In a late tenth-century Anglo-Saxon penitential handbook, there is an elaborate penitential commutation for a “powerful man, rich in friends.”Footnote 1 Thinking of a lord who is atoning for a mortal sin like murder, this text says that after the powerful man confesses, lays aside his weapons, and adopts the manner and appearance of a penitent, he can enlist the aid of friends to complete his own seven-year penance in just three days. To accomplish this, the man must first have twelve men fast for those three days on bread, herbs, and water. Next, he must obtain, “in whatever manner he can,” seven times 120 men who also fast for three days. Then the number of days in seven years will be accounted for in just three days. These numbers are not randomly assigned. They are remarkably accurate and add up to almost exactly the number of days in seven years.Footnote 2 The penitential imagined that this powerful man must have had a long list of penances to complete, perhaps even more than this one seven-year penance. But it is striking that he, who was neither poor nor (presumably) ignorant of Christian texts, did not complete his penance by almsgiving, singing the psalter, or some other recognizable penitential work. Rather, the text recommends that proxy penance is the best course of action.
This account raises a number of questions. Where did such thinking come from? How widespread was it? Were there any critiques? In fact, this was not the first mention of proxy penance. In the early church, there was little room for proxy penance primarily because penance could only be completed once in a lifetime and represented one's reintegration back into the fold of the church. There is evidence, however, that in mid-third century Carthage, soon-to-be martyrs offered the benefit of their death to lapsed Christians who had sacrificed to pagan idols in order to avoid death themselves.Footnote 3 These martyrs saw their deaths as fulfilling the necessary punishment for their lapsed brethren. There is also evidence that part of the late-antique eastern monastic relationship included a sharing of the punishment for sin between monks, or at least a pledge to suffer on another's behalf.Footnote 4 Nevertheless, on the whole, penance remained a practice done by one person for his or her own benefit.
By the eighth century, however, according to Megan McLaughlin, a system of penitential aid was well established in Europe: “Any of the faithful could, as an act of charity, pray, fast, or give alms on behalf of penitents. Such assistance was thought to speed up the process of atonement.”Footnote 5 During the year, except for Lent, it was customary that “people often, for love of friends, redeem others' fasts with alms.”Footnote 6 Although this aid, in its more recognizable form, was often directed toward the dead, proxy penance for the living was also a part of this same impulse. The community could lighten the load of their neighbor's penance by completing certain penitential acts, or a rich man could employ a penitential army to expunge his many and great sins.
Scholars have often described the medieval religious trend of “counting piety” as a late medieval phenomenon.Footnote 7 As a result, we forget that this had roots much earlier. Indeed, for as much as late medieval religion calculated time in purgatory, early medieval Christians weighed punishments for sin. And while scholars have debated the development of the particular forms of penance from the early to high Middle Ages—from arithmetic to contrition—few have mentioned the history of proxy penance: that one person could complete a penitential work for someone else. No doubt, the medieval idea of weighing sin and penance will seem strange to some today. While we might not understand how sins and penances could be so meticulously counted, we do understand what it means to work and act on behalf of others, especially for those who cannot help themselves.
The few scholars who have pointed to proxy penance in the early Middle Ages have viewed it as overwhelmingly caustic to the penitential system, as if monks and ecclesiastics could not wait to use proxy penance to defraud people.Footnote 8 This conclusion is not entirely without merit, as early medieval forms of proxy penance were not immune to the tariffed nature of the age, which could so easily turn the virtuous activity of “bearing one another's burdens” into the iniquitous desire to “take away my sin so that I do not have to pay for it.” Scholars have not, however, focused on the ways in which proxy penance was also a great comfort to the sinner, nor have they placed proxy penance in a broader chronology, nor have they examined the full range of source material on the topic. This article amends the scholarship.
This article analyzes proxy penance in the early Middle Ages in three sections. First, I provide the background to proxy penance by describing the early medieval developments of penance. Second, I examine statements in liturgical and penitential texts that encouraged the priest to be a partaker or sharer in a sinner's penance. Third, I uncover the evidence for proxy penance among the laity. Precisely because early medieval penitential culture had adopted a system of calculation for tallying and paying off sins, the laity began to create new ways to pay off their eternal debts: by hiring or allowing others to do it for them. Embedded within acts of proxy penance was the tension between empathy and abuse. Priests were routinely encouraged to “share in the foulness” of those who confessed to them, and the laity developed a practice of fasting for others. At the same time, the church criticized proxy penance as an abuse of the penitential system, and for good reason. If the wealthy (or even priests) could game the system, penance would lose its credibility. Indeed, this back and forth rhythm—promotion and criticism of proxy penance—existed side-by-side in early medieval Europe. Even so, for the priest and the layperson, proxy penance provided an avenue for empathizing with other members of the body of Christ even as it enabled abuse.
I. Early Medieval Developments of Penance
By the sixth century, penitential practice began to shift away from the ancient method where those in the ranks of the ordo poenitentiae who completed public, or canonical, penance were corporately reconciled to the church.Footnote 9 Based, in part, on Tertullian's denial that penance, as a second baptism, could be completed more than once, the early church encouraged Christians who had committed mortal or grievous sins to seek remission of those sins only once in their lifetime during a Lenten ritual.Footnote 10 As a result, and because completing penance included lingering punishments even after reconciliation, most people deferred participation until their deathbeds.Footnote 11 Stemming from sixth- and seventh-century Irish monastic influences, private penance arose in the early Middle Ages to encourage penitential discipline throughout one's life. As a result, penance became a repeatable activity. Thus, by the seventh century, the Council of Châlon presented penance as a normal part of the Christian's life.Footnote 12 Even as the forms of penance changed, the day-to-day practice remained a fertile ground for proxy activities to take root and flourish because penitents were always in a state of need.
As a result of this shift from one-time to repeatable penance, European penitential practice began to develop a judicial approach to counting and paying off sins—what Peter Brown has recently called the “peccatization” of the early medieval world.Footnote 13 Scholars have labeled this new system “tariffed penance” because it so meticulously imagined the necessary penitential acts that were required for each sin. Some of these sins were unbelievably specific: Did you drink liquor that a dead mouse had been in, or have sex with two sisters, or eat honey from bees that had just killed a person? But others seem routine: Did you kill someone? Did you commit perjury? Did you steal? Each crime had its corresponding penitential act of satisfaction: one year fasting on bread and water, seven years of hard penance, or even a lifetime of wandering. Prayer, almsgiving, and fasting were by far the most frequently assigned penances. Augustine and others had earlier argued for the benefit of this trio, but their popularity as penitential acts stemmed from being similarly easy to count—as if the confessor could weigh the sin in one hand and the penance in the other.
