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The Church Fathers · c. 650

The Penitential of Cummean

Cummean

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What it is

A tariff of penances arranged under the eight principal vices taken from Cassian, prescribing a measured remedy for each sin by kind, duration, and the offender's rank — with contraries applied to contraries as a physician treats disease.

Why it lasted

The most systematic of the Irish penitentials and the one that carried the eight vices, and private repeatable confession, into continental practice. Western sacramental penance as it developed is largely an Irish export, and this is its clearest specimen.

Scripture it works from

Where to read it

Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.

These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.

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