Early in his account of St. Benedict's Life, Gregory the Great recalls the critical moment when memories of a former female acquaintance temporarily distracted the young saint in the wilderness. Attempting to thwart Benedict's vocation, the devil manipulated these memories to ‘so inflame the soul of God's servant with desire’ that he was nearly overcome with pleasure and tempted to abandon his calling. Recalled to his senses by divine mercy, Benedict cast away his clothing and threw himself into a nearby thicket of briars and nettles. By this, the saint ‘cured the wounds of his soul by the wounds of his body’ and was henceforth free from the temptations of the flesh. When Peter asks for a fuller explanation of the meaning of this anecdote, Gregory expounds: ‘It is plain, Peter, that in youth, the flesh is inflamed with temptation.’3 Gregory thus acknowledges that the saint's experience was in part typical, and in part exceptional. As was normal for a young man of his age, Benedict was vulnerable to the temptations of the flesh. What was exceptional was his ability (with divine assistance) to permanently extricate himself from such temptations. For the comparatively less remarkable majority, puberty was an extended period of prurience with social and spiritual implications, subdued only through continuous effort – an effort the penitentials recognize as potentially difficult, if not impossible, for most young people.

Indeed, the inextricable social and spiritual implications of puberty are clear in a number of these handbooks. So too is the ambiguity of assessing the onset of such temptations. Such is clear in the terminology these manuals share with other early medieval voices to describe individuals experiencing them. The Penitential of Cummean and the Old Irish penitential anticipate various sexual transgressions, ranging from lustful thoughts to intercourse, involving pueri of various ages and sexual development, up to the age of twenty. The Penitential of Theodore likewise discusses possible sexual transgressions, primarily of young males, but this manual also establishes limits on parental authority over sons and daughters in certain contractual circumstances, such as slavery, marriage, and religious vocation. Together, these little books present a coherent, albeit complex, assessment of youth as an extended period between childhood and adulthood that encompasses multiple social, legal, biological, and moral expectations marked by sexual development and directly associated with greater understanding.