Lists of these sins and penances were written down, compiled, and copied from generation to generation in an attempt to stabilize and codify penitential practice. These penitentials, as they were called, were then used for numerous purposes: handy reference guides for confessors, doctrinal rubrics for theologians, companions to liturgical rites, and proto-canon law rulings.Footnote 14
While tariffed penance remained the norm for some time, reformist councils in France in the early ninth century attempted to reinstate the ancient public penitential process in opposition to the new system. These critics of the penitentials argued that because the modes of penance in the penitentials varied greatly and seemed to have devolved from more ancient penitential practices, the penitentials themselves ought to be destroyed. Although they were banned in 813 and again in 829, and bishops were encouraged to send them to the flames, these actions were largely rhetorical gestures that encouraged the reform of the penitential system and the creation of new penitentials that were more mindful of the ancient system and more able to be regulated by the bishops.Footnote 15 Even with this effort, the half-revived ancient system never fully overtook the tariffed approach. The ensuing compromise, rooted in Augustine, resulted in the Carolingian Dichotomy—that is, public penance for public sins and private penance for private sins. While both systems coexisted after these ninth-century reforms, the growing importance of intention and inner contrition in the twelfth century sped up the decline of public penitential practices and gave rise to high medieval, secret penance; although this strict progression has been challenged by scholars at many points.Footnote 16
I make little claim in this work to advance or refine the arguments about the two types of penance in the early medieval world. Nor do I necessarily argue that the penitentials represented the impulse for either social control or pastoral education, as others have argued.Footnote 17 Rather, I highlight the role of a proxy in the penitential process to show the range of penance itself: that it could be done on behalf of another person.
We must also be aware that penitential practice in the early Middle Ages was not yet an exclusive privilege of the ordained clergy. Indeed, the church allowed alternative types of confession, either to God alone or even to a layperson.Footnote 18 In the East, monks and holy men took control of this process, and in the West the laity were allowed to participate as well. There were also other forms of penitential practice that early medieval authors, especially monastic ones, enthusiastically copied. When Origen (185–254) drafted his list of the seven ways to receive remission of sins, only the last one included some hint at formal reconciliation with the church. To him, all these won remission of sins: baptism, martyrdom, almsgiving, forgiving others, converting sinners, an abundance of love, and penance through tears and confession.Footnote 19 Later, John Cassian (360–435) expanded this list to twelve and left out any mention of priests or formal reconciliation.Footnote 20 Caesarius of Arles (470–542) later copied Cassian's list,Footnote 21 and subsequent penitential works incorporated both lists.Footnote 22
Although no early medieval penitential said, for example, “In order to have remission of your sins, go and save someone else, or love others,” we do know that there were probably other informal methods of penance practiced during this time.Footnote 23 These alternative traditions countermanded earlier efforts to ensure that the bishop alone retain his power to reconcile the penitent with the church. And while early medieval penitentials show some continuity with these alternative practices—by incorporating a few of the items like prayer or almsgiving—they also show a movement back toward the role of the bishop (and, by extension, the priest) in the penitential process.
My point here is that even though the dominant modes of penance in the early Middle Ages were clearly judicial and economic—counting and paying off sins as spiritual debts—they did not completely eliminate other ways of obtaining remission of sins. In fact, proxy penance flourished as an alternative precisely because of this lack of specificity: penance was a particular tariff but was also, in some cases, any number of pious acts. To call proxy penance an alternative might not be quite accurate, as one scholar has argued that it was one of three pillars of early medieval penitential piety.Footnote 24 So even though we might assume that early medieval penance centered on counting piety, we must not assume that that excluded counting for others—which is, after all, still counting.
II. Priest as Proxy Penitent
In order for the priest to take on the role of a proxy in penance, he must be seen as able to stand in for the sinner. On the face of it, this seems unlikely if not absurd, and flies in the face of New Testament writings.Footnote 25 But early medieval writers did not perceive such a gap between the priest and sinner, as developed later. The two were seen as interlocking spiritual units, dependent on each other for spiritual growth. Because the priest could share in the suffering of his penitent, he could also act as his proxy to complete his penance.
Gregory the Great (d. 604) first outlined how this sharing of suffering occurs. For Gregory, the priest and the sinner are radically interconnected: “Therefore you [the sinner] spare yourselves and us [the priests] if you cease from wicked works. We spare ourselves and you when we do not remain silent at something which displeases us.”Footnote 26 In this formulation, both parties have a responsibility for the other's spiritual benefit. This is no trivial problem for Gregory because a priest who remains silent about someone's sin is charged with that sinner's spiritual damnation if that person perishes before repentance.Footnote 27
Paralleling his perspective on the priest's responsibility, Gregory described priests as the instrument on which the sinner's sacrifices are made: the table of God. Glossing Ezekiel 40:39–40 and Old Testament notions of sacrifice, Gregory said that when priests pour out prayers to God on behalf of sinners they are “tables of God [who] bear the flesh of the offering.”Footnote 28 Gregory compared priests to the instrument of sacrifice and the agent of the remission of sins because he saw their function in Christ-like terms: those who bear the sins of the whole world. Indeed, as tables of God, priests should shed tears for sinners and bear their offerings because Christ “shed his blood on the cross for our iniquities.”Footnote 29
For Gregory, this involved more than sympathy. In his popular manual of pastoral care, he moved quickly from advocating sympathy—a compassionate listener—to empathy—a co-suffering participant: “The ruler [that is, the pastor] should be a near neighbor to everyone in sympathy so that through the bodily depths of loving-kindness he may transfer the infirmities of others to himself.”Footnote 30 Feeling sorry for the sins of another must translate into bearing those sins. To deal with the risk of deadly contagion, Gregory formulated an idea that had far-reaching implications: “The pastor ought by no means to be afraid [of receiving the sins of others], since, under God, who nicely balances all things, he is the more easily rescued from his own temptations as he is more compassionately distressed by those of others.”Footnote 31 That is, the more the priest acts as he ought and suffers for others, the more easily God removes his own sins and any that he acquired through his priestly duties.
