The papal penitentiary was one of the principal departments of the curial administration in the later Middle Ages. Much of its business concerned those who had committed sins whose absolution was reserved to the pope, and it possessed a writing office which issued dispensations and other favours in the name of the head of the office, the cardinal penitentiary. The standard work concerning the papal penitentiary is Emil Göller's Die päpstliche Pönitentiarie von ihrem Ursprung bis zu ihrer Umgestaltung unter Pius V., which was published in two volumes, each of two parts, between 1907 and 1911. The registers of the penitentiary, containing copies of supplications addressed to the pope and approved by the head of the penitentiary, were not used in Göller's work; indeed he was unaware of their existence until after its completion. Since these registers, which begin in the fifteenth century, became available for research in 1988, scholarship has unsurprisingly tended to focus on them. In contrast, Fossier is concerned with the earlier period, although he is familiar with publications which derive from the registers and makes use of the earliest extant register (of the conciliar popes Alexander v and John xxiii).
Chapter i concerns the early history of the penitentiary, from the first indications under Alexander iii and Innocent iii that the pope delegated to others the hearing of confessions and granting of absolution, to the expansion and institutionalisation of these arrangements in the course of the thirteenth century. The next chapter covers the further bureaucratisation of the Avignon period and the multiplication of offices in the different obediences of the Great Schism. The author believes that the registration of supplications was an innovation of the Roman popes of the Schism and suggests reasons for the innovation (p. 123), but this is to ignore the evidence that such registers existed already under Gregory xi. A letter of this pope of 14 March 1374 refers to a dispensation of the cardinal penitentiary ‘prout in regestris supplicationum dicte penitentiarie, qui dicto cardinali vivente et de ipsius mandato fiebant, plenius dicitur contineri’ (Lettres de Grégoire XI, ed. C. Tihon, ii, Brussels–Rome 1962, no. 2546). The cardinal in question is Étienne de Poissy, cardinal priest of St Eusebius, known as the cardinal of Paris, who died in 1373. Contrary to what is implied on pp. 119–20, the penitentiary scribes of Urban vi deserted en masse to Clement vii (here somewhat misleadingly described as ‘l'antipape français’), as is clear from the passage from Walter Murner's formulary cited at page 175 n. 168 (the key word here is ‘recesserunt’). The formularies of letters of the cardinal penitentiary, which are the principal source of the book, are the subject of chapter iii. It would be interesting to have the author's assessment of Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Holkham misc. 20, which contains the formulary of Benedict xii (or Cardinal Gaucelme de Jean) and appears to be fairly close in date to its compilation (1335–8). The following chapter concerns the letters themselves. The author's analysis derives almost exclusively from the formularies, and the question arises of how far the procedures of the penitentiary can be reconstructed from these. He devotes little attention to the letters which survive in the original, although there are several points in the book, notably in the discussions of the relationship between the penitentiary and the chancery (see, for instance, p. 98), where fuller consideration of the procedures in issuing documents would have been beneficial.
The fifth chapter, entitled ‘La Qualification juridique’, concerns the canonistic background to the activity of the penitentiary, with acute analysis of terms such as ‘peccatum’, ‘reatus’, ‘excessus’ and ‘enormitas’. Dispensations, for instance those allowing marriage within the prohibited degrees, form the subject of the next chapter. The author notes that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish dispensations from licences. Chapter vii concerns absolutions and related subjects, including reserved cases, ecclesiastical censures and the division of responsibilities between the penitentiary and the ordinary. The final chapter, which is one of the most original in the book, discusses the concept of scandal and suggests that a desire to avoid scandal meant that cases were often kept secret.
The author provides generous quotations, almost invariably with translations, of printed and manuscript sources. Unfortunately, the transcriptions display a large number of errors; for instance, p. 80 n. 12 ‘excedat’ not ‘excedeant’; p. 97 n. 103 ‘Fiat per penitentiarium cardinalem’ not ‘penitentiarum’, ‘Datum Avinione’ not ‘Avinionensem’; p. 173 n. 152 ‘[qui]’ is not needed; p. 220 n. 113 ‘pontificatus’ not ‘pontificis’; p. 235 n. 156 ‘alteri quam diocesano’ not ‘quando’, ‘cum … adire non audeat’, not ‘eum …’, ‘ad superiorum ascensum’ not ‘ascensu’, ‘ius patronatus’ not ‘vis’; p. 268 n. 106 ‘diem suum clausit extremum’ not ‘dictum’; p. 342 n. 220 ‘eorum desiderium in hac parte adimplere non possunt’ not ‘potest’; p. 357 n. 279 ‘exponent’ not ‘exponet’, ‘quantum cum deo possumus’ not ‘cum dicto’, ‘propter que’ not ‘propterque’; p. 359 n. 283 ‘propter inhibitionem … factam’ not ‘fratrem’, ‘per eiusdem sedis clementiam’ not ‘per eius de sedis’; p. 363 n. 300 ‘sanctissimus in christo pater’ not ‘patri’, ‘semel tantum’ not ‘tamen’; p. 376 n. 51 ‘patentes inde sibi litteras’ not ‘penitentes’; p. 383 n. 65 ‘ecclesiis in quibus’ not ‘si quibus’; p. 425 n. 294 ‘misericorditer provideri’ not ‘promoveri’, ‘iniugatis inde sibi … penitentiam salutarem’ not ‘penitentia salutari’; p. 482 n. 203 ‘cum alias non posset fugere’ not ‘cum aliis’; p. 497 n. 266 ‘eodem P(etro) huiusmodi impedimentum sciente’ not ‘eodem per huiusmodi’, ‘subiungebat’ not ‘subiugebat’; p. 498 n. 271 ‘non applices animum’ not ‘annum’. Admittedly many of the more trivial slips can readily be spotted and corrected. The author has an occasional tendency to misplace punctuation marks, making understanding more difficult; for example, p. 256 n. 55 ‘dictamque ecclesiam dimittere, sic paratus’ should be ‘dictamque ecclesiam dimittere sit paratus’; p. 354 n. 266 ‘non obstante aliqua indulgentia’ does not require a comma after ‘obstante’; p. 460 n. 121 ‘recepit ordines et ministravit etiam, …. In eisdem apertis tamen intelligentie oculis’ should be ‘recepit ordines et ministravit etiam … in eisdem. Apertis tamen intelligentie oculis’; p. 464 n. 130 ‘ut moris est, patrie nemine contradicente’ should be ‘ut moris est patrie, nemine contradicente’. Also problematic for our understanding of the texts are omissions in the quotations; thus, the author leaves out the nature of the marriage impediment (public honesty, p. 342 and n. 220) or the stipulation that dispensation from fasting rules is granted ‘dummodo id de confessoris vel medici vestri procedat consilio’ (p. 361 n. 292).
Against these defects must be set Fossier's very learned discussion of the canonistic and theological basis of the functioning of penitentiary and his in-depth study of the formularies. In these respects Le Bureau des âmes supercedes earlier publications, and they make the book a significant complement to Göller's work published over a century ago.
