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
Prelacy, Pastoral Care and the Instruction of Subordinates in Late Twelfth-Century England
Historians of the Middle Ages usually associate the phrase ‘pastoral care’ with the sacraments and religious services performed by parish priests on behalf of lay people. But late twelfth-century writers primarily attributed pastoral care to prelates. Closely following the tradition of Pope Gregory I's Pastoral Rule, they held that prelates bore the responsibility to govern, guide and (perhaps most importantly) instruct their subordinate clergy or religious. Prelates did this by preaching, and they were supposed to validate their words with the example of their own righteous lives. But although commentators assumed that prelates would be reasonably well educated, late twelfth-century writers did not attribute good preaching to intellectual aptitude, or to the availability of preaching treatises or model sermon collections, as historians often assume. In an age of intellectual vibrancy and flourishing schools, ensuring that prelates instructed their subordinates remained firmly a moral, rather than an educational, question for the English church. Only by instructing subordinates could a prelate ensure their, and by extension his own, eternal salvation: neglect of preaching was tantamount to murder. This article uses the little-studied writings of Alexander of Ashby, Bartholomew of Exeter and Thomas Agnellus to uncover new links between ideas about prelacy, pastoral care and the instruction of subordinates in the high Middle Ages.
NEW DECAPODS FROM THE NAVIDAD FORMATION (MIOCENE) OF CHILE
Abstract A new Miocene decapod fauna is described from the Navidad Formation of coastal Chile. The fauna includes five callianassoid taxa, none of which is preserved sufficiently to identify to species level. New species include Calappilia? chilensis, Hepatus spinimarginatus, Proterocarcinus navidad, Pilumnus cucaoensis, and Pinnixa navidadensis. A possible rhizopine member of the Pilumnidae Samouelle, 1819, is described. Trichopeltarion levis Casadío et al., 2004, previously known from the late Oligocene of western Argentina, was also recovered from these rocks. Calappa circularis Beurlen, from the lower Miocene Pirabas Formation in Brazil, is herein referred to Calappilia. This report greatly increases the known number of fossil decapods from Chile and sets the stage for paleobiogeographic comparison of the decapod faunas of Chile and Argentina.