Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages

Book 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1903153484
• ISBN13: 9781903153482
• Release Date: October 2013
• Publisher: York Medieval Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 9.2"