298 BuoniCattolici
confessors for Easter.^173 The Dominicans, however, warned their preachers
not to circumvent the law.^174 Even after Pope Martin IV liberalized the
rule by allowing people to make their annual confession to mendicants, the
Dominicans hesitated to put this privilege to use.^175
The Lateran decree certainly affected the parish clergy. For the first time,
in many cases, priests became spiritual physicians for all their parishioners,
even if this happened only once a year.^176 This new task partly explains
the multiplication of confessional manuals during the mid- 1200 s. Confession
became the task of every priest holding a pastoral cure, and not all were
ready for it.^177 The experience of the English Franciscan Hymo of Havers-
ham in the mid- 1220 s shows what this new rule meant for the laity. Hymo
was present at a parish church in Canterbury during Lent, and his lay com-
panion, Fra Benevent, preached on the ‘‘Easter Duty.’’ The people were so
convicted that they lined up to go to confession. It took three days to hear
them all.^178 For the laity, the novelty brought byUtriusque Sexuswas not
obligatory confession; it was waiting in line to do so. It turned the more or
less private event of confessing before Communion to any priest one liked
into an annual public ritual of confession to the pastor.^179 One stood waiting,
with others of the same parish, while each parishioner went up to the seated
priest, knelt, confessed, received penance, and departed. Nor could the pa-
rishioners fail to notice the others in line, as they fidgeted, chatted, and
generally made noise. But this long, drawn-out process, standing in line for
confession, could never match other rituals as a mark of parish belonging.^180
Catholic Italians had always been able to see who absented themselves from
Mass, rogation processions, and the great feasts.^181
- Bonaventure,Commentaria in Quatuor Libros Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi, 4. 17 and 4. 21 ,Opera
Omnia(Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1882 – 1902 ), vol. 4 ; and, on this, see Salimbene,Cronica
( 1250 ), 591 – 94 , Baird trans., 410 – 11.
174 .ACGOP( 1282 ), 218. - See Rusconi, ‘‘Francescani e la confessione,’’ 283 – 84 , on Martin IV’s decreeAd Fructus Uberes
( 13 December 1281 ), and the Dominican hesitation inACGOP, 218. - See Maccarrone, ‘‘Cura animarum,’’ 161 – 62 , citing Anthony of Padua,Sermones Dominicales et
Festivi,ed. Beniamino Costa et al. (Padua: Messaggero, 1979 ), 1 : 304 , 2 : 587 – 88 , for examples of this new
view of the parish clergy. - So in the 1300 s the incompetent parish-priest confessor became the butt of jokes:Novellino, 91 ,p.
- But confession did not become a major comic theme until later: see Emilio Pasquini, ‘‘Confessione
e penitenza nella novellistica tardo-medievale (secolixiii–xv): Fra Stilizzazione e parodia,’’Dalla penitenza
all’ascolto delle confessioni, 179. - Thomas of Eccleston,Tractatus de Adventu Fratrum Minorum in Anglia,ed. A. G. Little (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1951 ), 6 ,p. 28 ; see, on this passage, Rusconi, ‘‘Francescani e la confessione,’’
- I dare to make this suggestion, even if De Sandre Gasparini, ‘‘Laici devoti,’’ 211 , correctly notes:
‘‘E`assai difficile valutare il modo con cui i fedeli recepirono il sacramento della confessione.’’ - As noted by Zelina Zafarana, ‘‘Cura pastorale, predicazione, aspetti devozionali nella parroc-
chia del basso Medioevo,’’Pievi e parrocchie,ed. Erba et al., 1 : 523. - My treatment of confession in the preceding section might shed a different light on the famous
exchange between Thomas Tentler and Leonard Boyle over the ‘‘social-control’’ function of confession,
which is conveniently reprinted inThe Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion,ed. Charles
Trinkaus and Heiko A. Oberman (Leiden: Brill, 1974 ), 103 – 37.