General Craufurd and his Light Division (London, 1891); Sir George Larpent, Private Journal of F. S. Larpent during the Peninsular War (London, 1853); Major-General H. D. Hutchinson, Operations in the Peninsula, 1808–9 (London, 1905); The Dickson MSS, being Journals of Major-General Sir Alexander Dickson during the Peninsular War (Woolwich, 1907).
PEÑISCOLA, a town of eastern Spain, in the province of Castellón
de la Plana, and on the Mediterranean Sea, 5 m. by road
S. of Benicarló Pop. (1900), 3142. Peñiscola, often called the
Gibraltar of Valencia, is a fortified seaport, with a lighthouse,
built on a rocky headland about 220 ft. high, and only joined
to the mainland by a narrow strip of sand. Originally a
Moorish stronghold, it was captured in 1233 by James I. of
Aragon, who entrusted it to the Knights Templar. In the
14th century it was garrisoned by the knights of Montesa, and
in 1420 it reverted to the Crown. From 1415 it was the home
of the schismatic pope Benedict XIII. (Pedro de Luna), whose
name is commemorated in the Bufador de Papa Luna, a curious
cavern with a landward entrance through which the sea-water
escapes in clouds of spray.
PENITENTIAL (Lat poenitentiale, libellus poenitentialis, &c), a manual used by priests of the Catholic Church for
guidance in assigning the penance due to sins. Such manuals
played a large role in the early middle ages, particularly in
Ireland, England and Frankland, and their influence in the
moral education of the barbarian races has not received
sufficient attention from historians. They were mainly composed
of canons drawn from various councils and of dicta from
writings of some of the fathers. Disciplinary regulations in
Christian communities are referred to from the very borders of the
apostolic age, and a system of careful oversight of those admitted
to the mysteries developed steadily as the membership grew
and dangers of contamination with the outside world increased.
These were the elaborate precautions of the catechumenate, and—as a bulwark against the persecutions—the rigid system known
as the Discipline of the Secret (disciplina arcani). The treatment
of the lapsed, which produced the Novatian heresy, was
also responsible for what has frequently been referred to as
the first penitential. This is the libellus in which, according
to Cyprian (Ep. 51), the decrees of the African synods of 251
and 255 were embodied for the guidance of the clergy in dealing
with their repentant and returning flocks. This manual,
which has been lost, was evidently not like the code-like compilations
of the 8th century, and it is somewhat misleading to
speak of it as a penitential. Jurisdiction in penance was still
too closely limited to the upper ranks of the clergy to call forth
such literature Besides the bishop an official well versed
in the penitential regulations of the Church, called the poenitentiarius,
assigned due penalties for sins. For their guidance
there was considerable conciliar legislation (e.g. Ancyra, Nicaea,
Neocaesarea, &c.), and certain patristic letters which had
acquired almost the force of decretals. Of the latter the
most important were the three letters of St Basil of Caesarea
(d. 379) to Bishop Amphilochus of Iconium containing over
eighty headings.
