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This chapter engages in a philosophical and theological critique of thinkers who construe justice and mercy as contradictory norms. It develops a theological account of restorative justice in which mercy is understood as the ‘operative condition’ enabling the pursuit of justice beyond mere retribution. It elaborates this through an account of the moral anthropology inherent in Christian accounts of penance which understand moral agency as a time-bound pursuit of character-formation. Justice is pursued not in meting out a measure of proportionate hard-treatment, but in the merciful gift of the ‘penitential time’ which may enable reform of character and action. It ends with a tentative account of sanctification, desire and desistence and suggests these aspects of theological anthropology might inform a critique of the criminogenic machine of consumerism.

This chapter addresses modern Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, originating in the appearances of Jesus experienced by nun Margaret-Mary Alacoque (1647–90). Since the seventeenth century, understandings of the Heart of Jesus have shifted from visceral to symbolic registers: from a fetish (a concealing object standing in for something else) to an icon (an image) and, finally, to a mere symbol (a sign). Yet from the eighteenth century up to the present day, the status of the Sacred Heart has remained a source of theological contestation between Jesuits and orthodox Catholics, who emphasize its viscerality, and Jansenist Protestants and Catholic reformers, who treat it as a symbol.

This chapter explores a variety of Nahuatl and Maya confessional manuals to expose their similarities and differences in prescribing a confessional experience for natives. It examines the differences between Nahuatl manuals from the sixteenth to the late eighteenth century, and it illustrates how these manuals changed over time and according to authorial and regional preferences. Moreover, the chapter studies the only two Maya confessional manuals known today. Overall, Nahuatl manuals prescribed a more rich and detailed confessional experience for natives compared to their Maya counterparts.

General confession was a practice of recalling, ordering, and telling one's entire life to a spiritual director. Unlike sacramental confession, general confession was not a sacrament and it could be reported to a mother superior as well as to a priest. In promoting general confession, religious orders in late medieval and early modern Europe enhanced techniques of life-telling and life-writing among believers. These believers were almost always people of the church. The practice later became obligatory among some religious orders, and was included in Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. Following him, it became a standard technique of making sense of one's life.

This chapter revisits the role of faith, and specifically Catholicism, at the fin de siècle. It gives a survey of the historical contexts for British and French Catholic practice at the turn of the century, highlighting the main anxieties and interests of literary fin-de-siècle Catholics on both sides of the channel. These include a critique of realism and materialism, the role of nostalgia in envisioning Catholicism’s future, as well as the arts of suffering, sacrifice and penance.

This chapter starts by considering how little discipline cases changed between the episcopal and presbyterian periods. It is shown that witchcraft cases were unknown during the period despite two local ministers being involved in high-profile cases elsewhere. Charming and similar offences were known but not much taken account of. There is discussion of the cases likely to go to presbytery rather than kirk session, and of the tension between civil and church law. The varying levels of punishment and restitution between different parishes, with some of the rituals being described. The effect of a long period of discipline on individuals is also considered. Exceptional cases are also mentioned; heritors, church servants and elders all found themselves in trouble periodically and such cases are discussed. The oath of exculpation used as a means to complete a case where evidence is not clear is described, together with the ritual which surrounded it, with a note that both men and women could take the oath, but few women did. The relationship between church and civil law changed after 1707; many cases referred to civil courts by the church were abandoned, with a resultant dilution of the church’s authority.

The general difficulty of identifying true intentions specifically haunts the sacrament of Penance, where the intention to repent can be feigned. The lure of hidden intentions animates Decameron 3.3: a wife converts her confessor into her pimp by hiding from him her true intention to use him as a go-between in arranging an affair with his friend. The danger of hidden intentions is exemplified in Decameron 8.7: Rinieri, infatuated with Elena, fails to discover her intention only to make a fool of him until he stands frozen at her door at Christmas. He in turn hides his intention to enact vengeance until he succeeds in stranding her, naked, on a rooftop in the blazing summer sun. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” challenges her audience/reader to discover the intention(s) behind her account of “experience” as a “Pauline nightmare” of multiple marriages, sexual excess, and apparent conformity to misogynist and misogamous traditions.

In the early Irish Church (600–800 CE) there were apocrypha of Oriental origin and in the tenth-century poem Saltair na Rann (“Psalter of Quatrains”) the account of the Fall of Adam and Eve is recognized as having analogues with rabbinic tradition and also a poem on Adam’s head. This essay first considers Jewish texts that have, or may have, influenced Irish tradition. Jewish influence on Irish traditions is then considered: Latin conjoined treatises on Adam and Eve; Adam created in agro Damasceno, in the field of Damascus; the seven or eight parts from which Adam was made; the four elements from which Adam was made (with rabbinic analogues); the naming of Adam (Slavonic Enoch and Sibylline Oracles 3:24–26); Penance of Adam and Eve; Sunday, Sabbath, respite for the damned; XV Signs before Doomsday; Jewish traditions in Saltair na Rann; the influence of Hebrew Bible traditions on early Irish genealogies and imagined prehistory.

This introduction explains the governing argument of the book and how each chapter contributes to that argument. It begins with the rationale for a sacramental understanding of conversion and the practical importance of obtaining forgiveness of sins through the sacrament of penance. It then describes Luther’s grappling with the tension between an instrumental understanding of baptism and one that requires some kind of faith from the recipient. This tension will harden after his death into a great divide between Lutheran and Reformed. The Reformed insistence on an inward baptism by the Holy Spirit will eventually result in evangelicalism.