To all Listmebers:
A search for citations.
In a collection of documents entitled Anecdota
Graeco-Byzantina, (edited by A. Vassilieff, Moscow: 1893 ( and
appearing as well in other collections), a libellus assigned to 1274
( possibly 1275, or 1278, but certainly shortly after Lyons II) and
ascribed to an anit-unionist opponent of Michael Palaeologos ( most
likely by and after the return of one of Michael's envoys from the
sessions at Lyons, there is recounted a contentious exchange between
the "Latins" and the "Greeks", in which the Latins seem to suspect
the Greek Church of practicing Absolution of the Dead. This
accusation, while not detailed in the libellus, may be related to a
prayer in the Orthodox Burial Service, in which, prior to the final
litany of commemoration, the celebrant reads a prayer requesting
forgiveness and mercy to the departed, in which requests are made for
the lifting of "bans" or interdicts that may have placed by the
Church upon the departed.
Apparently the Latins responded by reading their official
condemnation of the practice of Absolution of the Dead and the
official ( canonical?) prohibitions thereof. Of course, the prayer,
if that is the source for suspicion, espouses no such thing, and the
Greeks were outraged, since, of course, the Sacraments of the Church
are for the living.
What interests me is:
1.Of what wouldsuch condemnation by the Latins consist?
What were the canonical decrees that might have constituted their response?
In other words, what is the Official Latin position on the issue of
Absolution of the dead. ( late 13thc)?
2.Any citations of polemical literature surrounding this issue.
3 A question of Theo-logic:
If posthumous and often chronologically distanced lifting of
bans and interdicts was common practice in the Church; and if such
interdicts or bans,
( or rather the issue which caused the imposition of the bans), at
the time of their operation effectively precluded the recipients of
the those interdicts from participating in the Sacramental life of
the Church; and if such exclusion, as it must, prohibited the
Sacrament of Confession and Absolution; would/ could the lifting of
those bans posthumusly authorize the possibility of a posthumous
absolution, which may have been denied to them exclusively by the
specific issue which caused the ban, but not by their desire to
confess their sins and receive the Absolution procalimed by the
Church.?
4.) A call for any instances of posthumous confessions
heard/witnessed and accepted by the Church as confessions of
guilt/sin in Medieval hagiography?
I most certainly may require your absolution for the length and
wanderings of this post.
Josef Gulka
Josef Gulka
[log in to unmask]
Tel: 215- 732-8420
Fax (215) 732-8420
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