It is axiomatic, for Gregory, that the priest becomes filthy when he interacts with sinners because the priest is, for him, the physician of the heart.Footnote 32 And as a physician, the priest risks contagion with the sick whom he serves. Gregory could have argued that God somehow keeps priests free from contagion or that the holiness of their office acts as a shield against sinful infection. He did not argue this, however, but assumes that the penitent's sin becomes the priest's. Gregory did not state that the priest always takes on the sin of the penitent willingly. In fact, he was probably also responding to fears of subconsciously contracting sinful thoughts, and indeed this was how the majority of those who later copied this quotation used it.Footnote 33 Nor was Gregory worried about priests becoming murderers or thieves because they heard such things confessed to them. More likely, Gregory was concerned that priests hearing about sexual activity or spiritual despair would be tempted to partake in those activities themselves. Regardless of the nature of infection—willing or unwilling—it is evident that sin was thought to transfer from sinner to priest and to be shared by both. Gregory's ideas about sharing sin influenced early medieval penitential culture and the role of the priest in penance, and echoed throughout religious texts of this period.
We must avoid reading subsequent ideas back into Gregory which would encourage us to see him simply as an advocate for the priest's power to bind and loose sins. Rather, as Bernhard Poschmann has argued: “The emphasis on participation in penance [in the sixth century] is already evidence that the intercession of the priest is to be evaluated from the point of view of vicarious satisfaction, and not from that of sacramental absolution.”Footnote 34 Indeed, nowhere in Gregory's discussion did he mention a formal absolution ritual. In his formulation, the onus, quite purposefully, was not just on the sinner to repent but was also on the priest to share in that sin and, as the table of God, to bear its weight.
It must be admitted here that sharing is not precisely a proxy activity. What I am describing takes place on a spectrum of spiritual aid, from simple help to proxy action. Still, sharing is more than simple help: to share is to participate, to partake, and to take on part of the burden of another person. This is all part of the same penitential culture that allowed for proxy activity, and I argue that sharing penance and proxy penance are interrelated. Some texts even make explicit that the sharing of the priest required that he also complete penance for a penitent.
A striking example of the priest doing proxy penance is seen in a statement that was repeated throughout early medieval religious texts. Most notably, we find it in the Gelasian Sacramentary (circa sixth century) in the rubric for the prayers in a Mass for the deceased who had not completed penance while alive and could not confess on his deathbed because he had lost the ability to speak.Footnote 35 The sacramentary stated that as long as suitable witnesses testify to the penitent's internal state and the penitent himself makes some non-audible sign of confession before he dies, the priest “should complete everything concerning the penitent, as is custom.”Footnote 36 To explain what “everything” entails, this same Mass included a prayer that reveals the extent of the priest's obligation: “We beseech thee O Lord, that the offering of this present sacrifice [that is, the Mass] may make satisfaction to you for the soul of your servant [N.], and may he attain the pardon of sins that he sought, and receive in compensation [the part] of his desired penance that he could not fulfill by means of his tongue.”Footnote 37 Thus, in this context, the intention of the penitent to do his own penance enables the priest to complete that penance on his behalf, the Mass becomes the sinner's penitential act, and the priest becomes the sinner, as his proxy, doing the work to receive remission of his sins.Footnote 38
The fact that scholars have often focused on the growing role of the Mass being said for others should not turn our attention away from the function the Mass was performing. In other words, though the Mass was clearly an intermediary work on behalf of the sinner, its function in some cases was to complete the penance, and make satisfaction, for the sinner. Indeed, we know that from an early period Masses served as a type of penance because the penitentials weighed them against harsher sins: one Mass equaled twelve days of penance, for example.Footnote 39 Burchard, quoting from Theodore's penitential, described this as a kind of penitential commutation. For those who could not complete their own penance, one day of penance could be remitted by having the priest sing Mass for the penitent. Both the sinner and the priest are seen as offering the elements of the Mass and their prayers to God for the penitent's sins.Footnote 40
That the Gelasian Sacramentary referred to completing the penance of the dying penitent—rather than simply offering the more general merit of the Mass—is made clear when we compare it to a very similar example in the earlier and influential fifth-century canonical collection Statuta ecclesiae antiqua (circa 475). Statute seventy-six states that if someone is deathly ill and asks for a priest, but loses the ability to speak or even becomes mad before the priest arrives, witnesses can give testimony about the dying person who then—his hearing apparently still intact—should receive his penance. If the dying person seems unlikely to recover, the priest ought to lay his hands on him and give him the Eucharist. If the person seems to be on the mend, his friends and witnesses ought to remind him of the penance that the priest enjoined.Footnote 41
Both the statute and the sacramentary were concerned with a specific circumstance in which a person is about to die, and therefore must complete his final penance and confession, but cannot speak. But while the statute gives only two possible scenarios—the penitent, about to die, is given the Eucharist; the penitent lives, is given penance—the sacramentary imagines a third option in which the penitent dies and is given the Eucharist, but the priest continues to work on his behalf. In the statute, the priest accepts the confession of the witnesses as a sign of the penitent's spiritual state and so absolves him and gives him the Eucharist. In the sacramentary, however, although the priest still accepts the testimony of the dying person's witnesses and, presumably, gives him the Eucharist as well, he also offers the Mass as a satisfaction to God for the deceased's soul in order to win for him that pardon of his sins which his lack of speech could not obtain. Just as the penitent, in the statute, would have to complete his penance if he recovered from his illness, so the priest, in the sacramentary, has to complete the penitent's penance if he dies. The issue, in both places, is an unpaid debt. God cannot forgive a debt that has been incurred even if a person dies, so the priest takes on the responsibility of paying that debt on the person's behalf.
While it might seem baffling that someone who received the laying on of hands and the Eucharist would still require further remission of sins, it is clear that in this circumstance the church believed that the deceased person could still benefit from a work of satisfaction like the Mass. And so we now see the priest saying Mass on the sinner's behalf not simply as his intermediary but as his proxy. Indeed, both the very early Leonine Sacramentary (circa 540) and a later version of the more influential Gregorian Sacramentary included this particular Mass.Footnote 42 The point here is that the priest, in saying the Mass, was completing the penance of the penitent as a proxy satisfaction and was not offering him posthumous absolution. The efficacy for the sinner stemmed not only from the priest's performance of the Mass but also from the priest's position as a proxy.
