The Armour Archive

Hi,

I often misspeak or trip over myself.

So I'm asking what the historical versions of pennance are.

What is the historical basis of sackcloth and ashes? Is it documentable?

Thank you,

Yes, it is documentable, specifically (that I know of) to biblical times. I believe the story of Jonah has a mention of the king declaring such, when he is told his city will be destroyed.

Sackcloth and ashes was a primarily Biblical form of penance. It still was known in the Middle Ages but many other forms of penance were known, for example:

“SCARIFICATION, n. A form of penance practised by the mediaeval pious. The rite was performed, sometimes with a knife, sometimes with a hot iron, but always, says Arsenius Asceticus, acceptably if the penitent spared himself no pain nor harmless disfigurement.

There's a book in print that's a translation of a Manual for assigning penances for specific sins:
http://tinyurl.com/2e8lnf

This is a book describing penances imposed at different times in history:
http://www.amazon.com/Humiliation-Sinners-Public-Penance-Thirteenth-century/dp/0801489946

And here is something from the Florilegium:
http://www.florilegium.org/files/NICOLAA/confession-art.html

Another scholarly article:
http://www.catholicculture.org/library/view.cfm?recnum=5231

One very public penance was that of Henry II after the murder of Archbishop Thomas a Beckett. Wearing only a woolen smock, he walked barefoot from London to Canterbury and lay in the cathedral where he was scourged by all the monks (not just four chosen ones as the movie showed it).

Another was that of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry (Heinrich) IV, who was excommunicated by Pope Gregory VII. Henry went in penitential humility to where the Pope was living in Canossa in the winter, The Emperor was barefoot and dressed in a monks' robe or hair shirt. The Pope kept him waiting for three days before admitting and absolving him.

But the Pope should have quit while he was ahead. He imposed additional penance on Henry (which apparently were private because I haven't seen them described anywhere), to which he objected and eventually deposed the Pope.

One question that always comes up with such things is when and where and to a certain extent what for. And in this one is it a pennance chosen by oneself, by ones confessor or ijmposed by a church court.

Some sources via Google Books -

• Medieval Handbooks of Penance: A Translation of the Principal Libri Poeniteniales by John Thomas McNeill and Helena Margaret Gamer
• "Penitence and Penitents" in Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence by John Henderson

There are many cases biblically, none of them as pennance though, but of grief.

Job and the city of Ninevah to name two.

Look up celice.
And "hairshirt."

Effingham

Why would ashes be penance?

Ashes mixed with natural oils the hair can saponify into a form a lye soap, so maybe the ashes part was to clean up your act.

Ash was, was, and still is placed on a parishioners forhead (even in some Protestant churches), on Ash Wednesday - then, and now.

I know a lot of people on the board are Neopagans, or a-religious, but haven't any of you been to a church a couple of times during your life?

Just low-church.

Alcyoneus wrote:Just low-church.

Which there is no excuse for because the Bishop of reference for Western Rite Orthodoxy is in Wichita.