Three things tended to develop these rules into something like a system of penitential law. These were the development of auricular confession and private penance; the extension of the penitential jurisdiction among the clergy owing to the growth of a parochial priesthood; and the necessity of adapting the penance to the primitive ideas of law prevailing among the newly converted barbarians, especially the idea of compensation by the wergild In Ireland in the middle of the 5th century appeared the “canons of St Patrick.” In the first half of the next century these were followed by others, notably those of St Finian (d. 552). At the same time the Celtic British Church produced the penitentials of St David of Menevia (d. 544) and of Gildas (d. 583) in addition to synodal legislation. These furnished the material to Columban (d. 615) for his Liber de poenitentia and his monastic rule, which had a great influence upon the continent of Europe. The Anglo-Saxon Church was later than the Irish, but under Theodore of Tarsus (d. 690), archbishop of Canterbury, the practice then in force was made the basis of the most important of all penitentials. The Poenitentiale Theodori became the authority in the Church’s treatment of sinners for the next four centuries, both in England and elsewhere in Europe. The original text, as prepared by a disciple of Theodore, and embodying his decisions, is given in Haddan and Stubbs’s Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland (iii. 173 seq.). A Penitentiale Commeani (St Cumian), dating apparently from the early 8th century, was the third main source of Frankish penitentials. The extent and variety of this literature led the Gallican Church to exercise a sort of censorship in order to secure uniformity. After numerous synods, Bishop Haltigar of Cambrai was commissioned by Ebo of Reims in 829 to prepare a definitive edition. Haltigar used, among his other materials, a so-called poenitentiale romanum, which was really of Frankish origin. The canons printed by David Wilkins in his Concilia (1737) as being by Ecgbert of York (d. 767) are largely a translation into Anglo-Saxon of three books of Haltigar’s penitentials. In 841 Hrabanus Maurus undertook a new Liber poenitentium and wrote a long letter on the subject to Heribald of Auxerre about 853. Then followed the treatise of Reginon of Prum in 906, and finally the collection made by Burchard, bishop of Worms, between 1012 and 1023. The codification of the canon law by Gratian and the change in the sacramental position of penance in the 12th century closed the history of penitentials.
Much controversy has arisen over the question whether there was an official papal penitential. It is claimed that (quite apart from Haltigar’s poenitentiale romanum) such a set of canons existed early in Rome, and the attempt has been made by H. J. Schmitz in his learned treatise on penitentials (Bussbucher und das kanonische Bussverfahren, 1883 and 1898) to establish their pontifical character. The matter is still in dispute, Schmitz’s thesis not having met with universal acceptance.
In addition to the works mentioned above the one important work on the penitentials was L. W. H. Wasserschleben’s epoch-making study and collection of texts, Die Buszordnungen der abendländischen Kirche nebst einer rechtsgeschichtlichen Einleitung (Halle, 1851). See articles in Wetzer and Welte’s Kirchenlexikon, Hauck’s Realencyklopädie, and Haddan and Stubbs’s Councils See also Seebasz in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, xviii. 58. On the canons of St Patrick see the Life of St Patrick by J. B. Bury (pp. 233–275).
PENITENTIARY (med. Lat. poenitentiarius, from poenitentia, penance, poena, punishment, a term used both as adjective and substantive, referring either to the means of repentance or that of punishment. In its ecclesiastical use the word is used as the equivalent both of the Latin poenitentiarius, “penitentiary priest,” and poenitentiaria, the dignity or office of a poenitentiarius. By an extension of the latter sense the name is applied to the department of the Roman Curia known as the apostolic penitentiary (sacra poenitentiaria apostolica), presided over by the cardinal grand penitentiary (major poenitentiarius, Ital. penitenziere maggiore) and having jurisdiction more particularly in all questions in foro interno reserved for the Holy See (see Curia Romana). In general, the poenitentiarius, or penitentiary priest, is in each diocese what the grand penitentiary is at Rome, i.e. he is appointed to deal with all cases of conscience reserved for the bishop. In the Eastern Church there are very early notices of such appointments; so far as the West is concerned, Hinschius (Kirchenrecht, i. 428, note 2) quotes from the chronicle of Bernold, the monk of St Blase (c. 1054–1100), as the earliest record of such appointment, that made by the papal legate Odo of Ostia in 1054. In 1215 the fourth Lateran Council, by its 10th canon, ordered suitable men to be ordained in all cathedral and conventual churches, to act as coadjutors and assistants to the bishops in hearing confessions and imposing penances. The rule was not immediately nor universally obeyed, the bishops being slow to delegate their special powers. Finally, however, the council of Trent (Sess. xxiv. cap. viii. de reform.) ordered that, “wherever it could conveniently be done,” the bishop should appoint in his cathedral a poenitentiarius, who should be a doctor or licentiate in theology or canon law and at least forty years of age.
