Penance
Webster's Dictionary [1]
(1): ( n.) Repentance.
(2): ( n.) A means of repairing a sin committed, and obtaining pardon for it, consisting partly in the performance of expiatory rites, partly in voluntary submission to a punishment corresponding to the transgression. Penance is the fourth of seven sacraments in the Roman Catholic Church.
(3): ( n.) Pain; sorrow; suffering.
(4): ( v. t.) To impose penance; to punish.
Charles Buck Theological Dictionary [2]
A punishment either voluntary, or imposed by authority, for the faults a person has committed. Penance is one of the seven sacraments of the Romish Church. Besides fasting, alms, abstinence, and the like, which are the general conditions of penance, there are others of a more particular kind; as the repeating a certain number of avemary's paternosters, and credos; wearing a hair shift, and giving oneself a certain number of stripes. In Italy and Spain it is usual to see Christians, almost naked, loaded with chains, and lashing themselves at every step.
See Popery
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature [3]
(Lat. pcnitentia) is the outward profession of sorrow, as repentance (q.v.) is the principle and inward feeling of sorrow for sin. The word is used in a negative and a positive sense. In a negative sense penance is manifested in the neglect of ordinary attention to dress, to the care of the person, to the use of food. In a positive sense the word is used to designate the performance of some acts of ecclesiastical discipline, enjoined or authoritatively imposed either as a punishment for offenses by which the party has exposed himself to the censures of that ecclesiastical body called the Church, or as an expression of his penitence. For the sake of affording a historical treatment of the subject, we shall first consider the views and practices of the early Christian Church. (A pretty full account is given by Bingham. Origines Ecclesiae, and a more concise one by Coleman, Ancient Christianity Exemplified, and upon these we shall mainly depend in the first part of this article.)
The Nuttall Encyclopedia [4]
In the Roman Catholic Church an expression of penitence as well as the sacrament of absolution; also the suffering to which a penitent voluntarily subjects himself, according to the schoolmen, as an expression of his penitence, and in punishment of his sin; the three steps of penitence were contrition, confession, and satisfaction.
