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Penance and confession were an integral part of medieval religious life; essays explore literary evidence.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
List of contents
`Medieval Confession' and ``Confessors' manuals and the avoiding of offspring'. - Peter Biller
`The Frequency and Nature of early medieval Penance'. - Rob Meens
`Counselling in Medieval Confession'. - Alexander Murray
`Gendered Souls in Sexed Bodies: the Male Construction of Sexuality in Some Medieval Confessors' Manuals'. - Jacqueline Murray
`William of Auvergne and Confession'. - Lesley Smith
`Confession, Social Ethics and Social Discipline in the `Memoriale Presbiterorum'' and `The Interrogatories for Officials, Lawyers and Secular Estates of the `Memoriale Presbiterorum''.and Secular Estates of the `Memoriale Presbiterorum''. - Michael Haren
`The 1996 York Quodlibet Lecture, `From the Ordeal to Confession: In Search of Lay Religion in Early Thirteenth Century France''. - John Baldwin
About the author
Peter Biller, A.J. Minnis
