in the ancient Christian church, a name given to certain prebysers or priests, appointed in every church to receive the private confessions of the people, in order to facilitate public discipline, by acquainting them what sins were to be expiated by public penance, and to appoint private penance for such private crimes as were not proper to be publicly confessed.

Penitentiary, at the court of Rome, is an office in which are examined and delivered out the secret bulls, graces, or dispensations relating to cases of conscience, confessions, &c.

Penitentiary, is also an officer, in some cathedrals, vested with power from the bishop to absolve, in cases referred to him. The pope has at present his grand penitentiary, who is a cardinal and the chief of the other penitentiary priests established in the church of Rome, who consult him in all difficult cases. He presides in the penitentiary, dispatches dispensations, abolutions, &c. and has under him a regent and 24 provosts, or advocates of the sacred penitentiary.

Penman-Mawr, a mountain in Caernarvonshire, 1400 feet high. It hangs perpendicularly over the sea, at so vast a height, that few spectators are able to look down the dreadful steep. On the side which is next the sea, there is a road cut out of the side of the rock, about six or seven feet wide, which winds up a steep ascent, and used to be defended on one side only by a flight wall, in some parts about a yard high, and in others by only a bank, that scarce rose a foot above the road. The sea was seen dashing its waves 40 fathoms below, with the mountain rising as much above the traveller's head. This dangerous road was a few years ago secured by a wall breast-high, to the building of which the city of Dublin largely contributed, it being in the high road to Holyhead.