Virtues and Vices In Early Texts on Pastoral Care
The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 can undoubtedly be counted among the formative events in medieval history.1 Pope Innocent III successfully reinforced the pastoral responsibility of the clergy towards all the faithful and fundamentally redefined the relation between the Church and the Christian individual. All Christians were required to make a full confession of all their sins and to take part in Holy Communion at least once a year.2 Priests had to be qualified to fulfill their duties by preaching, hearing confession, imposing penance and by educating their flock both morally and theologically in the confessional interrogation. An important side effect of this new rule was the rise of a great number of different new genres of pastoral texts, leading to a true discursive explosion with deep impact on the literate culture of the later Middle Ages. These new genres include confessionals, catechetical handbooks, preaching aids, collections of exempla , mirrors of princes and laymen and many others.3 The mendicant orders who received their
Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction Before the Council of Trent
Abbreviations Introduction 1. Franciscan Preaching as Religious Instruction 2. Religious Instruction in Rules, Rule Commentaries and Constitutions 3. Rules and Treatises for Novice Training 4. Franciscan Catechisms 5. Confession Handbooks 6. Instructory Works for the Mass and the Divine Office 7. Works of Religious Edification 8. Prayer Guides Bibliography of secondary sources Index of authors Index of works
The Provincial Centre at Camulodunum: Towards an Historical Context
Present assessment of the provincial enclosure at Camulodunum, more particularly how far it can be compared to the standard picture of similar centres elsewhere, is inevitably constrained by the limited evidence at our disposal. With no numismatic sources to draw on and in the absence of a single record of the provincial priesthood — a striking void that calls for comment — documentary testimony is restricted to what can be made of two passages in the literary authorities. The first, a notorious sneer in Seneca's Apocolocyntosis (VIII.3), tells only that a temple of some sort was associated somehow with the emperor Claudius. The second text, an obscure allusion in Tacitus, is at first sight no more enlightening but, on closer analysis, the phrase templum Divo Claudio constitutum (Ann. xiv.31) yields the invaluable inference that the temple was to the deified, not the living Claudius; in which case construction must have been begun in a.d. 54 or later. Archaeological data throw no light on the origins of the temple or of the precinct in which it stood but exploration has steadily enlarged our knowledge of the site itself, and understanding of the remains has now reached the stage at which, for all its puzzling lacunae, the centre is as well known in some ways as the triple-tiered complex at Tarraco, the provincial enclave of Hispania Citerior. We have arrived at the point where the British sanctuary and its counterparts on the Continent can be mutually illuminating.