Description
Book SynopsisThis book is a comprehensive historiographical survey on Christian penance and confession from the early sixteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. The author charts the change from medieval practices of penance to the modern rites of penance.
Trade ReviewThe questions Molineaux raises are indeed vital, and her curiosity about the influence of Greek and Jewish penitential traditions on those of the Latin west is well-founded….Students interested in the historiography of penance may benefit from consulting the often informative pages of Medici et medicamenta. * Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture *
This is an ambitious work by an author whose imagination takes the reader far beyond the late antiquity of her title. Eighteen pages of impressively diverse bibliography place the standard literature familiar to historians of penance in wider contexts…. So it seems ungenerous to criticize a work that provides so many ways to think about penance and accumulates so much information about so many disputed moments in the long history of penance…. Natalie Brigit Molineaux suggests new ways to think about the history of penance and provides an abundance of places to look for answers to the many questions she raises. * The Catholic Historical Review *
Table of ContentsPart 1 Foreword by Daniel P. Sheridan Part 2 Preface Part 3 Acknowledgements Part 4 Introduction Part 5 Part One: A Survey of Modern Historiography of Penance (ca. 1500-2000) Part 6 Penance as Construct in the Modern History of Religions Part 7 From Dogmatic History to the History of Dogma (ca. 1520-1920) Part 8 Convergences and New Directions (ca. 1920-2000) Part 9 Paradigms in the New Contemporary Historiography of Penance Part 10 Part Two: A Survey of the Literature of Penance (ca. 1650 B.C.-A.D. 650) Part 11 Penance in Pre-Christian Antiquity Part 12 The Origins of Ritual Penance In Christian Antiquity Part 13 The Transformation of Penance In Late Antiquity Part 14 The Monasticization of Penance (ca. 450-650)
