ABSTRACT
The distinction between penance and penitence was a battleground between Protestant and Catholic theologians after the Reformation.1 Nevertheless, in this debate, Protestants and Catholics shared more than they admitted. Catholics believed in the sacrament of penance, requiring confession to a priest, but they also practised private and domestic devotions involving the penitential acknowledgement of sin and prayer for grace and forgiveness. Protestants rejected all but the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, insisting that no sacramental work of penance could effect one’s salvation, but they were no less penitential in practice than their Catholic countrymen, and, as Catholics traditionally had, they read and sang the Penitential Psalms both in church worship and in devotions at home. Indeed, for devout early modern Christians of all sorts, the Penitential Psalms were the foundation of domestic devotional culture.
