Ian Wei asked about texts for undergraduate teaching a while back.
May I suggest the translation of 'The Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam'
(eds./transl. J.L. Baird et al) (Medieval and Renaissance texts and
studies, 40) (Binghamton, New York, 1986), pp.410-17?
The passage includes:
1. A justification for confession to mendicant friars.
2. An excremental anecdote about how a woman got her revenge on a priest
who tried to seduce her during confession.
3. A further story of a woman who confessed to a friar that after she was
raped, she went to confession three times, and each time a priest raped
her. The friar, needless to say, did not. [Pro-friar, anti-secular-priest
propaganda in response to propaganda directed the other way?]
4. Popes have given the friars the right to preach and hear confessions.
Salimbene is one of the most valuable sources for thirteenth-century
religious history; his so-called chronicle has just as much right to be
called an autobiography as Guibert of Nogent's twelfth-century 'Memoirs'.
It is a pity that the Baird translation is not available in paperback. But
unless it were to be slimmed down, I don't think it could be.
Gary Dickson
University of Edinburgh
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