Also, as the sacramentaries and the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua stated, witnesses could act as a proxy and obtain forgiveness for the penitent individual, even though in the fifth century Pope Leo I had argued that those who died before being reconciled (and, thus, before completing penance) were in the hands of God.Footnote 43 An Anglo-Saxon penitential from the mid-eleventh century says that if the priest arrives after the dying person loses the ability to speak, those in his presence can testify on his behalf.Footnote 44 Also, in flagrant opposition to Leo I, Haltigar's penitential states that if a person had already confessed, was subsequently excommunicated, then suddenly died, his relatives could make an offering or free captives on his behalf.Footnote 45 Theodulf of Orléans denied that a deceased excommunicant could be given the benefits of the Eucharist, but he did allow penance to be done for him by others.Footnote 46 Although Hincmar, in the ninth century, worried that this was encouraging priests to reconcile hesitant or uncooperative penitents for a price, the risks did not outweigh the rewards for the penitent.Footnote 47
In some ways, the Mass itself was more important than the priest in completing penance for another. In an order for Mass that was combined with a tenth-century penitential, a sick penitent who might not be able to confess again shares in the benefits of the whole church. The priest concludes the Mass by saying: “On behalf of God and all the saints, the good that you have done from your infancy on, and the sacrifices and pious works that others will offer for you, which are done by Catholics throughout the world: may you have a share [in these things] like good Christians, and if you cannot attain to any other penance, may you be saved before God by this penance and confession.”Footnote 48 Indeed, a century earlier, Rather of Verona, bishop in both Liège and Verona, made a similar statement, albeit lacking the context of the Mass. Rather stipulated that if a sinner is so sick that he cannot fast, “the fast of the general Church may accomplish this for him, ‘For we are all in Christ one body’ [Rom. 12:5].”Footnote 49 Here the work of the whole church acts as a proxy act of penance for those who could not complete their own penance.
Nevertheless, priests functioned as optimal proxy penitents. Indeed, according to the penitentials, priests should help penitents with their penance in all moments, not just by saying Mass for those in danger of dying. As these texts suggest, when penitents come to confess, priests ought to prostrate themselves and chant psalms along with them.Footnote 50 As Karen Wagner notes concerning early medieval penance in general: “Penance and confession were done for and with the penitent, not to her.”Footnote 51 A priest could even complete penance as a proxy without saying the Mass, as Rather of Verona reveals that fasting “till the ninth hour” was a way to complete penance for others' sins.Footnote 52 In this period, then, priests—whether they said Mass or performed certain penitential gestures—shared in the penitential experience of sinners.
Furthermore, the following oft-repeated phrase found in the penitentials demonstrates the interconnectedness of the priest and the penitent during the penitential process: “[To] the priests of the Lord, who preside over the churches, a part is given to them together with those for whose faults they make satisfaction.” This appears in one of the earliest insular penitentials from the middle of the seventh century and it continues:
What is it then to make satisfaction for a fault unless when you receive the sinner to penance, [and] by warning, exhortation, teaching, lead him to penance, correct him of his error, amend him of his faults, and make him such that God is rendered favorable to him after conversion, you are said to make satisfaction for his fault? When, therefore, you are such a priest, and such is your teaching and your word, there is given to you a part of those whom you correct, that their merit may be your reward and their salvation your glory.Footnote 53
What is striking here is not the list of priestly activities, but that those activities are described as making satisfaction for the faults of others. Thus the “part” that is given to the priest is some part of penance that he can complete by proxy while he carries out his priestly responsibilities. In this way, all priestly work with penitents is satisfactory work on their behalf. The priest's reward for such work is not only the salvation of the sinner but also his own increase of merit. This passage recalls Gregory's statement that there is a reciprocal benefit for suffering on behalf of another, notably inspiring God to forgive one's own sin if one is bewailing those of others. This passage was copied multiple times, with little change, for the next two centuries.Footnote 54
The writers of the penitentials also defined the details of this priestly proxy penance and described this act in medical terms. The following was the most common prologue in the penitential genre, and was included as early as the eighth century in both insular and continental texts:
Every time we assign fasting to a Christian who comes to penance, we ought to share the fasting with them for a week or two or more. Let it not be said about us what was said by our Lord and Savior to the Jewish priests: “Woe to you, learned ones, who oppress men with heavy loads and place burdens upon their shoulders, but do not lift one finger to pick up these burdens” [Luke 11:46]. For no one can support or raise up one found to be under a weight unless he himself bend down and extend a helping hand. Nor can any physician cure wounds or heal sicknesses unless he becomes a sharer in that foulness [nisi fetoribus particips fiat]. For this reason, no priest or bishop can heal the wounds of sinners and bear away sins from their souls except through wholehearted concern and prayer and tears. Therefore it is necessary, dear brothers, that we be concerned for sinners because we are “members one of another” [Rom. 12:5]. For this reason, “if one member suffers anything, all members suffer with him” [1 Cor. 12:26].Footnote 55
Beyond the obligation to share in the fasting of the penitents, the priest here is told to “share in the foulness” of the sinner in order to bear away his sins. This image is the exact opposite of what we normally see in this period when spiritual health is talked about in medical terms. Usually, penitential writers employed and expanded upon the much older idea that “contraries cure contraries,” that the best way to cure sin is to treat it with its opposite—pride with humility, miserliness with generosity, and so on.Footnote 56 What is unique in the current passage, however, is that the medicine applied is not one's own shame but another's empathy. Rather than having the penitent apply medicine to himself through confession or some penitential act, the priest is enjoined to heal the sinner by sharing in his disease, his sin, rather than employing the contrary virtue.
We know from tenth-century reconciliation ceremonies that there was a greater emphasis on the role of the priest or bishop in showing the penitent that both were sinful beings, but the kind of sharing highlighted here is much different.Footnote 57 I want to stress the particular focus on sharing sin as opposed to mere help. No doubt every priest, like every physician, risks some degree of contagion whenever contact is made with the sinful or sick. The sense of the metaphors in this passage from Paenitentiale Oxoniense II, however, suggests that that risk is not just an inevitability but a necessary prerequisite for healing. First, the warning against becoming like Jewish priests, who dole out punishments but do not assist the punished, suggests that assistance must be given along with punishment. Second, the text argues that it is against reason that one could help someone without actually putting shoulder to the wheel. Finally, and this is clear, healing cannot happen unless one takes on the sickness himself. The inevitability of contagion in this passage once again recalls Gregory the Great's concern with such a reality: that the bishop or priest ought to “transfer the infirmities of others to himself.” The penitentials, advancing Gregory's position, point beyond the risk of contagion to argue that healing, reconciliation, and salvation cannot happen unless the healer somehow becomes a participant in the sickness of the infirm. Even further, this participation is willingly assumed and expected as a duty of the office.
