The Christian theory of penance ultimately rests on the view that the Christian church is the precise analogue of the Jewish people under the elder dispensation. As the Jews were the one family on earth in direct covenant with God, so that it became necessary for all Gentiles who desired to be brought into the like relation to abandon their own proper nationality and to become Jews by adoption, forsaking their former habits and associations together with their creed; and as various offences against the law of Moses were punished with temporary or final exclusion from fellowship in the Hebrew polity; so was it from a very early period in the Christian church. One marked difference between the Rabbinical and the Christian discipline is indeed visible from the first, that the former involved the suspension or deprivation of civil rights, whereas the latter, in all the earlier centuries at any rate, was a purely spiritual penalty. But they are agreed in combining two ideas, one wholly foreign (as already observed) to paganism, and the other but vaguely shadowed therein, —the aim of healing the offender himself and the need of his making public satisfaction to the society whose rules he had broken, and which might suffer in reputation and influence by reason of his misconduct. It is this notion of satisfaction which has led to the extension of the word “penance” itself from its more restricted and legal meaning to its wider use as covering the whole range of ascetic practices. And, as it soon came to be accepted that the inward sorrow for sin would be attended with an outward token of that sorrow, involving pain or humiliation in some form or other, there are four distinct stages in the ecclesiastical use of the word “poenitentia,”—first, as denoting the change of mind due to sorrow for sin; next, the external penalty attached to each offence; thirdly, the discipline of the church in dealing with all spiritual offences; and lastly, any piece of austerity practised with a religious motive; and the fact of the Latin language having no doublets like the English “penitence” and “penance” to express the distinct though allied ideas of the mental attitude and the outward action has powerfully conditioned Latin theology and practice.

There is naturally but little to be found in the New Testament on the subject of discipline; but the whole principle is provided for and anticipated in one saying of

Christ—that which directs that he who neglects to hear the church as arbiter in a dispute shall be regarded as a heathen man and a publican, and which goes on to confer upon the apostles the power of binding and loosing (Matt, xviii. 17, 18),—words which they, with their Jewish experience and associations, must needs have interpreted as authorizing, and even enjoining, the infliction of penalties, and notably that of excommunication, upon members of the new society. Accordingly, the leading example of such discipline, the case of the incestuous Corinthian, attests plainly some form of trial, a sentence of excommunication, some proof of repentance, and the consequent reconciliation and restoration of the offender (1 Cor. v.; 2 Cor. ii. 6-10); and it is most probable that some such method was pursued in the sub-apostolic church, each case being dealt with locally, and on its separate merits, long before any formal system or code came into existence. The penalties seem at first to have been very simple and lenient, leaving out of account the difficult problem of the phrase “delivering to Satan,” twice found in this connexion (1 Cor. v. 5; 1 Tim. i. 20), which may mean merely relegating to heathen fellowship by exclusion from the society of Christians, but also may cover much more ground. Exclusion from the eucharist itself, exclusion from non-communicating attendance at the eucharist, and exclusion from all religious assemblies for even the minor offices of worship are the only censures discoverable in the earlier period, though it is not long before certain additional penalties accompanying these grades of separation begin to appear. The following broad rules govern all cases of penitential discipline in the ancient church. (1) Penance related only to baptized and communicant Christians. Even catechumens were not held capable of it, to say nothing of Jews or Pagans. (2) It was exclusively spiritual, and in no way touched the civil condition of the penitent, even after the conversion of the empire. (3) It was not compulsory, but spontaneous; nay, so far was it from being imposed, that it had to be sought as a favour. Of course, where it was not so sought the excommunication of the offender remained in force, but this excommunication was not regarded as in itself a penance in the later use of that term. (4) The most usual rule allowed of penance but once. The relapsing offender had no second opportunity granted him. (5) It was always preceded by confession (εξορολόγησις), a term which, however, even as early as Tertullian’s time, was already extended to include, over and above the oral acknowledgment of guilt, the external acts of mortification accompanying it (De Poen., c. 9). (6) There was a careful classification of the offences involving penance, and after a time a corresponding classification of penitents into certain fixed grades, through which it was in many cases necessary to pass, from the lowest to the highest, before receiving absolution and being restored to full communion.

