According to the World History Encyclopedia, 'The Church focused on regulating and defining an individual's life in the Middle Ages, [and] it was...recognized as the manifestation of God's will and presence on earth.'
Thomas Oakley says in 'The Origins of Irish Penitential Discipline' that 'usually, the penances were assigned in terms of severe fasting.' But there were other options, such as 'the giving of alms, marital continence [abstinence], prayer and lamentations, seclusion in a monastery, the amending of one's morals, and restitution.'
The Penitential of Cummean states, 'He who for a long time is lured by imagination to commit fornication and repels the thought too gently shall do penance for one or two or more days, according to the duration of the imagination.'
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