By contrast, in the life of Saint Gerald of Aurillac (circa 855–909), we read that “like a skillful doctor who chances to be wounded himself but is careful to heal the wounds of others, [Gerald] did not fail to protect the weak even when he was suffering injury himself.”Footnote 58 This is an accurate depiction of the risk of contagion where the saint distributes grace but does not share in the sin of the sick. What Gerald suffered was a consequence of helping others: a kind of drawing enemy fire toward himself. This is not how the penitentials describe the duty of the priest in confession who only saves the sick by becoming sick himself.
This sharing has Christological foundations given that in other texts this word for sharing (particeps) is also used to describe Christ's sharing in human nature.Footnote 59 The priest, like Christ, partakes of and shares in the sinful human condition. The priest, like Christ, becomes infected and takes on the sins of the penitents. The priest, like Christ, acts in ways sinners cannot to bear away their sins.Footnote 60 That penitentials were grouped with services for the sick and dying in Anglo-Saxon England only heightens the sense of the priest as curer of soul and body.Footnote 61
The fact that the penitentials included this kind of language is all the more striking given that the bulk of these texts are lists of sins and penances, which has led some scholars to argue that these works were more concerned with the “sin than the sinner.”Footnote 62 For this reason, it might seem surprising to read statements that encouraged the priest to participate in the sinful state of the penitent. But we know that penitential practice in this period was concerned with the internal state of the penitent and that this concern was not the sole invention of the twelfth century. In fact, Pierre Payer uses exactly this passage, as quoted in Haltigar, as evidence of the continued focus on compassion in the penitentials. He sees it as a bridge to the later humanism of penitential texts.Footnote 63 Thus, we must see the penitentials not only as lists of crimes and satisfactory acts but also as clerical manuals of spiritual care, albeit in a nascent form. To say that these texts were primarily judicial, or controlling, or educational is to miss those moments when they encourage proxy activity and thereby evince their emotional range.Footnote 64
Writing in the eleventh century, Peter Damian relates three intriguing stories that give us a glimpse into the practice of proxy penance that might have been influenced by this aspect of the penitentials. The first story is about a priest who “strictly forbade his dying mistress to do penance for which she urgently pleaded, solemnly promising to perform the penance in her place.”Footnote 65 She believed him, but he lied. She died and was “plunged into hell.” The overt moral here is not to trust priests who have mistresses, but underlying this moral is another reality buried in an off-hand remark. Priests were believed to do penance on behalf of others, perhaps especially for the dying. The fact that this priest was a liar does not detract from the fact that both parties believed he could complete his dead mistress's penance. In fact, Damian's cavalier inclusion of this belief only affirms its commonality. Although proxy penance is latent in Damian's anecdote, it is made manifest in the following.
In a letter to Baroncius—a hermit and later the prior at Fonte Avellana—Peter admonishes him:
In your unrestrained charity you should never agree to discharge the penance of someone who is strong and healthy. But if you do take this upon yourself, be sure to fulfill the obligation as quickly as you can. Moreover, since the canons forbid a priest to remit a fast of one day for a penitent, unless he immediately compensate for it by giving an alms of comparable value, how in good conscience can we bind ourselves to assume such a frightening obligation belonging to another, since we do not know how long we have to live?Footnote 66
Peter does not restrict this proxy penance to priests and has both priests and monks in mind here. The language of “discharge” and “take this on” suggest both a sacerdotal and a fraternal activity. The warning to both: if you receive another's penance, be sure to complete it before your own death or else you will pay for it as if it were your own penance.
The subject of the subsequent story, however, is a warning to monks alone. Peter heard that when a monk received penance for his many sins, “he asked a certain brother, who was a close friend of his, to help bear the onus of his expiation. This brother graciously accepted it, bore the part of the penance agreed upon, and assured his friend that he would not have to pay all of the debt.”Footnote 67 This kind gesture turned sour when the proxy, who by all accounts had led a blameless life, died before he could complete his portion of the original monk's penance. He languished in postmortem pain until the rest of the monastic community “paid the debt [he] had promised and then neglected” by completing “various practices of a special kind.”Footnote 68 Now released from his penitential obligation, the proxy migrated to happier shores. Much like priests—who heal the sick by sharing in their foulness—these monks fulfilled the deceased monk's penance through other penitential activities. In this strange world, contraries do not cure contraries but (similia similibus sanantur) similar things are healed by other similar things.
These stories, while polemically charged, only reiterate the phrase “sharing in the foulness.” Sharing in the foulness meant to complete part of another's penance but not languish in another's sin. In other words, the priest and the monk could experience the burden of the consequence of sin for someone else, but not that sin itself. The practice of proxy penance was not limited to priests or monks, however, and was even adopted by the laity in the early Middle Ages.
III. The Uses and Limits of Lay Proxy Penance
Proxy penance was not always a one-to-one affair, as one person could direct his or her aid to many people at once. In an advice book to her young son, Dhuoda recommended the power of the recitation of the Psalms for the benefit of others.Footnote 69 There was also a general agreement that fasting for the dead was beneficial for them,Footnote 70 around the same time that the Council of Mainz (847) declared that the prayers and almsgiving of the friends of the dying would alleviate their penance.Footnote 71
From the opposite perspective—many to one—the diffusion of penance across a group of proxies allowed its completion more easily. Peter Damian tells a story about a layman who died at a monastery dedicated to Mary, which was a daughter house of Le Puy. When the heavenly queen appeared in order to settle the dispute between the angels and demons over his soul, the demons seemed to score a victory when they uncovered that the man had never disclosed a “heinous and bloody” crime in confession. Undeterred, Mary told the man to wake up, confess this crime to a priest-monk at the monastery, “and on the authority of my command ask them to take upon themselves the penance that will be imposed on you, and to apply it to your absolution, for you are soon to die.”Footnote 72 The man did as requested and the monks “accepted the penance imposed on him.” He died soon after and presumably escaped this psychomachian battle the second time around.Footnote 73 We know that by the eleventh century, monastic communities—especially the Cluniac order—became the “refuge of the penitent,” although this does not specify the full value of their services.Footnote 74 Penitents flocked to Cluny not merely because its monks prayed for their souls but because its monks could complete proxy penance.