The case dealt with by St Paul establishes one point, that of the comparative brevity of the time of penance, even for very grave offences, since three years is the longest period which can have elapsed between the two epistles to the Corinthians; whereas under the later system periods of fifteen and twenty years are not rarely to be found, and in some cases penance was for life, however protracted. The earlier method can be shown to have come into wide acceptance far within the 2d century, because it forms the subject of a charge made against the church by Tertullian in one of his Montanist treatises (De Pudicitia) ; and the more stringent discipline of the succeeding era appears to be due to the nearly simultaneous action of two causes,—the great success which attended the persecution set on foot by the emperor Decius in 249, resulting as it did in a far larger proportion of apostasies and compromises than any of the others, and the rise of Novatianism within two years, in protest against the leniency exercised towards the lapsed. Although the church rejected the extreme theories of rigid discipline which Novatian formulated, yet it was tacitly admitted that he did but exaggerate a truth, and the reins began to be drawn tighter from that time forward. Much information regarding the practical working of the system in the third century can be gathered from the epistles of Cyprian, and from his treatise On the Lapsed ; but the fact that he had to struggle against a lax party in Africa, at the very time when laxity was preponderant in the Italian Church, proves that no uniform system had yet been evolved. The 4th century is the period when broad general rules, intended to apply to all cases, begin to be laid down, and when the distribution of penitents into fixed classes or grades is clearly evident. The Eastern Church took the lead in this development, and canons of Ancyra and Neo-Caesarea in 314 refer to the grades of penance in terms which imply their general recognition as already established. They are first defined in an epistle ascribed to Gregory Thaumaturgus about the year 258, and are as under: (1) Weepers, forbidden to. enter a church, and permitted merely to assemble at the doors to ask the prayers of those entering; (2) Hearers, suffered to come in for the Scripture lessons and the minor offices, but obliged to depart before the eucharistie office began; (3) Kneelers, allowed to attend the earlier part of the eucharistie office, as far as the close of the introductory portion, but obliged to withdraw then along with the catechumens; (4) Standers, who might remain throughout the entire rite, but were not suffered to communicate. This minute subdivision does not seem to have made good a footing in Western Christendom, where the first of these degrees is not found on record (Morinus, De Poeηiteηt., vi. 8), nor did it hold its ground very long in the East itself, disappearing as it does during the 5th century. The penitential observances usually imposed on those who were admitted to these grades were public confession of their offence in presence of the congregation, and that, in the case of the lowest grade, several times over; the disuse of all ornaments, and the assumption of a sackcloth garb, with the strewing of ashes on the head (Euseb., II. E., v. 28); men had to cut off their hair and shave their beards; women to wear their hair dishevelled and to adopt a special veil; all had to abstain from baths, festivals, and, generally speaking, all physical enjoyments, and fasting on bread and water was often enjoined; they were bound to much more frequent and regular attendance at all religious assemblies than the faithful or the catechumens (Cone. Carthag. IV., c. 81); if possessed of means, they were required to give largely in alms, or to assist actively in works of charity; and they were, for the first ten centuries, incapable of being admitted to ordination. One result of the crowds of penitents which had to be dealt with after the lull that followed the Decian persecution was that the bishops were no longer sufficient in numbers to deal with each case separately, though under the earlier system the bishop alone (even when the presbyters acted as his assessors) could put to penance, as he continued for a long time to be the only officer who could reconcile and readmit those who had performed their appointed penance. A practice arose, therefore, of appointing certain presbyters to confer with all persons applying for admission to penance, and to receive their confessions privately, in order to prepare them for the public confession which made an integral part of penance, and indeed to decide whether they could be admitted thereto at all. These officers, known as “penitentiaries,” were abolished in the church of Constantinople by the patriarch Nectarius about 390 (Socrat., II. E., v. 19; Sozom., II. E., vii. 16), and his example was followed throughout nearly the whole East; but the office continued in the West, with various modifications necessitated by the gradual change of discipline.

