Promoting Harmony

The practice of caritas enjoined Christians to keep the peace with their neighbour whilst also looking out to admonish them for their sin, necessary to ensure their salvation. Unsurprisingly, these ideas could come into conflict. This chapter explores how lower-order Scots, who often lived in small houses with many people, produced ‘privacy’ by deciding when to see, hear, or feel sin. It deploys the distinction made by the Church between secret, private, and public worship as a framework of knowing and publicity used by Scots to help them live harmoniously with their neighbours. Focusing on infanticide, rape, and domestic violence cases, this chapter highlights both the contexts in which people chose to keep secrets and the rituals used—such as processioning or calling witnesses—designed to make things public. It particularly attends to the importance of physical space and material conditions in shaping the experience of caritas in this context.