medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Off the top of my head I can't remember where in canon law confession to lay people is allowed, but here are two specific examples:
Ralph of Shrewsbury, Bishop of Bath and Wells issued a mandate to the priests in his diocese in January 1349 in the midst of the Plague. Because of the ravages of the plague, he instructs them to inform lay people that "if when on the point of death they cannot secure the services of an ordained priest, they should make confession of their sins, according to the teaching of the apostle, to any lay person, even to a woman if a man is not available." He goes on to note that lay people who hear such emergency confessions are bound by the seal of confession not to reveal what is confessed to them. To forestall such emergency confessions, he offers lay people a forty-days indulgence for those who confess to their own parish priests before they fall sick. If people who confess to lay people later recover, they are obliged to confess the same sins again to a priest. The mandate is translated in Rosemary Horrox's _The Black Death_ (1994), pp. 271-72 and in F. A. Gasquet's _The Black Death_ (1908), pp. 93-95 (included in Shinners & Dohar, _Pastors and the Care of Souls in Medieval England_, pp. 284-85) and comes from Wilkins, _Concilia_, II, 745-56.
In Joinville's _Life of Saint Louis_, there is an account of this practice in action a hundred years earlier in 1250 when Joinville records a wonderful moment where he and some of his fellow knights, captured by Saracens, fear that they are about to be executed:
"A good thirty of the Saracens now boarded our ship, with drawn swords in their hands, and Danish axes hanging at their necks. I asked Baudouin d'Ibelin, who was well acquainted with their language, what these men were saying. He told me they were saying that they had come to cut off our heads. At once a great number of people crowded round to confess their sins to a monk of the Holy Trinity, named Jean, who was in the service of the Comte Guillaume de Flandre. I for my part, unable to recall any sins I had committed, spent the time thinking that the more I tried to defend myself, or to get out of this predicament, the worse it would be for me. So I crossed myself, and as I knelt at the feet of one of the Saracens who was holding a Danish axe such as carpenters use, I said to myself ‘Thus Saint Agnes died.' Guy d'Ibelin, Constable of Cyprus, knelt down beside me, and confessed himself to me. ‘I absolve you,' I said to him, ‘with such power as God has granted me.' However, when I rose to my feet, I could not remember a word of what he had told me." (From Margaret R. B Shaw's Penguin translation (1963), pp. 252-53.)
Best,
John
----- Original Message -----
From: "Long, Thomas" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Saturday, December 4, 2004 11:18 am
Subject: Re: absolution by lay persons
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
> culture
> Wouldn't that depend on the moment in the historical development
> of the sacrament? The Council of Florence (1439) legislated the
> Thomistic view of penance as a sacrament requiring repentance,
> auricular confession, penance and presbyteral absolution.
>
> I also recall dimly from my days in theology (late-1970s) that
> auricular confession constituted the matter of the sacrament, so
> that one could, in an emergency, confess to one's horse in the
> absence of a priest. Is this only apocryphal?
>
> //TL
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture on
> behalf of Pat McIntosh-Spinnler
> Sent: Sat 12/4/2004 5:47 AM
> To: Long, Thomas
> Subject: absolution by lay persons
>
>
>
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
> culture
> I have a feeling I have read something somewhere along these lines:
>
> It was possible, in extremis, for a lay person (ie one not
> ordained priest)
> to hear a deathbed confession and to pronounce absolution of some
> sort. This
> would be particularly the case on a battlefield or at some similar
> momentwhen a priest was unobtainable. I associate the idea
> particularly with the
> miltant Orders (Knights Hospitallers, in this case.)
>
> Can anyone offer any comment?
>
> Pat McIntosh-Spinnler
>
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