| dc.contributor.author | Cels, Marc | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2012-11-15T18:47:10Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2012-11-15T18:47:10Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2012-11-15T18:47:10Z | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/2149/3223 | |
| dc.description | I presented my paper, “Tracing the Tradition of Medieval Parochial Peace-Making,” as part of a three-person session on medieval war and peace during the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Medievalists. My paper questioned the assumption of earlier scholars about the importance of the parish priest in encouraging peace among his parishioners. It looked at the surviving instructions given to priests (manuals for confessors and episcopal statutes) and found few that insisted that priests demand that enmities be forgiven as part of penance. A theological tradition connecting peace-making to penance was found in the thirteenth century diocese of Salisbury, England. It could be connected to the eleventh-century instructions of German Bishop Burchard of Worms, and to his source, a ninth-century Carolingian Frank, Bishop Theodulf of Orleans. Nevertheless, all these sources betray an ambiguity towards the Gospel injunctions to make peace. This ambiguity can be linked to the influential interpretations of Augustine of Hippo in the early fifth century. At best, therefore, medieval Christians were encouraged to change their hearts towards their enemies as a preparation for forgiving them. Although parochial charity and concord remained an important ideal, nevertheless, the prescriptive literature did not closely associate penance with peace-making. These findings contribute to a current revision of historical thinking about the role of medieval clergy in conflict and conflict resolution, and efforts to understand peace-making in pre-modern and pre-state Europe more broadly. | en |
| dc.description.abstract | My paper questions a persistent paradigm in the history of Catholic confession that argues for a medieval shift, beginning with the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, from the reconciliation of community members towards greater emphasis on the reconciliation of individual sinners to God. The older tradition, it has been argued, demanded that sinners re-establish charity with their enemies before seeking forgiveness from God—especially as a prerequisite for Easter communion. This paper focuses on strongly-articulated theology of communal reconciliation that is closely associated with Diocese of Salisbury, especially in Bishop Richard Poore’s statutes and Thomas of Chobham’s Summa confessorum. However, a closer examination of these texts and their Ottonian, Carolingian and Patristic sources reveals that medieval instructions for confessors were ambiguous about the penitential reconciliation of penitents and that communal reconciliation was not universally demanded, even in the pre-Lateran IV era. It turns out, that, through the early and late Middle Ages, the literal force of Biblical injunctions to seek peace with one’s neighbour before making peace with God was tempered by Augustine’s spiritualizing interpretation: an inward, psychological preparedness to forgive or ask forgiveness was considered sufficient as reconciliation. This, no doubt, accounts for the lack of evidence for widespread penitential reconciliation that has often been considered characteristic of medieval Christianity. It also reveals that a concern for the psychological disposition of the penitent was not an innovation of the 16th century (John Bossy) let alone the 18th century (Foucault). | en |
| dc.language.iso | en | en |
| dc.relation.ispartofseries | 92.927.G1344; | |
| dc.subject | Confession | en |
| dc.subject | Middle Ages | en |
| dc.subject | Clergy | en |
| dc.subject | Augustine | en |
| dc.title | Tracing the Tradition of Medieval Parochial Peace-Making | en |
| dc.type | Presentation | en |
