The Penitential Wand

As is not inappropriate for the approach of the principal season of penitence in the ecclesial calendar Shawn Tribe writes on the Liturgicsl Arts Journal website today about the history of the Penitential Wand or Staff. 

This custom originated in ancient Roman law and practice with the tapping by means of a wand or stick a person as a symbolic imposition of a legal penalty or as the sign of the manumission of a slave. It was that sense which was taken over by the Church as a sign of the release of a penitent from the slavery of sin, especially in terms of reserved sins or of indulgences granted by Papal authority in, for example, Holy Years.

One could add to the examples cited of knighting with a sword and the tap on the cheek of a male confirmand two others of the tactile transmission of judgement or legal intent. The first is the slap or clasp on the shoulder to confer knighthood still used in the Netherlands and, I think, the Order of Malta and there was also the use in the past of the monarch’s sceptre with to touch a bill to make it an Act of Parliament,  either by the sovereign or their representative, in both England and Scotland.

The custom of using the Penitential Wand, with more than two thousand years of history behind it, and harmless in itself and, literally, striking in its symbolism, was abolished by the cultural iconoclasm of Pope Paul VI in 1967.

The article, with illustrations of the use of the wand, a surving example and the throne chair of the Major Penitentiary in St Peter’s from which it was wielded on occasion, can be seen at Lost Romanitas: The Virgula Poenitentiaria -- Or Penitential Wand / Rod