Abstract.
Amongst the many articles on this website is one on Celtic Liturgy. In it there is a short section on confession. This article looks at our current understanding of early medieval penance and offers some thoughts on how it might have been practised in the north of Scotland in the long eighth century. It begins by looking at the integration of the church in the west and north with that in the rest of Europe, using the Easter question as an example. It then looks at the geographical and historical background to the area including the sources of various external influences. Having set the scene, it outlines the development of penance as a practice before finally discussing how this may have looked in the early medieval north.
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