a punishment, either voluntary or imposed by authority, for the faults which a person has committed. Penance is one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic church. Besides fasting, alms, abstinence, and the like, which are the general conditions of penance, there are others of a more particular kind; as the repeating a certain number of ave-marias, pater-nosters, and credos, wearing a hair-shirt, and giving one's self a certain number of stripes.