Manuals for Penitents in Medieval England
Regular price
€77.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
A01=Krista A Milne
A01=Krista A. Murchison
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Ancrene Wisse
Author_Krista A Milne
Author_Krista A. Murchison
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HRAX
Category=QRAX
Church control
confession
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
knowledge dissemination
Language_English
layfolk
Manuals for Penitents
medieval culture
Medieval England
medieval texts
morality
orthodoxy
PA=Available
Parson's Tale
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
religious literature
sin
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9781843846086
- Weight: 438g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 17 Dec 2021
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
First comprehensive survey of a major genre of medieval English texts: its purpose, characteristics, and reception.
The "bestseller list" of medieval England would have included many manuals for penitents: works that could teach the public about the process of confession, and explain the abstract concept of sin through familiar situations. Among these 'bestselling' works were the Manuel des péchés (commonly known through its English translation Handlyng Synne), The Speculum Vitae, and Chaucer's Parson's Tale.
This book is the first full-length overview of this body of writing and its material and social contexts. It shows that while manuals for penitents developed under the Church's control, they also became a site of the Church's concern. Manuals such as the Compileison (which was addressed to a much broader audience than its English analogue, Ancrene Wisse) brought learning that had been controlled by the Church into the hands of layfolk and, in so doing, raised significant concerns over who should have access to knowledge. Clerics worried that these manuals might accidentally teach people new sins, remind them of old ones, or become sites of prurient interest. This finding, and others explored in this book, call for a new awareness of the complications and contradictions inherent in late medieval orthodoxy and reveal plainly that even writing that happened firmly within the Church's control could promote new and complex ways of thinking about religion and the self.
Krista A. Murchison is an assistant professor of medieval English and medieval French at Leiden University, in The Netherlands. At present (2020-2024), she is leading an individual Dutch Research Council-funded project on medieval manuscripts destroyed during World War II. Her previous grant-funded research projects include a digital analysis of French manuscripts produced in medieval England (2018).
