Amy Steinberg

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, "Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch"? All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence.

-Colossians 2:20-23

This is how the Lord gave me, brother Francis, the power to do penance.

-The Testament of St. Francis of Assisi

Sin, according to TheCatholic Encyclopedia, is "a moral evil...[and] evil implies a deficiency in perfection" (O'Neil). Sin is man's fall from perfection, the breaking of the covenant between God and creation. The Ten Commandments defined sin for Jews, and later, Christians, in a concrete manner. It should then follow that sin is a fairly simple issue. However, with sin, came temptation, and as man and woman alike gave into the lures of sin, they soon discovered that just as God was vengeful, God was also forgiving. They began to interpret the Bible, wondering what was necessary for forgiveness of sin to be achieved. This movement is not a fixed time in a history, but rather a series of paths in the growth of a faith, specifically Catholic Christianity. Those actions of reparation for sin fall under the Catholic interpretation of penance.

In the Medieval period, acts of penance varied from prayer and confession, to mortification and other ascetic acts. Ascetics, as those who practiced bodily denial were so named, sometimes believed that mortification was not only an act of atonement, but also a preventative measure. Christianity became preoccupied with the notion of sin and the nature of forgiveness through penance. This page examines the nature of penance through the Middle Ages, the growth of the Ascetic movement and its principles, and finally, mortification as an act of atonement and prevention.

The act of penance most often began with the act of confession, though confession alone was not enough to earnforgiveness. In the early days of Christian expiation through penance, penance basically took two forms, public and private. Private penance was confession in its earliest form. Public penance, on the other hand, was of a more serious nature to the sinner as well as the church. In the following passage, public penance and its consequences are described:

Forgiveness for the major or capital sins (such as adultery, murder, idolatry) was obtained through the rite of public penance that began on Ash Wednesday with the excommunication of the penitentsfrom the church and the Eucharist, prayers for their forgiveness, and the enjoining of penance...the penance ended on Holy Thursday with reconciliation and readmission to the Eucharist. (Paylr 489)

By the thirteenth century, penance had evolved into three forms: solemn, public, and private. By this time, solemn penance had taken on the form of earlier public penance in its severity in terms of the long term consequences. Public penance consisted of rites such as pilgrimages. Private penance referred mainly to confessionals. The pilgrimage reached its peak popularity in the Middle Ages, though it "had been a favorite form of satisfaction for sin since the sixth century" (Braswell 103). In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the storytellers themselves are on a pilgrimage, though we are not told whether it is for punishment or spiritual enlightenment, though "the most memorable characters...are without a doubt sinners" (Braswell 101).

As penance became the central category of expiation, church leaders began to see a need for regulation. According to the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, "Penitentials were handbooks devised to aid the priest-confessor in the administration of private penance" (Paylr 489). Penitentials took many forms, such as lists of canons that specified sins and their particular penances. Penance became an organized and prescribed act even before the Middle Ages. The Celts were probably the first to have penitential handbooks which assigned certain penance to certain sins. In the eleventh century, "confession seems to have been less strictly enforced, despite attempts to appeal to the more mundane interests of the popular mind by alleging that it was a source of earthly good fortune" (Braswell 23).

Because the penitentials of the Celts were not uniform in thier prescriptions, later writers sought to reform the manuals in order to consolidate the various penalties for sin. Penitentials soon evolved into forms called "tariffs." The tariffs were "lists...of various sins that could be committed and a corresponding list of penances that applied automatically to them--prayers and genuflections [reverence] for lesser sins and hard fasting for greater ones, for example" (24). Earlier penitentials often prescribed long, severe punishments which might even be life-long. Later handbooks, however, offered alternative solutions to harsh penalties, where a penitent could satisfy the requirements for penance through "psalms, almsgiving, monetary payments, and even, in some cases, having some one else do the penance" (Paylr 490). Of course, those who were wealthy had advantages over the poor when it came to monetary satisfaction.

