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Penitential Manuscripts and the Teaching of Penance in Carolingian Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2019
Abstract
This article discusses the educational value of penitential literature in Carolingian Francia. In particular, it looks at manuscripts which were not simple penitential handbooks but were compiled as educational tools for priests. Apart from penitential works, these manuscripts included monastic rules, moral and ascetic works providing moral instruction, and, in some cases, school texts and glossaries.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2019
References
1 Due to the tendency to regard manuscripts comprising a variety of texts belonging to different genres as ‘miscellanea’, these manuscripts are rarely studied in much detail.
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19 My sources for the choice of manuscripts discussed here were Meens's list of educational manuscripts (Het tripartite boeteboek, 259–60) and the lists of manuscripts including individual penitential books in the appendices of his Penance in the Early Middle Ages, 226–37. Raymund Kottje's comprehensive presentation of manuscripts containing Halitgar's penitential was also useful: Die Bussbücher, 14–82.
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28 ‘Duodecim abusivis sunt saeculi: sapiens sine operibus, senex sine religione, adolescens sine oboedientia, dives sine elemosyna, femina sine pudicitia, dominus sine virtute, Christianus contentiosus, pauper superbus, rex iniquus, episcopus neglegens, plebs sine disciplina et populus sine lege’: Pseudo-Cyprian, De duodecim abusivis saeculi (CSEL 3/3, 152).
29 Ibid. 152–73. On the text, see Breen, Aidan, ‘The Evidence of Antique Irish Exegesis in Pseudo-Cyprian, De duodecim abusivis saeculi’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 87C (1987), 71–101Google Scholar; On the text's popularity in Carolingian Europe, see Anton, Hans H., ‘Pseudo-Cyprian: De duodecim abusivis saeculi und sein Einfluss auf den Kontinent, insbesondere auf die karolingischen Fürstenspiegel’, in Löwe, Heinz, ed., Die Iren und Europa im früheren Mittelalter, 2 vols (Stuttgart, 1982), 2: 568–617Google Scholar.
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35 ‘External’ monastic schools were located outside the precincts of the monastery, and were intended for the education of children not destined for the monastic life. The external school of the monastery of St Gall is an example often cited to argue for the widespread existence and operation of such schools during the Carolingian period, but Hildebrandt, M. M., The External School in Carolingian Society (Leiden, 1992)Google Scholar, argues that it was neither typical nor regular in the ninth century. On complaints about the disarray of late Carolingian education, see Contreni, ‘Carolingian Renaissance’, 715–16.