The history of the early penitentials is complicated, not least because none of these manuals is known to have survived in an original manuscript, but have been preserved in later scribal copies. This is perhaps not surprising, given their intended use and the passage of time, which brings with it deterioration and destruction through myriad manmade and natural means. Yet scribes continued to copy these little books of penance for centuries, preserving not only the texts, but also clues about the provenance of their exemplars, making it possible to present them in a loose chronology, important for understanding their similarities and differences. It is important to note that although their differences point to production for distinct communities, the uncertainties about each manual's provenance make it impossible to offer more than general ideas about the geographic and temporal locations of those communities. An overview of individual texts and comparisons of their foci does, however, reveal a trajectory of broader inclusion and expanding claims of jurisdiction correlative to their likely production. The issues they anticipate, and the individuals they include, are not uniform, but each of these little books of penance does reveal consistent ideas about the intersections of the social and spiritual important for a fuller understanding of early medieval history.

The Penitential of Finnian

The earliest known penitential, dated to the mid-sixth century, is a comparatively brief manual attributed to Uinniaus, and hence known as the Penitential of Finnian. Various forms of this name, which appears in the manual's epilogue as transmitted in the Vienna manuscript was common in Irish, Welsh, and Breton sources of the period. Its likely original structure is derived from an incomplete ninth- or tenth-century copy preserved in the St Gallen manuscript, a composite manuscript of five parts which also includes writings of Augustine, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory the Great. An intriguing possibility is that the author of the Penitential of Finnian may have developed his approach to this practice through direct communication with Gildas (d. c. 570). In a letter to Gregory the Great, written around the year 600, Columbanus refers to an earlier exchange between Gildas and Uennianus auctor, who sought Gildas’ advice on disciplining disobedient monks.