Sex and the penitentials : the development of a sexual code, 550-1150 / Pierre J. Payer

Pierre J. Payer

Payer argues, despite modern orthodoxy, that the penitentials reflect reaction to actual practice and are not simply a record of the wild imaginings of monkish minds or the abstract categorizing of legal minds. He traces the history of the penitentials from their early Irish origins in the 6th century through their 9th century descendants in continental Europe and Anglo-Saxon England, to the great legal collections of the 10th to12th centuries.