Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
"The Humiliation of Sinners is the work of a formidable scholar whose intensive research . . . produced a bold reinterpretation of the history of medieval penance."--Catholic Historical Review"Mansfield's book challenges long-held assumptions about the disappearance of public penance after the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. . . . The Humiliation of Sinners shows that Mansfield was a young woman of extraordinary promise in the field of medieval studies."--Choice"Mansfield argues that public penance continued to flourish throughout the thirteenth century. . . . She examines a rich variety of sources drawn primarily from northern France. The surviving narratives report a surprising number of cases of public penance involving notorious figures."--Law and History Review"This book is a major achievement. Its masterly synthesis is extensively documented, based on very close reading of a wide range of manuscript and printed material. Coherent in itself, it contains much of value beyond its own immediate concerns."--French HistoryThis compelling book, first published in 1995, changed historians' understanding of the history of public penance, a topic crucial to debates about the complex evolution of individualism in the West. Mary C. Mansfield demonstrates that various forms of public humiliation, imposed on nobles and peasants alike for shocking crimes as well as for minor brawls, survived into the thirteenth century and beyond.
Synopsis
Despite the reforms of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which brought new privacy to the relationship between Christian and God with regard to confession, public penance continued to exist. In this book, newly published in paperback, Mary Mansfield questions the realities of the penitential revolution' of the early 13th century and demonstrates aspects of continuity in forms of public penance, especially in northern France. Drawing on a range of sources, including theological treatises, confessors' manuals, Episcopal registers, and various statutes, chronicles and liturgical works, she traces the development and use of public penance and addresses issues of private versus public contrition, questions of communality versus religious individuality, forms of humiliation, and so on. From well-known nobles to peasants, Mansfield shows that public forms of humiliation continued to be doled out for a range of punishments, from heinous crimes to minor brawls, throughout the 13th century.