12 - The confessors

Summary

Eccleston’s eleventh and twelfth collationes dovetail the friars’ ministry of preaching with the sacrament of penance and the schools. This combination was illustrated by the ministry of St Anthony of Padua, who divided his time in Padua between preaching, teaching and hearing confessions (predicando, docendo et confessiones audiendo). His preaching bore fruit in his exhortation that his hearers listen to the Scriptures, confess their sins and embark upon a penitential lifestyle. Wherever he preached, he was followed by teams of confessors. Friars were knowledgeable and sensitive confessors and their penitents included all ranks of medieval society.

The schools and instruction on penance

The friars’ schools played an integral role in preparing friars for the pastoral ministry. In the case of the office of preaching this is well recognised and that is why the friars’ schools proliferated and their theological syllabus was so admired. The sacrament of penance claimed a significant place in the faculty of theology. Just as the Eucharist generated a large number of quaestiones, so, too, did the sacrament of penance. While six distinctions of Peter Lombard’s Sententiae explored the sacrament of the Eucharist, de poenitentia occupied nine.

The canonists of the twelfth century played a key role in important clarifications and developments regarding this sacrament of penance. The nature of condign satisfaction and the identity of the minister of the sacrament were among the questions to explored, developed and applied to the new commercial centres. The study of the sacrament of penance claimed a major position in the schools, especially because these schools were spreading throughout western Europe and their work presupposed a sound working knowledge of the history and theology of the sacrament. This was allied to contemporary studies of usury, simony, avarice and the nature of restitution among other questions. A key part of the curriculum of the schools at every level was to train friars for the ministry of hearing confessions. Those preparing for ordination to the priesthood were obliged to immerse themselves in sacramental theology and sound pastoral practice.

Debates about canon law were prominent in the schools and friars understood the theology of the sacrament of reconciliation and the recent papal pronouncements about the exercise of this sacrament. They highlighted questions of sacramental jurisdiction and looked to successive popes for their sacramental jurisdiction.