forty.
But boys of twenty years who practice masturbation together and confess [shall do penance] twenty or forty days before they take communion.
Q What does the Penitential of Cummean reveal about the nature of Irish monasticism? What do you think was the theory of human sexuality held by early Irish Christianity?
Source: From Medieval Handbooks of Penance, edited by John T. McNeill and Helena M. Garner. Copyright a 1990 by Columbia University Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
life. Irish monasteries produced extraordinary illumi- nated manuscripts illustrated with abstract geometric patterns.
Their emphasis on asceticism led many Irish monks to go into voluntary exile. This “exile for the love of God” was not into isolation, however, but into mission- ary activity. Irish monks became fervid missionaries. Saint Columba (521–597) left Ireland in 565 as a “pilgrim for Christ” and founded an influential monas- tic community off the coast of Scotland on the island of Iona. From there Irish missionaries went to north- ern England to begin the process of converting the Angles and Saxons. Other Irish monks traveled to the European continent. New monasteries founded by
the Irish became centers of learning wherever they were located.
At the same time the Irish monks were busy bring- ing their version of Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons of Britain, Pope Gregory the Great had set into motion an effort to convert England to Roman Chris- tianity. His most important agent was Augustine, a monk from Rome, who arrived in England in 597. England at that time had a number of Germanic king- doms. Augustine went first to Kent, where he con- verted King Ethelbert; most of the king’s subjects then followed suit. Pope Gregory’s conversion techni- ques emphasized persuasion rather than force, and as seen in this excerpt from one of his letters, he was
Development of the Christian Church 159
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