If a penitent could not complete his own penance, or have someone else lighten his load, he could hire another person to complete that penance on his behalf. As early as the late seventh century, the Bobbio penitential claimed: “He who cannot [recite the Psalms or give alms], as stated above, let him choose a just priest or monk (a true monk who lives according to the Rule) so that he might complete this penance for him and redeem this penance with his just payment.”Footnote 75 The intention here was clearly to allow those who do not know how to do penance, or are physically or otherwise unable to complete it, to have it done for them by a priest or a monk. It is unclear if money is changing hands here. It would appear that the just payment in this transaction is the proxy's actions that take the place of the sinner's penance.
In other penitentials, however, the implication of money is made clear: “And he who does not know the psalms and is not able to fast shall choose a righteous man who will fulfill this in his stead, and he shall redeem this with his own payment or labor; this he shall disburse among the poor at the rate of a denarius for every day.”Footnote 76 In this instance, both payment and labor are suitable actions to do on another's behalf to fulfill their penance where the proxy could either give alms and/or do some kind of labor (that is, fasting and/or prayers). It is unclear if the penitent or the proxy is the one paying the poor here, although other examples below make clear that the penitent would pay the proxy for his proxy service and the proxy would give that money to the poor. This passage is found in a handful of very popular penitentials and points to the practice of proxy penance in the eighth and ninth centuries.Footnote 77
The growth of penitential commutation—that is, the lessening of penance into other, smaller acts of penance—provides one explanation for the development of penitential practices on behalf of others. Because it was possible for individuals to acquire more years of penance than they had left to live, the Irish, in the middle of the seventh century, created equivalent punishments that could be completed in less time.Footnote 78 A few years later, Book Two of the Irish Canons lists a dozen ways to substitute lesser works for harsher ones.Footnote 79 By the eighth century, the Irish had composed an entire work on the subject in which they devised commutations for smaller penances as well.Footnote 80 This development also allowed the confessor to more closely direct the sinner's penance because commutations gave the priest a wider range of possible penitential practices to assign.Footnote 81
Seen in this light, proxy penance could have grown in the rich soil of commutation. If harsher penances could be commuted into lighter ones, one could argue that, especially in cases where the penitent could not complete his own penance, it made sense for commutation to also include the completion of penance by another person. Further, because penitential authors did not draw fine lines regarding commutations, tares began to grow among the wheat, and abuse of the commutation system became quite common. In principle, when commutations maintained a link between work done and sin remitted, there could be no real abuse; but when that link was severed, as when the sinner did not have to complete his own penance, abuse crept in.Footnote 82
Although commutation enabled the confessor to enjoin just the right amount of penance, penitents evidently seized the opportunity to create their own methods of penitential substitution, as the account of the “powerful man, rich in friends” stated at the beginning of this article demonstrates. There is every reason to believe that this kind of thinking was common, especially since we have so much evidence about the wealthy trying to receive remission of sins in other ways, like donating land to religious institutions. This was such a common act of expiation that in many documents such donations were explicitly given pro remedio animae.Footnote 83 The rich must have thought this was appropriate because in one account from St. Gall we read: “God recommended to the world this remedy, that men could redeem their souls from Hell by their wealth, as he said through Solomon: a man's riches may ransom his soul.”Footnote 84
The remaining evidence of proxy penance comes from sources that critique it or attempt to root it out completely. In these sources it is evident that proxy penance existed quite early, even before ideas about commutations had been fully developed, and thus proxy penance may not have been a response to the calculating nature of the penitentials. Indeed, the so-called Judgment of Clement from the end of the seventh century states: “If anyone fasts for a reward and takes upon himself the sins of another, he is not worthy to be called a Christian. He shall fast for himself as much as he promised to fast for the other and give to the poor what he has received.”Footnote 85 Scholars have identified this penitential as perhaps the first to address the penance of the laity, and it is already alarmed by the practice.Footnote 86 Not only is this text critical of the economic gain that could be had by being a proxy penitent, it is also critical of taking on the “sins of another” (aliena peccata suscipit in se). Although the proxy is still encouraged to carry out the required fasting, this time he ought to do it for himself, which suggests that he is now atoning for the sin of proxy fasting itself. In the eighth and ninth centuries, penitentials assumed that this practice was carried out in ignorance of correct penitential doctrine, and always required the proxy to complete the fasting for himself and give the money received for the proxy act to the poor.Footnote 87
The most detailed critique of proxy fasting appears in a penitential recently found in an Oxford manuscript that was probably created in Frankish lands in the first half of the eighth century.Footnote 88 This penitential devoted two very long canons to what it saw as “those who fast for a price.” First, reporting “what we have heard,” certain men and women who believed themselves to be so just would approach penitents who had received the penance of fasting from priests and would say to them: “Give me payment and I will fast for you.” Clearly, this text was familiar with criticisms of proxy fasting as it played on the term used for a proxy, iustus, in texts that supported the practice. Then the penitential repeats the standard line that anyone who makes this offer ought to fast for himself (or herself; this text specifies both genders) and give that money to the poor.
