Reclaiming the pardoners

Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Volumn 33, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 311-334

  Minnis, Alastair ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF YORK   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 60949620551     PISSN: 10829636     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/10829636-33-2-311     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. and D. Trapp, "The Portiuncula Discussion of Cremona (ca. 1380)," Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 22 (1955): 79-94. Trapp's title is somewhat misleading, given that what is at issue is the indulgence claimed by the Church of St. John of the Desert near Cremona; however, the Assisi Portiuncula indulgence certainly is brought into the discussion
2. That said, the rich and powerful inevitably received special treatment and gained maximum benefit from the system. See, for example, B. Matray's statistics concerning the indulgence grants made by two popes to aristocrats and high-ranking churchmen: "Les Indulgences au XIVe siècle: Étude des lettres de Jean XXII (1316-1334) et d'Urbain V (1363-1370)," Cahiers de histoire 33.2 (1988): 135-51
3. Robert B. Ekelund et al., Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 152-53, 155, 164
4. Albertus Magnus, In IV Sent., dist. 20, E, art. 17, responsio, in B. Alberti Magni. . . Opera omnia, ed. Auguste Borgnet, 38 vols. (Paris, 1890-99), 29:850
5. Simon was not alone in blaming the belief that certain indulgences can release a pena et a culpa on a loose manner of speaking, on what is said among the common people. See for example the statements of Bonifatius de Amanatis ("absolutio a pena et a culpa sic vocata est non a iure, sed a vulgo") and William of Montlaudun ("talis plena remissio in anno iubileo . . . que vulgo a pena et a culpa dicitur. . . . Et fit tantum absolucio quoad penam"), both cited by Nikolaus Paulus, "Die Anfänge des sogenannten Ablasses von Schuld und Strafe," Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 36 (1912): 67-96, at 93, 94 (my emphases)
6. However, it could be argued that the pope was confirming a gift which Christ himself, appearing in a vision to St. Francis, had bestowed or at least initiated: Bishop Teobald explains that "it was revealed unto him on a certain night by the Lord that he should go unto the lord Pope Honorius" to seek the indulgence. Raphael M. Huber, The Portiuncula Indulgence, from Honorius III to Pius XI, Franciscan Studies 19 (New York: J. W. Wagner, 1938), 6
7. On this treasury see especially Robert W. Shaffern, "Images, Jurisdiction, and the Treasury of Merit," Journal of Medieval History 22 (1996): 237-47
8. Henry Charles Lea, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, 3 vols. (London, 1896), 3:19
9. Paul F. Palmer, Sacraments and Forgiveness: History and Doctrinal Development of Penance, Extreme Unction, and Indulgences, Sources of Christian Theology 2 (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1960), 352
10. The "direction in which medieval thought" leads the reader of the Pardoner's Prologue and Tale is, Patterson now claims, "toward symbolic sterility" ("Pardoner on the Couch," 663-64), a reading which in its procedures of moralizatio is highly reminiscent of Robert Miller's identification of the Pardoner as a eunuchus non Dei, a sinner who has cut himself off from virtue and good works: "Chaucer's Pardoner, The Scriptural Eunuch, and The Pardoner's Tale" Speculum 30 (1955): 180-99
11. See Walter Clyde Curry, Chaucer and the Medieval Sciences, 2nd ed. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1960), 54-70
12. Glenn Burger, "Kissing the Pardoner," PMLA 107 (1992): 1143-73
13. McAlpine, "The Pardoner's Homosexuality," 14
14. Donald R. Howard, The Idea of the Canterbury Tales (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 344-45
15. cf. Aron Andersson, Saint Bridget of Sweden (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1980), 99-100
16. cf. Huber, Portiuncula Indulgence, 6-10
17. cf. Andersson, Saint Bridget, 99-100
18. Shinners, ed., Medieval Popular Religion, 383
19. Fratris Francisa Bartholi de Assisio Tractatus de indulgentia S. Mariae de Portiuncula, ed. Sabatier, 15-17
20. Pierre Péano, "La 'quaestio fr. Petri Iohannis Olivi' sur l'indulgence de la Portioncule," Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 74 (1981): 33-76, at 64
21. Cf. Diana Webb, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in the Medieval West (London: J. B. Tauris, 1999), 76
22. On the forces of popular religious enthusiasm, wishful thinking, and hearsay, which induced and sustained this jubilee, see Jonathan Sumption, Pilgrimage: An Image of Medieval Religion (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1976), 231-36