However, wealth was not a characteristic enjoyed by all sinners. In fact, many Christians chose to deny themselves those earthly goods which might have actually helped them in the satisfaction of earthly penance. Such a belief in the denial of earthly goods was known as asceticism. According to St. Jerome, asceticism "is an effort to attain true perfection...it is prompted by the desire to do the will of God" (Campbell). Thus, penance is a subsidiary attribute to attaining that perfection and submitting to the will of God. According to the following passage from The Catholic Encyclopedia, the will of God is defined in the Ten Commandments:

The negative precepts, "thou shall not kill", "thou shall not commit adultery", etc., imply the repression of the lower appetites, and consequently call for penance and mortification; but they intend also, and effect, the cultivation of the virtues which are opposed to the things forbidden. (Campbell)

Thus, Christian asceticism derives from a desire to bend to the will of God as defined in the Ten Commandments. The repression of those desires which might cause one to sin can be achieved through penance and mortification. Here, it is evident that penance is not only a punishment, but a preventative measure as well. One might perform penance, such as mortification, in order to suppress those temptations that might be aroused by the flesh.

For some ascetics, the desire to do the will of God is not the only principle of belief. There is an ascetic belief that one must imitate Christ in the manner which is described in the Gospel. The imitation of Christ can be achieved in three basic practices: "mortification of the senses, unworldliness, and detachment from family ties" (Campbell). Mortification can be defined as "one of the methods which Christian asceticism employs in training the soul to virtuous and holy living" ("Mortification"). Mortification is a "means of curing bad habits and implanting good ones" ("Mortification"). Those who would wound their own skin and body do so out of a need to either expiate old sins, a form of penance, or out of a need to deny the body to prevent sin, such as fasting. Those who practice mortification overcome "temptations to sin...by inducing the will to accept hardships...rather than yield to the temptations" ("Mortification").

The Biblical roots for mortification can be found in various parts of the Gospel. Fasting and abstinence are mentioned often in scripture "as a generic term for all sorts of penance" (Campbell). The apostle Paul orginates the term by tracing "an instructive analogy between Christ dying to a mortal and rising to an immortal life, and His followers who renouce their past life of sin and rise to a new life of holiness" ("Mortification"). Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians, "but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified" (1 Corinthians 9:27). Paul is giving his own testament of mortification, though in Colossians, Paul is chastising those who are using mortification for their own satisfaction instead of for God's. Though it may seem that Paul is contradicting himself on the topic of mortification, it is important to note that each of his letters are situation-specific. In the Corinthian and Colossian correspondences, Paul was addressing different churches and different communities with different problems and questions. His responses are unique and individual to the community he is addressing. In Romans, Paul writes " for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death [mortify] the deeds of the body, you will live" (Romans 8:13). Here, Paul is advocating mortification to the community by instructing them to deny the body and mortifythe flesh.

It is thought that Paul was not necessarily advocating physical mortification as much as denial of certain bodily wants. Tertullian, an early Christian writer, writes in On Penitence of exomologesis, public penance. In the following passage, Tertullian describes the discipline of exomologesis:

It prescribes a way of life which, even in the matter of food and clothing, appeals to pity. It bids him to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to cover his body with filthy rags, to plunge his soul into sorrow, to exchange sin for suffering. Moreover, it demands that you know only such food and drink as is plain; this means taken for the sake of your soul, not your belly...Exomologesis does all this in order to render penitence acceptable and in order to honor God through fear of punishment, so that in passing sentence upon the sinner it may...I will not say prevent eternal torments, but rather cancel them (Saint 31-32, ll. 154-157, 160-161).

In the above passage, Tertullian describes a lifestyle which we would now label as ascetic. He sees the ascetic life prescribed above, if it is to be equated with exomologesis, as not only expiation, but prevention and even cancellation of damnation. The ascetic life forces one to suffer on earth as a "substitute for the wrath of God" ( ln. 161).

According to Tertullian, mortification is compulsory to the ascetic life. Bodily mortification "requires that, unwashed and filthy, they live without joy, in rough sackcloth and frightful ashes, their faces wasted with fasting" (ln. 181). It is here that we find a most interesting aspect of mortification: the mortification of the flesh through the wearing of sackcloth, possibly fashioned into a hair-shirt. According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, a hair-shirt is "a garment of rough cloth made from goat's hair and worn in the form of a shirt or as a girdle around the loins, by way of mortification and penance" (Alston).