The first canon ends with new instructions for priests: “Say this to all those to whom you give penance: ‘No one may fast for another man because he will both lose what he gives and the sin remains in him.’”Footnote 89 That the priest ought to make this disclaimer to all penitents suggests that proxy penance was such a concern, and likely such a common abuse, that it needed to be clarified at every opportunity. The theological sense here is that if someone pays another person to fast for him, that fasting turns the money given from a good work of alms into a worthless activity since the sin, which cannot be atoned by another's penance, remains and is not remitted. So not only is it a sin for the proxy to fast for another but the penitent still retains his sin. This is why so many warnings state that neither party (neque qui dat neque qui accipit) is worthy to be called a Christian.Footnote 90
This penitential does not stop there, however, but continues in the following canon to explore the absurdity of transferring the benefit of penitential fasting to another person. This is, to my knowledge, the only substantial discussion of proxy fasting in any early medieval penitential text:
For how can a sinner fast on behalf of another? What use is it if someone else eats on behalf of a hungry person? One will not be filled by another who goes hungry, or if one has fallen another cannot rest on his behalf. For if someone cannot, by eating, satisfy another's hunger or, by drinking, quench another's thirst, so too one who rests cannot relieve another's fatigue. But let everyone who has fallen find rest, and if he is hungry and thirsty, [let him] eat and drink for himself. Thus no one can fast for another, because “everyone will die in his own sin” [Deut. 24:16; 2 Chron. 25:4]. For just as the son will not receive his father's iniquity, neither can the father remove the sins of his children, nor wipe out the iniquities of his parents [cf. Ezek. 18:20]. He would be a fool who [tried to] wipe out someone else's sins by his own fasting. Such people are wretched, whether man or woman. If it is a righteous person, he will truly lose his own righteousness or his reward because of his greed for fasting. Concerning men or women of this kind Holy Scripture says, “Nothing is more wicked than a greedy man, for such a person offers his own soul for sale” [cf. Sirach 10:9–10]. Whether it is a man or a woman who comes to penance, let each one fast on his own behalf, as the most holy Apostle says: “Everyone bears his own burden” [Gal. 6:5]. Yet it is good that every Christian pray for another—not for the sake of honor, but for God's sake.Footnote 91
This critique takes a very literal approach to thinking about how merit is transferred (or claimed to be transferred) during proxy fasting and operates on both a material and a spiritual level. Materially, it makes no sense to try and help a starving person by eating for them. This would not only be ludicrous but cruel. As such, so this reasoning goes, proxy fasting has no spiritual benefit either. Because fasting as a penitential discipline was a way to combat the sins of the flesh—by curing the sin of gluttony with its contrary virtue, temperance—it ought to only have efficacy for the one who practices it. As Tertullian had quipped centuries before: “If you have committed no sin yourself—then suffer for me! But if you are a sinner, how will the oil in your tiny lamp suffice both for you and for me?”Footnote 92 Because no one can give anything that he does not already have, it also makes no sense for a proxy to function as if he will win certain virtues for another that he himself lacks.
The multiple inclusions in this passage of both genders are telling that proxy fasting had become a lay activity. Although the author could have addressed this to both male and female monastic communities, we know that this particular penitential is one of the earliest to address lay activity, and only the last eight canons (out of seventy-three) deal with clerical concerns. This work was also written for a population of recently converted people in Frisia, and consequently its penances are remarkably lenient.Footnote 93 That the author is so condemnatory of proxy fasting (although he gives no penance for the infraction) suggests that he saw this practice as contrary to the true Christianity that had recently sprung up in the region. Indeed, the last half of the canon is entirely a didactic exercise, replete with scriptural examples, intended to teach the limits of work carried out on behalf of another in the Christian system. Whether the recent converts learned about the possibility of proxy activity from their former pagan culture or from other Christians in the area, it is easy to see how laypeople, perhaps lacking marketable skills and needing money, naturally gravitated toward offering themselves as proxy fasters for hire.
Those who paid for proxies, like the “powerful man, rich in friends,” likewise did not escape censure. A few years after Paenitentiale Oxoniense II was written, the Anglo-Saxon Council of Clovesho (747) denounced proxy penance on the grounds that it encouraged a market for the buying and selling of spiritual merits. This council had just heard that a certain rich man had so fully expiated his sins through the penitential acts of others that he could live three hundred years without needing to do penance for his own sins. The council asked in haughty disgust: “If divine justice can be appeased by others in this way, why are rich men—who are able with bribes to purchase the limitless fastings of others for their own offenses—said to enter heaven with more difficulty than a camel goes through a needle's eye?”Footnote 94 Here, this rich man used his material wealth to stockpile spiritual assets in case, and perhaps in hasty expectation, of future sins. The council clearly saw this as an abuse of buying spiritual merit so as to keep on sinning.Footnote 95 Later authorities repeatedly condemned this when they argued that giving alms in expectation of sinning—not to mention hiring an army of proxy fasters—is like hiring God for a price so that one could be permitted to sin with impunity.Footnote 96
Almost lost in all this evidence is the fact that these penitential texts both promoted and rebuked proxy penance. On the one hand, a “righteous man will fulfill [another's penance] in his stead,” but on the other hand, “those who take on the sins of another, are not worthy to be called a Christian.” To my knowledge, there is no other topic in these texts as polarized. One view might suggest that proxy penance was promoted only when it could be done by a righteous person, a priest or monk, but condemned when attempted by the laity, since their desire to complete proxy penance must only be for economic gain. Going further, perhaps the clerical writers of the penitentials were trying to protect their market for doing proxy penance from the encroachment of lay competition. Yet another perspective might propose that since the penitentials disagree in so many other places, the polarity about proxy penance reflects the widespread unevenness of the texts.
One might also point to the reform of the penitentials in the ninth century. Perhaps proxy penance existed before these reforms and was subsequently outlawed. But both the critique and the promotion of proxy penance existed before and after these councils.Footnote 97 The fact that Wulfstan promoted the “powerful man, rich in friends” two hundred years after the Council of Clovesho condemned exactly this practice suggests that proxy penance resisted censure. Indeed, as Allen Frantzen has pointed out, proxy penance was considered by many to be a legitimate type of penance because, in a system of counting sins, it still counted.Footnote 98
In the midst of the variety of historical contexts at play, there are a few conclusions to be drawn from this evidence. Criticism of proxy penance in the penitentials took two tacks. First, for the penitent: God and his forgiveness cannot be hired for a price. One cannot buy forgiveness and, whoever attempts to do this, is probably trying to insure himself against future sin. Second, for the proxy: it is a sin to make money off other people's sins. Thus, for proxy penance to theoretically find validation given these criticisms, it would have to be voluntary, charitable, and free. Although these were ideal attributes, they would appear in later, scholastic works to form the basis of a theology of proxy penance.
Underlying all of these statements lurk two concepts that are at the heart of proxy activity: payment and labor. Just as people could pay off their own sins, so they could pay off their neighbor's. To give alms or redeem a captive or make any charitable use of one's money always took the place of penance—for anyone. For this reason, it is illuminating that all of the criticism of proxy penance in this period centered on the problem of payment; or, I should say, misdirected payment. Payment was such a fundamental part of proxy activity that even the few statements in favor of proxy penance imagined that the proxy would have been paid.Footnote 99
Additionally, if one did not or could not make a monetary payment for another's sins, he could substitute his own labor instead. Of course, this labor would also result in payment from the penitent, although that money was supposed to be donated to the poor. Ideally, laboring for another would satisfy the necessary conditions for proxy penance: voluntary, charitable, and free. Although labor was a sufficient and appropriate proxy act, we see here the beginnings of narrowing penance to a purely economic negotiation between the sinner and God where the sinner's merits were seen as worth nothing more than the value of his, or another's, labor.