23. Cited by Webb, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage, 117, 118
24. Corpus iuris canonici, ed. Friedberg, 2:1190
25. Lea, Auricular Confession and Indulgences, 3:63
26. A full account of all the causes of semicomprehension, misunderstanding, or simple confusion is, of course, beyond the scope of a single article. Suffice it to add that some of the absolution statements associated with fraternity indulgences (a type not included in our discussion thus far) actually include assertions of liberation a pena et culpa. What seems to be at issue here is a shorthand way of indicating the special privileges afforded by possession of, or participation in, such an indulgence. Association with the issuing fraternity gave the member the right to receive plenary absolution from a confessor of his or her own choice, thereby effecting release from culpa, while the pardon itself (together with the requisite contrition, etc.) effected release from pena. See the excellent discussion by Robert Swanson, "Letters of Confraternity and Indulgence in Late Medieval England," Archives: The Journal of the British Records Association 25, no. 102 (2000): 40-57, esp. 54
27. Thomas Walsingham, Historia anglicana, ed. Henry Thomas Riley, 2 vols. (London, 1863-64), 2:79-80
28. Henry Knighton, Chronicon Henrici Knighton, ed. J. R. Lumby, 2 vols. (London, 1889-95), 2:199
29. Select English Works of John Wyclif, ed. Thomas Arnold, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1869-71), 1:210 (my emphasis)
30. I.e., the "veronica," the relic of a cloth bearing the image of Christ's face, on which see Flora Lewis, "The Veronica: Image, Legend, and Viewer," in W. M. Ormrod, ed., England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1984 Harlaxton Symposium (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1985), 100-106
31. see further her article "Rewarding Devotion: Indulgences and the Promotion of Images," Studies in Church History 28 (1992): 178-94
32. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 7
33. See especially the discussion included in John of Dambach's De quantitate indulgenciarum, in Robert W. Shaffern, "A New Canonistic Text on Indulgences: De quantitate indulgenciarum of John of Dambach, O. P. (1288-1372)," Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law n.s. 21 (1991): 25-45
34. In IV Sent., dist. XX, E, art. 22, in Alberti opera, 22:858-59
35. Monica McAlpine, "The Pardoner's Homosexuality and How It Matters," PMLA 95 (1980): 8-22, at 16
36. J.J. Jusserand, "Chaucer's Pardoner and the Pope's Pardoners," Chaucer Society Essays 13.5 (1889): 423-36
37. A. L. Kellogg and L. A. Haselmayer, "Chaucer's Satire of the Pardoner," PMLA 66 (1951): 251-77
38. and Arnold Williams, "Some Documents on English Pardoners, 1350-1400," in John Mahoney and John Esten Keller, eds., Mediaeval Studies in Honor of Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), 197-207
39. Nikolaus Paulus, Geschichte des Ablasses im Mittelalter vom Ursprünge bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts, 3 vols. (Paderborn, Germany: F Schöningh, 1922-23)
40. There are, however, honorable exceptions. See especially Swanson, "Letters of Confraternity and Indulgence," who affirms that "a strong case can be made to show a positive side to indulgences, as a positive facet of late medieval English religion" (41). Nicholas Orme comments, "Like many well-known pictures of the past,. . . the tarnished image of indulgences is not altogether accurate. The theory on which they were based was perfectly rational, and their operation in practice was often equally respectable"; "Indulgences in the Diocese of Exeter, 1100-1536," Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature, and Art 120 (1988): 15-32, at 15
41. Robert Shaffern's ongoing work on the theology of indulgences is of vital importance. In addition to the articles cited in notes 4 and 46 above, see his "Learned Discussions of Indulgences for the Dead in the Middle Ages," Church History 61 (1992): 367-81
42. Indeed, Lee Patterson's latest study of the Pardoner implies that Lollard criticism of indulgences is the only view of significance for an understanding of Chaucer's character; "Chaucer's Pardoner on the Couch: Psyche and Clio in Medieval Literary Studies," Speculum 76 (2001): 638-80, esp. 664-65
43. The fact that much of that criticism was deemed heretical - mad or bad, certainly dangerous to know - is occluded. True, " 'Conservative Lollardy' is sometimes very close to 'radical orthodoxy,' " as Anne Hudson says, in The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 279
44. Steven Kruger, "Claiming the Pardoner: Toward a Gay Reading of Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale" Exemplaria 6 (1994): 115-39