Penitential Practice

This new edition (currently in early draft) aims to replace that of H.J. Schmitz, now nearly 120 years old. It is based on a fresh assessment of all the available manuscript evidence as well as recent research into source material. The edition will include indices, commentary, translation (English), and exhaustive source information. A draft edition is currently available here for viewing or download as a PDF. More information available at http://individual.utoronto.ca/michaelelliot/manuscripts/texts/poenitentiale_ecgberhti.html.

Summary:
This study is the result of research conducted on the text of the
rite of confession based on approximately 50 unpublished South Slavonic
manuscripts dating from the early 13th to the early 16th century, up
to its first printed edition. The research offers much more accurate and
detailed evidence confirming observations on the heterogeneity of the
South Slavonic confessional rite. The study classifies the text of the rite
of confession based on the type, the contents and the preserved South
Slavonic manuscripts. Research suggests two main textological circles
that determine the order of the enactment of the rite. One group of texts
belongs to the type of the service of confession of the Euchologium
Sinaiticum, a Glagolitic service book dating from the 11th century, and
the other belongs to the service of confession found in the Penitential
Nomokanon of John the Faster (John Nesteutes). Both groups contain
models that dictate the framework of the ritual for the Sacrament of
Penance. These models could include questionnaires with premade
questions, but usually there were long lists of “secret” sins about which
the penitent needed to be asked. Over time, owing to the influence
of practice and the reconsideration of existing forms, the texts of the
above-mentioned types of confession became entwined, creating new
compilations and recensions of the text. By the end of the medieval
period, the “Sinaitic” model survived as the main pillar of priestly
ministry but in several younger recensional and sub-recensional forms.
Research has distinguished its two late-medieval recensions (one of
them had prevailed since about 1350) and thus there seem to have been
three recensions of the “Sinaitic” service of confession in the period
from the 11th to the early 16th century.

This new edition (currently in early draft) aims to replace that of P.W. Finserwalder, now nearly 100 years old. It is based on a fresh assessment of the manuscript evidence, and is the first edition to present together the texts of the Canones Basilienses, the Canones Cottoniani, the Capitula Dacheriana, the Canones Gregorii, and the Paenitentiale Umbrense, the latter also being presented for the first time in its original single-book form (rather than the later two-book form). The edition will include indices, commentary, translation (English), and exhaustive source information. Draft editions of all five versions (without sources) are available here for viewing or download as a PDF. More information, including a synoptic edition (wherein the chapters of all five versions are presented together in a single table) can be found at http://individual.utoronto.ca/michaelelliot/manuscripts/texts/iudicia_theodori.html.

The control and eradication of superstitious beliefs and practices were a particular concern of the Catholic Church from the 16th century onwards. The sacrament of penance and the figure of the confessor played a fundamental role in this, due to the possibility of knowing in detail both the habits and the deepest feelings of penitents. The following paper analyzes a group of confessor’s manuals, which circulated in vernacular between the 16th and 17th centuries, in order to present some of the most common practices of deviant devotion. The reference to the treatises on superstition by Pedro Ciruelo and Martín de Castañega will allow us to understand the importance given to the sin of superstition and the place given to it in the works on confession. In the latter, we find not only the characterization of this sin, but also a whole inventory of manifestations of superstitious devotion whose character excluded other ways of control.

The law in literature movement has long appreciated law and literature as
“parallel forms of discourse, each with its own conventions and traditions,”
although their interaction is understood as being chiefly unidirectional:
literature provides an opportunity to critique changes in law or present
a view of law in action.1 Thomas’s book, however, proposes a new dimension altogether to this relationship. He sees William Langland using (primarily) the C-text of his Piers Plowman as a vehicle to participate in contemporary debates about canon law and the practice of pastoral care. As Thomas explains in his introduction, Langland’s intervention should not be seen as remarkable. Canon law was never an accumulation of statutes, as we often imagine law to be. Rather, canon law was a constantly evolving system, reliant on the debates and treatises of great canonists and theologians that produced much conflicting work. As a result, it was never a “closed corpus” (12). Nor was it definitive: rather, the judge in an ecclesiastical court ruled in accordance with those works he found most compelling. Drawing in part on the fact that Piers Plowman was typically read alongside treatises of canon law, Thomas asks us to imagine Piers Plowman as part of this process.He provides a cogent and compelling case for the poem’s participation in the glossing and production of canon law.

This essay provides an edition of a treatise on confession (composed 1225x1250) with a extensive (37 pp.) introduction and commentary. The work is addressed to a monastic audience, but it is designed to help them in giving spiritual counsel to the laity. The contents of the treatise are appropriate for a general lay audience, not for monks. The prologue explicitly discusses the issue of jurisdiction in confession and the laity confessing to religious. The author of the work cannot be identified, but he was an English cleric influenced by Grosseteste. The treatise has a close but complex relationship with a longer treatise on the seven sacraments. My introduction discusses the treatise's concept of criminal sin, its advice for hearing confession, and the long and unusual treatment of the five senses in confession. In general the author was willing to go against the consensus on some moral issues and to take a creative approach to standard tropes.

For most of the history of the Christian church the forgiveness of sin has been regarded as contingent upon the sinner's confession - "If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us" (1 Jn 1:9). Yet, some modern Protestant theology, like that of Karl Barth, has tended to see a subtle form of Pelagianism in such a condition. This paper will compare Reformed accounts of forgiveness and penitential practice, highlighting the theological differences which cause some to insist that the forgiveness of sins is conditioned upon confession, even while others deny it.

Public weeping during Holy Week processions in late medieval Spain were emotional performances that could be learned and rehearsed.  A variety of textual, visual, and doctrinal materials were available to lay penitents to assist them in achieving more profound—and more ritually efficacious—feelings of contrition and sadness.  By comparing the compelling similarities between late medieval devotional practices and Constantin Stanislavsky’s methodological tools for achieving emotional and spiritual truth on stage, we may better understand the corporal and cognitive processes of social actors in ritual and theatrical arenas.