Penance, confession and their texts (penitential and confessors' manuals) are important topics for an understanding of the middle ages, in relation to a wide range of issues, from medieval social thought to Chaucer's background. These essays treat a variety of different aspects of the topic: subjects include the frequency and character of early medieval penance; the summae and manuals for confessors, and the ways in which these texts (written by males for males) constructed women as sexual in nature; William of Auvergne's remarkable writing on penance; and the relevance of confessors' manuals for demographic history. JOHN BALDWIN's major study `From the Ordeal to Confession', delivered as a Quodlibet lecture, traces the appearance in French romances of the themes of a penitent's contrition, the priest's job in listening, and the application of the spiritual conseil and penitence.
PETER BILLER is Professor of Medieval History at the University of York; A.J. MINNIS is Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English, Yale University.
Contributors: PETER BILLER, ROB MEENS, ALEXANDER MURRAY, JACQUELINE MURRAY, LESLEY SMITH, MICHAEL HAREN, JOHN BALDWIN
- ISBN10 0952973413
- ISBN13 9780952973416
- Publish Date 29 October 1998
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 14 March 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint York Medieval Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 230
- Language English