I. Traditions of Sickness and Healing in Penitential Psalms
Presenter: Richard Bautch, S. J.

The Psalter was the cornerstone of monastic life, and monastic
penitence led Cassiodorus to underscore psalm 51 and five others. In time a penitential tradition arose around psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143. These psalms at times rehearse images of sickness and healing. Traditions of sickness and health antedate the monasteries and Cassiodorus, and can be traced back through the church fathers to Christian and Jewish communities contemporaneous with Jesus. In these traditions, sickness is due not only to God's "tough love," but also to demonic possession. Although God's power may ultimately prevail, good and evil may at times enjoy equal access to a person.
There is a quasi-dualistic tradition in Christianity, apart from psalm based penitence, which relates sickness to evil and healing to good. In Matt. 9:2-8, Jesus heals a paralytic to manifest his power/authority to forgive, in the face of scribal opposition. Opposition is also encountered
in the healing of the Gerasene demoniac (Matt. 8:28-34). Recognizing Jesus as the Son of God, the demons must yield to his power. In Matthew's account, sickness and healing are implicit, while Mark has Jesus emphasize God's mercy to suggest his self-understanding as an agent of God's forgiveness. In Matt. 12:22-34, Jesus critiques the popular dualism and asserts his own authority to caste out demons as a prophetic sign of the kingdom. Ultimately, Jesus' healing is pneumatic and is not to be rivalled or challenged. Inasmuch as the chreia of Matt. 12:31-32 captures Jesus' own forgiveness, defining it independently of dualism, it is seminal.

II. The Seven Penitential Psalms in the Precum Libelli
Presenter: Michael Driscoll

The precum libelli may have been used for the satisfaction of penance, which followed the pattern of praying, fasting and almsgiving. After fasting, the psalms were the preferred method of satisfying penitential tariffs; the mathematical conception explains the monastic practice of the laus perennis. Monks recited a certain number of psalms in order to pray for the dead, an obligation to which they were held through the contract of the rotulus, the scroll in which the names of the dead were enrolled. Lay-people educated in monastic schools prayed the psalter using the precum libelli. Though cut off from the official prayer of the church, the laity in the middle ages imitated monastic prayer customs. In a Cologne prayer book dressing prayers take on a penitential character. In Charlemagne's time, the libelli precum were common, but in subsequent centuries were replaced by the Book of the Hours, which provided simple forms of the Office for the use of lay people in the home. The contents of these books were generally: Calendar, Office of the BVM, Office of the Dead, Seven Penitential Psalms, Gradual Psalms, Litany of the Saints, other prayers and devotions, other offices on particular themes (e.g., the Cross, Holy Spirit, John the Baptizer, etc.). The penitential themes in these prayer books abound.