Penance in the ancient church -- The penitentials -- The condition of the texts -- Early Irish penitential documents -- Early Welsh penitential documents -- Penitentials of the Anglo-Saxon church -- Penitentials by Irish authors which were apparently compiled on the continent -- Anonymous and pseudonymous Frankish and Visigothic penitentials of the eighth and ninth centuries -- Penitentials written or authorized by Frankish ecclesiastics -- Selections from later penitential documents -- Penitential elements in medieval public law -- Synodical decisions and ecclesiastical opinions relating to the penitentials -- An eighth-century list of superstitions -- Selections from the customs of Tallaght -- Irish canons from a Worcester collection -- On documents omitted -- The manuscripts of the penitentials.

An up-to-date overview of the functions and contexts of penance in medieval Europe, revealing the latest research and interpretations.

Using hitherto unconsidered source materials from late antiquity to the early modern period, this volume charts new views about the role of penance in shaping western attitudes and practices for resolving social, political, and spiritual tensions, as penitents and confessors negotiated rituals and expectations for penitential expression.

The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity takes as its subject the beliefs, practices, and institutions of the Christian Church between 400 and 1500AD. It addresses topics ranging from early medieval monasticism to late medieval mysticism, from the material wealth of the Church to the spiritual exercises through which certain believers might attempt to improve their souls. Each chapter tells a story, but seeks also to ask how and why 'Christianity' took particular forms at particular moments in history, paying attention to both the spiritual and otherwordly aspects of religion, and the material and political contexts in which they were often embedded. This Handbook is a landmark academic collection that presents cutting-edge interpretive perspectives on medieval religion for a wide academic audience, drawing together thirty key scholars in the field from the United States, the UK, and Europe. Notably, the Handbook is arranged thematically, and focusses on an analytical, rather than narrative, approach, seeking to demonstrate the variety, change, and complexity of religion throughout this long period, and the numerous different ways in which modern scholarship can approach it. While providing a very wide-ranging view of the subject, it also offers an important agenda for further study in the field.

Examines research from a variety of fields, including archaeology, bio-archaeology, architecture, hagiographic literature, manuscripts, liturgy, visionary literature and eschalology, patristics, numismatics, and material culture, Diverse list of contributors, many whose research has never before been available in English, Provides substantial research regarding women's history in the Merovingian period, Expands research beyond Europe to include other cultures that came in contact with the Merovingians Book jacket.

This book is an early medieval social history based on the early penitentials, with up-to-date translations of these often-ignored or misunderstood texts.

This book provides an integral, readable account of changing attitudes toward pain in late medieval Europe. Since pain itself cannot be known, the book looks at pain by chronicling what people wrote about it, and what they did with and about that.

Based on a comprehensive study of penitential handbooks, from the earliest times to the Reformation, this volume records a tradition that examines trade and price from the point of view of sin and penance as taught by the medieval Church.

Clark examines the book of hours in the context of medieval culture, the book trade in Paris, and the role of Paris as an international center of illumination. 64 illustrations, 40 in color.

In Souls under Siege, Nicole Archambeau explores how the inhabitants of southern France made sense of the ravages of successive waves of plague, the depredations of mercenary warfare, and the violence of royal succession during the fourteenth century. Many people, she finds, understood both plague and war as the symptoms of spiritual sicknesses caused by excessive sin, and they sought cures in confession. Archambeau draws on a rich evidentiary base of sixty-eight narrative testimonials from the canonization inquest for Countess Delphine de Puimichel, which was held in the market town of Apt in 1363. Each witness in the proceedings had lived through the outbreaks of plague in 1348 and 1361, as well as the violence inflicted by mercenaries unemployed during truces in the Hundred Years' War. Consequently, their testimonies unexpectedly reveal the importance of faith and the role of affect in the healing of body and soul alike. Faced with an unprecedented cascade of crises, the inhabitants of Provence relied on saints and healers, their worldview connecting earthly disease and disaster to the struggle for their eternal souls. Souls under Siege illustrates how medieval people approached sickness and uncertainty by using a variety of remedies, making clear that "healing" had multiple overlapping meanings in this historical moment.