Description
Book SynopsisPastoral Care and Community in Late Medieval Germany explores how local religious culture was constructed in medieval European Christian society through close study of a set of neglected, late fourteenth-century manuscripts. The Mirror of Priests is a pastoral work written by Albert, an Augustinian canon from the Bavarian market town of Diessen, to guide local priests in their work with parishioners. Multiple versions of the text in Albert''s own hand survive and, by comparing them, Deeana Copeland Klepper shows how ostensibly universal religious ideals and laws were adapted, interpreted, and repurposed by those given responsibility to implement them, thereby crafting distinctive, local expressions of Christianity.
The vision of Christian community that emerges from Albert''s pastoral guide is one in which the messiness of ordinary life is evident. Albert''s imagined parish was marked out by geographic and legal boundariesproperty and jurisdictional
Trade Review
Klepper's work is a tour de force, with supreme attention to detail and a constant eye to the lived experience of the priest and canon. It will be invaluable for scholars of the cure of souls in the later Middle Ages.
* The Medieval Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. Pastoral Care and Guides for Priests in Late Medieval Europe
2. Albert of Diessen and the Augustinian Canons at Diessen am Ammersee
3. Making a Mirror for Priests: The Manuscripts
4. Making a Mirror for Priests: The Text
5. Constructing (and Reconstructing) Christian Community
Conclusion
