Penitents and Their Proxies
Penance for Others in Early Medieval Europe
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7713818 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gavin Fort, G Seymour Fort (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 86 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-32 |
| Publication date | 2017-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Church History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0009-6407 • E-ISSN: 1755-2613 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0009640717000038 |
| OpenAlex | W2612456650 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 24 |
This article investigates the religious practice of suffering for others in the early Middle Ages. In proxy penance, one person completed a penitential work for another, who received the spiritual benefit. This practice was based on the idea that one person could stand in for another to bear his burden. Using penitential, conciliar, liturgical, and epistolary sources, I uncover two types of proxy penance. First, priests shared in the penance of those who confessed to them. Liturgical texts include Masses in which the priest completes the penance for someone who could not complete it himself. Penitential texts admonish the priest to “share in the foulness” with the sinner in order to bring about the remission of his sin. Second, there was both a promotion and a criticism of proxy fasting among the laity. This sic et non rhythm shows that early medieval penitential culture could not control the demand for proxy penance. Some attention is also paid to the practice of proxy penance in the eleventh-century monastic milieu of Peter Damian. This article broadens the scope of current scholarship on penance by focusing on its substitutionary ability. Also, this article explores the changing notions of and metaphors about sin in this period—from medical to economic—that fueled proxy activity
Criticism · Penitential · Political science · Proxy (statistics) · Scholarship · Statistics · Theology · Historical Legal Studies and Society · History · Law · Mathematics · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
Medieval popular culture
Ancient Laws and Institutes of England
The Humiliation of Sinners
The Humanism of the Penitentials and the Continuity of the Penitential Tradition
The Ransom of the Soul
Spiritual Guarantors At Penance, Baptism, And Ordination In The Late Antique East
A New History of Penance
Confession before 1215
Alleviations of Penance in the Continental Penitentials
Ordering Medieval Society
The Penitential State
Prefaces to Canon Law Books in Latin Christianity
The Social Significance of Monetization in the Early Middle Ages
The Humiliation of Sinners
Medicine for Sin as Prescribed in the Penitentials
Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2025 (6) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |