8 Penitential Punishment and Purgatory: A Drama of Puriication through Pain Racha Kirakosian Harvard University Although the Premonstratensian order is not speciically known for forms of mysticism that emphasize the body, it is within this order that we encounter a mystic whose spiritual path reads as a dramatic plot, staging pain as the pivotal force in an efective programme of penance. The mystical Life of Christina of Hane (1269–92?) allows us to study the relationship between internal penance and physically sufered penance in a way that considers the historical background of penitential practices and beliefs in their individual and collective natures. 1 The grand narrative that penance as a personal act of reconciliation evolved under the inluence of Gratian’s Decretum, forming part of a general tendency towards the internalization of religious acts and thoughts, seems attractive but needs reinement and adjustment. The shift towards the inner realm as space of judgement does not necessarily imply that the penitential did not need to be manifested outwardly any longer. 2 There is no doubt that internal acts such as personal penance and confession were increasingly favoured over bodily and hence exterior means (Baldwin 1998: 198-205), but such developments evolved over the course of centuries and can be traced back to the Carolingian period (Hamilton 2011). The thirteenth century, then, appears to be a time in which concepts and ideas that developed over a long period became codiied, in some cases with the aim to regulate. 3 In the same 1 The critical edition of the text cited in this article is Kirakosian (2017). The text was irst edited by Mittermaier in two journal issues as ‘Lebensbeschreibung der sel. Christina, gen. von Retters’ (1965; 1966). 2 For a very critical, yet constructive reading of the history of penance and its relection in scholarship, see De Jong (2000; 2009). 3 One may think of the prohibition of priestly involvement in trials by ire and water by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 as an example of one of the many outcomes of debates on penance, as shown by Mäkinen and Pihlajamäki (2004: 536-37, 40). Baldwin (1990: 191) concludes that ‘Canon 18 of the Council attempted to put an end to the ordeal’ while ‘Canon 21 sought to encourage and formalize the technique of private penance’. Medieval scholars judged the ordeals to be ‘both canonically unsound and theologically suspect’ (McAuley 2006: 475). In legal theory, trials by ire and water were a means of protecting the innocent from an unjust sentence and punishment. Medieval formulae (ordines) show that the ritual the accused party had to undergo during an ordeal was also one of penitence and punishment. in: Punishment and Penitential Practices in Medieval German Writing. Edited by Sarah Bowden, Annette Volfing. Kings College London Medieval Studies. 2018.