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
Nature, Ethics, and the Doctrine of ‘Habitus’: Aristotelian Moral Psychology in the Twelfth Century
Among the range of moral concepts that the Middle Ages derived from Aristotle, few exercised greater influence than the doctrine of habitus (a term ordinarily translated as ‘habit,’ but more properly meaning ‘state’ or ‘condition’). In the thirteenth century, such prominent thinkers as Thomas Aquinas, Godfrey of Fontaines, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham placed habitus (derived from the Greek term ἅξις) near the heart of their studies of ethics. It is largely possible to explain thirteenth-century interest in the concept of habitus on the basis of the appearance of Robert Grosseteste's full translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Grosseteste's Latin version, taken in conjunction with a growing interest in the field of ethics among arts masters, rendered the technical vocabulary of Aristotelian moral thought into a commonplace of scholastic philosophy.