Overview
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.
- | Author: Peter Biller
- | Publisher: York Medieval Press
- | Publication Date: Oct 17, 2013
- | Number of Pages: 232 pages
- | Binding: Paperback or Softback
- | ISBN-10: 1903153484
- | ISBN-13: 9781903153482
