Pseudo-Bede: De Remediis Peccatorum

This penitential, a handbook for priests assigning penance, is known as the Penitential of Bede. In the preface the compiler says he has excerpted these few remedies for sins from the records of earlier fathers, not with the authority of a judge but with the counsel of one who shares the sinner’s suffering, and urges every priest to consider the sex, age, condition, status and heart of each penitent before judging. Penances such as fasting, frequent genuflection or standing with arms outstretched in the form of a cross are to be weighed with discretion. The chapters then list penances for fornication and other sexual sins, killing, eating unclean meat, capital crimes, lesser sins, greed, the sins of clergy, and oaths.

The work belongs to the penitential literature that grew up in Ireland and England and spread across the Continent in the eighth and ninth centuries. Its attribution to Bede is debated, and in the manuscripts it is closely associated with the penitential of Egbert, archbishop of York, as the label of one section shows. It is an important source for early medieval church discipline and for the social and moral concerns of the period.