IMC 2017: Sessions
Session 733: Confession in the Middle Ages, I: The Path to the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215
Tuesday 4 July 2017, 14.15-15.45
| Sponsor: | Network for the Study of Late Antique & Early Medieval Monasticism / Forschungsstelle für Vergleichende Ordensgeschichte (FOVOG), Technische Universität Dresden |
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| Organiser: | Cristina Andenna, Forschungsstelle für Vergleichende Ordensgeschichte (FOVOG), Technische Universität Dresden |
| Moderator/Chair: | Albrecht Diem, Department of History, Syracuse University, New York |
| Paper 733-a | Confession in Irish Monastic Rules and Penitentials (Language: English) Index terms: Canon Law, Ecclesiastical History, Monasticism, Religious Life |
| Paper 733-b | Lament and Praise in Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés's Bella Parisiacae urbis (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Mentalities, Monasticism, Religious Life |
| Paper 733-c | Manuals for Confession in the High and Late Middle Ages (Language: English) Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Monasticism, Religious Life, Theology |
| Abstract | In his History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault described confession as the predominant way of producing knowledge in Western societies. The Western individual is, as he describes it, a 'confessing animal'. Despite the increasing interest in penance and penitential literature, the medieval origins of confession, the transformation of confessional practices and the role of confession as a textual technique have hardly been studied systematically. We hope that the two sessions on confession form the beginning of a collaborative endeavour to explore the origins of confession as a religious and literary practice. Undoubtedly the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) with his famous clause Omnis utriusque sexus formed a turning point in the history of confession. The first session focuses on confessional texts and textual practices rooting in the pre-1215 world, the second session focuses on confessional practices emerging after the Council that imposed on every Christian to confess at least once every year. |