Abstract

One of the richest sources available to critics and historians interested in the history of subjectivity in late-medieval Europe is the large body of works surrounding the sacrament of penance. These texts are of interest not simply because of their number and evident popularity, but because of the central role they played in the relationship between the church's spiritual, ethical, and juridical authority and the everyday conduct and experience of medieval people. As penance gained increasing theological and institutional importance during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the church became increasingly concerned with the need to cultivate a penitential perspective on the territory of human action in everyone, layfolk as well as religious; and as confession in particular became an increasingly central feature of late-medieval ethical practice, the need was seen as well to develop the skills of ethical reflection and psychological analysis necessary for productive work in the confessional