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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
One of [the Pharisees], a lawyer, asked [Jesus] a question, to test Him. ‘Teacher, what is the great commandment in the Law?’ And [Jesus] said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.’
Reconciliation of the relationships broken by sin, or the fall, is one of the central themes of Christianity, as this collection, of studies duly highlights. The themes of reconciliation to God and reconciliation to neighbour run throughout both the New Testament, with special emphasis in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, and the Hebrew Scriptures, for in this passage from the Gospel of Matthew Jesus was quoting from Deuteronomy and Leviticus. This text would have been well-known to Christian authors on the subject of reconciliation in Western Europe in the thirteenth century; and the passage, or at least its message, should have been familiar to most clergy and many of their people. As an item of catechesis, one of its virtues is that it is short, and thus easy to teach and to remember.
1 Matt 22: 3 5-40 (RSV).
2 Deut. 6: 5; Lev. 19: 18.
3 Collins, Randall and Makowsky, Michael, The Discovery of Society (6th edn, Boston, MA, 1998), 104 Google Scholar.
4 See the works of Bossy, John, especially Christianity in the West, 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1985). 35–56 Google Scholar.
5 The Corrector et Medicus is Book XIX of Burchard’s Decretum.
6 PL 140, 943-1014, 949: ‘Hebdomada priori ante initium Quadragesimae, presbyteri plebium convocent ad se populum, et discordantes canonica auctoritate reconcilient, et omnia jurgia sedent, et tunc primum confitentibus poenitentiam dent; ita ut, antequam caput jejunii veniat, omnes confessi poenitentiam acceptam habeant, ut liberius dicere possint: Dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris’. The translations in this paper are mine, but selected passages are translated in The Corrector of Burchard of Worms’, in Medieval Handbooks of Penance: a Translation of the Principal Libri Poenitentiales and Selections from Related Documents, ed. and trans. McNeill, John T. and Gamer, Helena M. (New York, NY, 1938, repr. 1980), 321–45 Google Scholar.
7 PL 140, 977-8: Tunc prosternat se poenitens in terram, et cum lacrymis dicat: Et in his, et in aliis vitiis, quibuscunque humana fragilitas contra Deum et creatorem suum, aut cogitando, aut loquendo, aut operando, aut delectando, aut concupiscendo peccare potest, in omnibus me peccasse, et reum in conspectu Dei super omnes homines esse cognosco, et confiteor. Humiliter etiam te sacerdos Dei exposco, ut intercedas pro me, et pro peccatis meis ad Dominum et creatorem nostrum, quatenus de his et omnibus sceleribus meis veniam et indulgentiam consequi merear. [Prayers follow.]
8 See Hamilton, Sarah, ‘Penance in the Age of Gregorian Reform’, 47–83 Google Scholar.
9 Brooke, Zachary Nugent, The English Church and the Papacy from the Conquest to the Reign of John (Cambridge, 1931), 237–9 Google Scholar. There is also textual evidence suggesting a copy at Salisbury: Thomae de Chobham Summa confessorum, ed. Broomfield (Louvain, 1968), passim.
10 Councils and Synods, with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, ed. F. M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney, 2 vols (Oxford, 1964) II: A.D. 1205-1313, 57-96 [hereafter C&S II]; Cheney, C. R., English Synodalia ofthe Thirteenth Century (London, 1941, repr. 1968), 51–89 Google Scholar.
11 English Episcopal Acta, 18: Salisbury, 1078-1217, ed. Brian Kemp (Oxford, 1999), lix.
12 C&S II: 64.
13 Cheney, , English Synodalia, 62–7 Google Scholar.
14 McEvoy, J., Robert Grosseteste (Oxford, 2000), 3–30 Google Scholar and passim; idem, , The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (Oxford, 1982), 492–3 Google Scholar.
15 McEvoy dates it from after 1239, but admits that ‘Further precisions must, however, await new evidence’: see Philosophy, 492-3. For text and notes, see the edition by Wenzel, S., ‘Robert Grosseteste’s Treatise on Confession, “Deus Est”’, Franciscan Studies 30 (1970), 218–93 Google Scholar.
16 Wenzel, , ‘Grosseteste’s Treatise on Confession’, 245 Google Scholar. My translation.
17 Haines, R. M., ‘The Indulgence as a Form of Social Insurance’, in idem, Ecclesia Anglicana: Studies in the English Church ofthe Later Middle Ages (Toronto, 1989), 183–7 Google Scholar.
18 Oden, Thomas C., Care of Souls in the Classic Tradition (Philadelphia, 1984), 51–2 Google Scholar.
19 Southern, R. W., Robert Grosseteste: the Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1986, 2nd edn, 1992), 258–60 Google Scholar.
20 Wenzel, , ‘Grosseteste’s Treatise on Confession’, 226–7 Google Scholar.
21 C&S II: 992.
22 C&S II: 1074.
23 C&S II: 1061, prologue to Quinel’s treatise.
24 C&S II: 1077.
25 Boyle, Leonard, ‘Notes on the Education of the Fratres Communes in the Dominican Order in the Thirteenth Century,’ in Xenia Medii Aevi Historiam Illustrantia oblata Thomae Kaeppeli O.P. (Rome, 1978), 253–66 Google Scholar, repr. in idem, , Pastoral Care, Clerical Education and Canon Law, 1200-1400 (London, 1981), VI Google Scholar; Raimundus de Pennaforte, Summa de paenitentia, ed. X Ochoa and A. Diez (Rome, 1976).
26 Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae, Tertia Pars: 90.3 Google Scholar.
27 Ibid., 73.4.
28 Ibid, 73.4; 79.5; 80.4, most clearly expressed, but also found throughout his discussions of die eucharist.
29 Bossy, J., ‘The Mass as a Social Institution, 1200-1700’, Past and Present 100 (1983), 29–61 Google Scholar, especially 50-5.
30 Lawrence, C. H., The Friars: The Impact of the Early Mendicant Movement on Western Society (London, 1994), 152–65 Google Scholar; Haren, M., ‘Confession, Social Ethics and Social Discipline in the Memoriale Presbiterorum’, in Biller, Peter and Minnis, A. J., eds, Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages (York, 1998), 109–22 Google Scholar; Moorman, J. R. H., Church Life in England in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1945), 390–3 Google Scholar.
31 Bossy, , Christianity in the West, 35–56 Google Scholar; Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, CT, 1992), 93–154 Google Scholar.