Penitentials were handbooks listing many sins a confessor could be expected to encounter during private confession and the appropriate penances he should assign for each act or the appropriate moneys the penitent should pay to commute a penance. They were first compiled by Irish monks in the 6th century when the practice of private confession began to supersede the public confessions of sins and imposition of penances of early Christianity and spread to the continent, continuing to be published through the 12th century even though they were officially condemned by the Catholic Church during the Council of Paris in The penances tended to be things like fasts, repetitions of psalms on your knees or standing, giving alms, and the sins were everything from fornication to murder.
Whoever fornicates with an effeminate male or with another man or with an animal must fast for 10 years. Elsewhere it says that whoever fornicates with an animal must fast 15 years and sodomites must fast for 7 years. If it is a boy, for the first time, 2 years; if he does it again, 4 years. If he is a boy, for the first time, 2 years; if he does it again, 4 years.
If he fornicates interfemorally between the limbs , he must fast for 1 year or the 3 day periods. If he defiles himself masturbates , he is to abstain from meat for four days.
He who desires to fornicate with himself i. If he is a boy and does it often, either he is to fast 20 days or one is to whip him. If a woman fornicates [with another woman? If she touches herself in the same way, i. One penance applies to a widow and a virgin; more penance is earned by her who has a husband if she fornicates. Whoever ejaculates seed into the mouth, that is the worst evil. From someone it was judged that they repent this up to the end of their lives.
And it goes on and on like that. Marriage is no cure either, because there are endless strictures against marital sex as well. The penitential writers saw marital sex as a concession, not as a right or even a gift from God.
