The Library
1693 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
1–100
1 work
c. AD 1–100
Greek
Apocalypse of Moses
Anonymous
What Adam and Eve did after the garden: the penance standing in the Jordan and the Tigris, Satan's account of why he refused to worship a creature made of clay, and Eve's deathbed confession to her children of how it all happened.
201–300
6 works
c. 203
Latin
De Paenitentia
Tertullian · c. 155–c. 220
Two repentances are described: the one that leads to baptism, and the single painful public penance allowed to a believer who falls afterwards.
c. 217–222
Latin
De Pudicitia
Tertullian · c. 155–c. 220
A furious response to a bishop who offered forgiveness to the sexually lapsed, denying that the church has power to remit such sins at all.
c. 230
Syriac
Didascalia Apostolorum
Anonymous
A Syrian church order on the duties of bishops, the seating of the congregation, the reconciliation of penitents, the care of widows, and the ministry of deaconesses to women.
251
Latin
De Lapsis
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
After the Decian persecution, an unsparing analysis of why so many complied so quickly, and a refusal to let confessors hand out forgiveness in place of the bishop and a period of penance.
c. 253
Latin
De Opere et Eleemosynis
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
An appeal for generosity to the poor, arguing that alms cleanse sins committed after baptism and answering wealthy Christians who plead that they have children to provide for.
c. 254–258
Greek
Gregory Thaumaturgus · c. 213 – c. 270
Written after a barbarian raid on Pontus, ruling on Christians who took advantage of the chaos: those who kept plunder, those who informed on neighbours, those who joined the raiders, and the women taken captive, who are declared guiltless.
301–400
3 works
306
Greek
Peter of Alexandria · d. 311
Fourteen rulings grading the penance owed by Christians who failed under persecution — those who bribed officials, those who sent slaves in their place, those who fled — with a different penalty for each.
c. 375–390
Latin
Pacian of Barcelona · d. c. 391
Three courteous letters to a Novatianist who had written to say the catholic church had no right to forgive the lapsed. Pacian answers that the power to bind and loose was given without conditions, and defines himself in a phrase that outlived everything else he wrote: Christian is my name, Catholic my surname.
379–397
Latin
Ambrose of Milan · c. 339–397
Correspondence including the letters in which a bishop refuses an emperor communion until he does public penance for a massacre.
501–600
2 works
c. 525–550
Latin
Finnian · 6th century
A tariff of penances matching each sin with its remedy, and prescribing that contraries be cured by contraries — the greedy to give, the angry to be patient.
c. 590–600
Latin
Columbanus · c. 543–615
A severe Irish rule for the monasteries he founded across Gaul and Italy, paired with a penitential assigning a specific penance to each named sin.
601–700
2 works
c. 650
Latin
Cummean
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.
c. 690, from his rulings
Latin
Theodore of Tarsus · 602–690
Rulings by a Greek archbishop of Canterbury on penance, marriage, food, and the reconciliation of Irish and Roman practice, collected by a disciple.
701–800
1 work
c. 740–760
Latin
Egbert of York · d. 766
A northern English tariff of penances covering perjury, theft, violence, sexual sin, and the eating of blood, with reductions for the poor and the ill.
1001–1100
1 work
c. 1008–1012
Latin
Burchard of Worms · c. 950–1025
Twenty books of canon law for a working bishop, the nineteenth of which is a penitential listing in detail the folk practices confessors should ask about.
1301–1400
1 work
c. 1354
Italian
Specchio di vera penitenza
Jacopo Passavanti · c. 1302–1357
Lenten sermons on confession and penance, illustrated with vivid cautionary tales of the damned appearing to the living.
1601–1700
1 work
1643
French
Antoine Arnauld · 1612–1694
An argument that communion should be approached only after real penitence, against confessors who admitted penitents again the same week.
18 of 1693 works