The main difference between the earlier and later systems lies in the fact that penance was for some centuries restricted to certain very grave sins, to wit, idolatry, adultery, and murder, with such lesser offences as were closely allied (as, for instance, the delivery of the sacred books to pagan inquisitors, that traditio which has given the words “treason” and “traitor” to modern diction); nor does it appear that any distinction was made between the treatment of those penitents whose guilt was notorious and those whose own voluntary confession alone made it manifest. Minor offences were punished with suspension of communion and with refusal of oblations at the hands of the offender, and many were left wholly to the individual conscience. But the catalogue of canonical offences was much enlarged at the time when the penitential system was developed and codified,—theft, usury, false witness, polygamy, habitual drunkenness, and some others being included amongst those which had to be publicly expiated. Yet it was this increased severity which led to the almost total abrogation of public penance, because of the scandal given by the publication of the numerous offences on the new list, whereas the cases under the older rule were necessarily few, however serious. It is clearly stated by both Socrates and Sozomen that the motive of Nectarius in abolishing the office of penitentiary was to avoid the recurrence of an uproar occasioned by the public confession of a lady of high rank, implicating others in a disgraceful fashion, so that he judged it better to leave the question of communion to be settled in private by penitents with their religious advisers, and not to be made matter of general publicity. This became the rule at once in the East, but public penance held its place in the West for many centuries longer, and in fact has never become entirely obsolete. There was, however, a considerable innovation introduced after the 7th century, in that offences privately committed were put in a different category from public sins, and were no longer made liable to public penance, but might be, and soon were, dealt with by private confession and penance only. Not only so, but, whereas the accusation of any person to the bishop as an offender was the usual mode of bringing his case under ecclesiastical cognizance in the earlier Christian centuries, on the other hand the discipline introduced in the Middle Ages was to exact public penance from such alone as had been convicted on trial before secular judges. The first beginnings of this innovation on Western usage are attributed by Morinus with much probability to Theodore of Tarsus, the Greek archbishop of Canterbury, who sat from 668 to 690, and whose Penitential (or code of ecclesiastical discipline), though not the earliest even now extant in the British Isles, soon achieved wide acceptance throughout the West, notwithstanding that it followed the then long-established Eastern usage in favour of private as opposed to public confession. A more serious innovation, fraught with dangerous consequences, made its appearance somewhat later, that of buying off a penance by a money payment to be expended in alms, a system in full force in the 9th century, as attested by the capitularies of Hincmar of Rheims and Hérard of Tours. Another custom which tended to break down the efficiency of the earlier discipline was that of resorting to Rome to have the more serious cases adjudicated on by the pope. At first this was an exceptional mode of dealing with difficult matters, regarded as too serious or too intricate for local decision, but by the 11th century it had become a fashion, so that offenders of any rank or wealth refused habitually to submit to penance at the hands of the local authorities, and betook themselves to Rome, where they stated their case in their own way, with no evidence to check them, so that they were enabled either to evade the canonical penances altogether or to get them much lightened. This abuse was combated by various councils, notably that of Seligenstadt in 1022, which decreed in its eighteenth canon “that no indulgences obtained from the Roman pontiff should avail for penitents, unless they had first fulfilled the penances set them by their own priests according to the degree of their offence; and, if they chose to go then to Rome, they must procure a permit from their own bishop, and letters on the matter in question to be carried to the pope.” But this attempt to check the practice was unsuccessful, and it became established that, just as certain cases of conscience were reserved to the bishop, and could not be dealt with by ordinary parish priests, so certain other cases were withdrawn from the cognizance of the bishops themselves, and reserved for the hearing and decision of the pope alone. Many alterations in the nature and incidence of penances were made in the course of the later Middle Ages, but the details are unimportant except for specialists; it will suffice to mention such examples as imprisonment in monasteries, penitential pilgrimages, and flagellations, the last having been introduced by the hermit Dominic the Cuirassier (died 1060).

It is time to speak of the position occupied by penance in the theological systems of the Latin and Greek Churches. Both of them account penance, taken in its widest sense of the method of dealing spiritually with sins by confession, discipline, and absolution, as a sacrament, but there are various differences in their theories and methods. The Greek and Armenian Churches are in full agreement with the Latin Church in regarding confession as an integral and essential part of penance, of which they consider it the outward and visible sign, while the spiritual part of the sacrament consists in the form of absolution, whether precatory or declaratory, pronounced by the priest. And they lay down that the external acts of asceticism performed by the penitent...