The hair-cloth was not only a means of bodily mortification, but a method by which the wearer could resist temptations of the body, such as sexual relations. The hair-cloth was not only common for ascetics, but for "ordinary lay people...who made it serve as an unostentatious antidote for outward luxury and comfort of their lives" (Alston). The hair-shirt was donned by some monastic orders as a means of mortification, as well as penitents on Ash Wednesday. It was perhaps the easiest and most private form of bodily mortification by which a Christian could obtain certain goals, whether ascetic or expiative.

The hair-shirt was a popular form of mortification in the Middle Ages. In The Book Of Margery Kempe, the female mystic Margery Kempe, through her scribe, describes her own mortification: "she did great bodily penance...and wore the hair-shirt every day" (Kempe 47). She also tells of an encounter with "a woman of that town dressed in a pilch" (71). The pilch in this scene is described in a similar manner as the hair-shirt, but an external garment, rather than an undergarment, like the hair-shirt. Thus, the pilch is a more evident form of sackcloth or hair-clothing. The exhibition of a pilch garment has one of two effects: either the wearer is pitied for his or her sin and revered for the piety, or the wearer would be chastised for the outward appearance of vainglory, or pride in his or her own piety. Thus, a hair-shirt was a private undergarment, meant to be known only to the wearer and to God. Margery Kempe undertakes the wearing of the hair-shirt to mortify her flesh and force herself to suffer for her own sins, as well as to prevent herself from breaking her vow of chastity. In the Book, Margery states that "she got herself a hair-cloth made for a kiln--the sort that malt is dried on--and put it inside her gown as discreetly and secretly as she could, so that her husband should not notice it" (47). Margery wore the hair-cloth in secret even from her husband. She wished that not even he would know of her suffering. She did not even want him to know of her vows, lest he too might slander and censure her for her strict life (47).

Margery is an excellent example of the type of person who might have worn a hair-shirt and participated in mortification. She was not a saint, nor was she a spiritual leader. She was an ordinary woman who became extraordinary in her love and visions of Christ. Though later in her Book we learn that Christ gives her permission to remove her sackcloth undergarments, her previous references to the hair-shirt show that both she and her scribe took her mortification very seriously. When Christ releases her from this mortification, it is not only a release for herself, but it is as if Christ is telling even the readers of the book that this sort of fleshly mortification is not necessary. Though Margery often refers to "a thing on her conscience which she had never revealed before that time in all her life" (Kempe 41), we are given the impression that Margery is forgiven for her sins through her unique and personal relationship with Christ. In this book, Christ is portrayed as loving, forgiving, and fatherly. Christ is a friend to Margery. The mortification of the flesh, the doctrines of penance, and the ascetic life all force the followers to suffer for the sake of Christ, and for the sake of salvation. However, St. Jerome writes "Be on your guard when you begin to mortify your body by abstinence and fasting, lest you imagine yourself to be perfect and a saint" (Cambell). Sin is imperfection. Penance is a means to forgiveness. Ascetics attempt to achieve that which may not be attainable: the perfection of God.

Alston, Cyprian. "Hairshirt." The Catholic Encyclopedia.. Online.

Available at: http://www.knight.org/advent/cathen/07113b.htm

Braswell, Mary Flowers. The Medieval Sinner. East Brunswick, New Jersey: Associated

University Press, 1983.

The Testament of St. Francis of Assisi. Burr, David, trans. Online. Available at:

http://courseware.lib.vt.edu/users/olivi/HIST3565/readings/Testament_dup.html

Campbell, T.J. "Asceticism." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Online. Available at:

http://www.knight.org/advent/cathen/01767c.htm

The HarperCollins Study Bible, New Revised Standard Version. New York: HarperCollins Publishers,

1993. [all Biblical citations]

Kempe, Margery. The Book of Margery Kempe. Trans. By B.A. Windeatt. New York: Penguin

Books, 1994.

"Mortification." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Online. Available at:

http://www.knight.org/advent/cathen/10578b.htm

O'Neil, A.C. "Sin." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Online. Available at:

http://www.knight.org/advent/cathen/14004b.htm

Paylr, Pierre J. "Penance." Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Vol. 9. New York:

Charles Scribner's Sons, 1987.

Saint, William. Ancient Christian Writers: Tertullian, Treatises on Penance. Vol. 28. Westminster,

Maryland: The Newman Press, 1959.