The reason why payment and labor took on such meanings is because sin was also beginning to take on new meanings in this period. As all this evidence makes clear, there were two dominant ways to describe sin: medically—as a disease—or economically—as a debt. Most penitential texts preferred the former as the sympathetic means for priests to clean penitents' filthy wounds, while only some rejected the latter as the brazen method of purchasing forgiveness for oneself. When described medically, sin could be shared like a cold but could not be fully transferred. Its foulness was too internalized for the penitent to completely deliver it to the priest or any other proxy. But when described economically, sin could not only be shared but also transferred. Here, sin-as-debt was externalized and fungible, and thus payable by anyone.
Economic language had already been in use to describe both penance and other Christian doctrines, especially those related to Christ. Centuries before, Tertullian had argued that God, acting like a merchant, would recognize true penitence just as a merchant recognizes true or counterfeit coins; and Tertullian also described penance as a transaction between God and man.Footnote 100 More directly antecedent, the fifth-century “First Antiphon of Lauds” described the Incarnation in terms of an exchange of Christ's divinity for his humanity. And the solemn prayer for the Easter Mass in the Gelasian Sacramentary said that “Christ, our paschal sacrifice, has been offered . . . and by the law of holy exchange, human things are traded for divine.”Footnote 101 Likewise, the “Exultet” sung on Easter Eve listed in the Gregorian Sacramentary proclaimed that Christ “paid Adam's debt to God for us.”Footnote 102 In many ways, these ideas about Christ, couched in economic vocabulary, informed the commercial language used to promote and criticize proxy penance: a proxy trades his own work for another's merit and in so doing follows the example of Christ. Recall that the word used to describe the priest's sharing (particeps) in the penitentials was the same word used to describe Christ's sharing in human nature, and the same word was also used to describe those who gave an offering and thus share in the mysteries of Mass.Footnote 103 The connection between divine commerce and human exchange was developing together at this time.Footnote 104 Given the nature of gift-exchange in early medieval society, we can see how an act of proxy penance operated within such a framework and anticipated later theological ideas.Footnote 105
IV. Conclusion
This article has traced the development of proxy penance in the early Middle Ages by focusing on its two most striking aspects: the promotion of the priest sharing penance with penitents, and the promotion and criticism of proxy fasting among the laity. While we lack direct evidence, outside the monastic context, that priests actually took on the penance of those who confessed to them, we can reasonably assert that both the promotion and criticism of proxy fasting reveals that individuals, including the laity, were fasting on behalf of others in this period. Although Alexander Murray has argued that regular, lay confession was rare, if non-existent, before 1200—except by monastics and the laity served by pastorally-focused centers of religion—this evidence for proxy penance reveals that acts of penitential satisfaction, and by extension acts of confession, existed in this period.Footnote 106 Disregarding the monastic and liturgical examples cited here, it is evident that the penitential rubrics specifying that those who do not know the psalms or do not have money to give alms should choose a priest or monk to complete their penance, strongly suggests that these texts had the laity in mind. Additionally, the vociferous attack in the Paenitentiale Oxoniense II against those in Frisia who would offer their services as proxy fasters, shows that confession and penance were happening in a newly Christianized location, at some distance from a religious center.
This article has also demonstrated a few ways to understand the development of proxy penance in the early Middle Ages. On the one hand, proxy penance could be seen as a response to the harsh, tariffed nature of penance and the consequent creation of penitential commutations. In other words, when penances became difficult and avenues opened for lessening their severity, people sought out others to complete penance on their behalf. On the other hand, proxy penance seems to have existed before commutations were fully articulated. Instead of being a subcategory of commutations, proxy penance was rather an expression of the relationship between the members of the body of Christ. Commutations, from this perspective, could have still encouraged the spread of proxy penance, but could not have single-handedly fostered their growth. Seen in these terms, proxy penance in the early Middle Ages was constantly peeking through the cracks of a vast and rapidly changing religious system that was, in certain places and at certain times, desperately trying to control it.
Indeed, what these texts demonstrate is that early medieval penitential culture struggled to find an appropriate balance. On the one hand, priests ought to complete penance for their penitents, and some people can fast for others. But on the other hand, proxy fasting should not be done. Although we might attribute this polarity, in part, to the unevenness of the penitentials themselves and the wide variety of their authors and uses, we must also recognize that this sic et non rhythm regarding penance would be repeated in the high Middle Ages and beyond. The forces behind this undulating rhythm drew strength from two approaches to salvation—individual or corporate—that had much earlier roots. Even the Apostle Paul exemplified this tension: just three verses after his oft-quoted phrase “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2), Paul warned the Christian community: “For each man will have to bear his own load” (Gal. 6:5).
It is also important to note that most of the occasions of proxy activity in this period occurred in situations where the penitent was, for some reason, unable to complete his own penance. The priest's Mass fulfilled the sinner's penance when the penitent was either dead or gravely ill. Likewise, penance could be completed by a righteous person when the penitent was unable to sing psalms or lacked money for alms. Although proxy penance could easily succumb to abuse and the greed of the proxy—priests could charge penitents to say Mass on their behalf and wealthy lords could hire armies of proxy fasters—we ought not miss the inherent care for others embedded in the act. Indeed, the reason the penitentials allowed for proxy penance in the first place was to ensure that all sinners could receive the benefit of penance, whether they could complete it for themselves or not.
When the priest's role shifted from sharer of penance to dispenser of absolution by the thirteenth century, this made room for the laity and other religious to take on that role vacated by the priest. This shift did not preclude the development of ideas about proxy penance or particular practices of it. Rather, new intellectual approaches to proxy penance continued to be elaborated in the great penitential writings of the following centuries, and new practical applications of proxy penance were created. Most notably, the innovative religious culture of the Low Countries in the early thirteenth century cultivated proxy penance, and the laity in late medieval England developed a predilection for proxy pilgrimage. In every age, proxy penance took the form of the most preferred penitential activity. What is clear is that, from the early church through the end of the Middle Ages, suffering for others as a proxy penance remained a desirable, and in some cases necessary, form of spiritual experience in medieval Europe.
