THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
of the war he took his theological course, as above, was made deacon, 1869, and priest, 1870; he then served his church at Bristol, Va., St. George's, Mount Savage, Md., and the Church of the Messiah, Baltimore; he was consecrated missionary bishop of Cape Palmas, Africa, in 1877, and did good service in healing divisions and establishing missions in Africa; in 1883 he resigned, and became rector of St. Andrew s, Louisville, Ky., and later at Frankfort, Ky. He has written : More than a Prophet: a Series of Expository Chapters of the Life of St. John the Baptist (New York, 1881); Our Deeds, our Memories, our Duties (1888); and Hopes, Perils, and Struggles of Negroes in the United States (1893), besides missionary reports and briefer papers.
PENITENTIAL BOOKS (Libri pcenitentiales): Collections of rules for the guidance of the confessor, prescribing the satisfaction he ought to demand before granting absolution. The pre-Reformation Church taught, like the modern Roman Catholic, that the forgiveness of sins required, besides contrition and confession, the performance of some act of penance, which in the early Church was taken as evidence of the sincerity of the repentance (see Penance, Repentance). Later, under the influence of Teutonic legal customs, the payment of a sum of money appears as compensation for an act displeasing to God. The earlier good works required for this purpose consisted usually in acts of selfdenial prescribed by custom, which the sinner imposed upon himself for a time; the later money payment, to be devoted to pious and benevolent ends, was taken in their stead as an act pleasing to God. It was the function of the confessor to determine, according to the gravity of the sins confessed, the amount of this payment; and rules grew up as a standard for the regulation of penances. Collections of rules for the performance of the confessor's office were known as libri pamitentiales. In the early Church, the synods and councils held at Ancyra (314), Nicaea (325), and elsewhere, laid down such rules; and further influence on their development was exercised by three letters of St. Basil of Caesarea (d. 379), which contain directions for penance. John Scholasticus (d. 578) selected therefrom sixty-eight canons for his Syntagma, and the Second Trullan synod (692) confirmed them.
The later development of this literature in the Church of the East has little importance for the West; Basil was studied there, but the Church of the West had worked on the problem for itself a century before his time. Thus about the middle of the third century, Cyprian mentions the compilation, from the decisions of African councils on the question of the Lapsed (q.v.), of a little book of particular directions. The monastic discipline had its influence, and so had the secular law with its system of graded fines for all offenses, giving impulse in the old British and Irish Church to a whole literature of penitential books prescribing particular penance for respective sins. Fragments of these are preserved in later compilations; such as the Canones Patrieii (c. 546), a Liber Davidis (St. David, bishop of Menevia, d. 544), and a penitential of Gildas (d. 583). Theodore, archbishop of Canter-
bury (d. 690) made use of these works for the Anglo- Saxon Church, though he was in connection with Greek and Roman tradition also. The names of Bede (d. 735) and Archbishop Egbert of York (d. 767) are also attached to similar compilations.
These regulations were brought over to the Frankish kingdom by Columban (q.v.), when he came from Bangor to Gaul about 590; he wrote a Liber de pcenitentia which was much esteemed and served as a foundation for later works. Still greater influence on the Frankish discipline was exercised by some of the confessional books ascribed to Theodore and by a Pcenitentiale Commeani, dating probably from the beginning of the eighth century. The confusion resulting from this variety of authorities induced the Frankish synods to condemn them generally, in favor of a stricter discipline based on the old canons, Holy Scripture, and ecclesiastical custom. About 829 Ebo, bishop of Reims, induced Halitgar of Cambrai to compile a book of the kind himself; of this the first two parts are taken from Gregory I. and Prosper, books III.-V are an extract from an independent collection of his own; and book VI. is attributed to a Roman source, though it is certainly Frankish.
Entirely independent of this is the Pcenitentiale Romanum of which there is frequent mention from the first half of the eighth century, and upon the significance of which different opinions have been offered. The proof, however, that a universal system of penance approved by the Curia does not exist is accepted. The title Paenitentiale Romanum, never applied to one and the same work, really represents the source of the principles of universal application, as distinguished from local or national bodies of penances. Other penitential books arose in the Frankish kingdom of the ninth century, and finally every diocese had its own; but all employed the same material, which passed from one to another, from the above-mentioned sources through the collections of Regino, Burchard, and others, down to Gratian. (E. Feiedberg.)
Bibliography: A rich article is to be found in DC A, ii. 1608-16, with minute bibliographical detail. Consult further: F. W. H. Wassersehleben, Die Bussordnungen der abendlandischen Kirche, Halle, 1851 (learned and full) ;
E. Friedberg, Aus deutschen BussbiXchern, Halle, 1868;
F. Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen und der Litteratur des kanonischen Rechts im Abendlande, Gratz, 1870; R. Gibbings, The Taxes of the Apostolic Penitentiary, Dublin, 1872; E. Katz, Grundriss des kanonischen Strafrechts, Berlin, 1881; H. J. Schmitz, Die Bussbiicher und die Bussdisziplin der Kirche, Mainz, 1883; H. C. Lea, .1 Formulary of the Papal Penitentiary, Philadelphia, 1892; P. Hinschius, Kirchenrecht, v. 90 sqq., Berlin, 1895; Schaff , Christian Church, iv. 371 sqq.; Neander, Christian Church, iii. 137 sqq., 451 sqq.
PENITENTIAL ORDERS: A general name for numerous orders and religious corporations submitting to classification according to their practical relations and functions, for (1) the instruction of the young; (2) nursing of the sick; (3) spiritual ministration; (4) redemption of captives; (5) controversy with infidels; (6) public preaching (Franciscans and Dominicans); and (7) home and foreign missions (Lazarites of France). All have the one aim in common, to attain heaven by a life of asceticism or penance. Besides this general aim some of the