Feasting,Fasting,andDoingPenance 289
Frequent, open, discrete, willing, contrite, whole as due,
Holy, willed with tears, and repeated as per need,Bold, self-blaming, and prepared to reveal the deed.
What confession ought to be is given in these verses.^108Thirteenth-century Italians learned to examine their consciences, not by
reviewing the Ten Commandments, but by matching their behavior against
the seven capital sins: pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust.^109
In fact, confessional expositions of the Ten Commandments are quite rare.
A handful are in the vernacular. One Bergamascan poet produced a versed
expansion of the commandments about 1253.^110 The poet used biblical exem-
pla to elaborate each commandment. Susanna and the elders illustrate false
witness, while Cain and Abel serve, not for murder, but for coveting a neigh-
bor’s goods.^111 The more common system of the vices was an old one; by the
early communal period this was already a model, if not the practical norm.
Contemporary theologians normally divided the lay aspects of confession—
the priest handled absolution—into three: sorrow for sins, confession of sins,
and doing penance for sins.^112 Confessional aids first diagnosed the disposi-
tion of the penitent. Such an aid might be by a story showing the proper
(and improper) ways to approach the sacrament.^113 Or formulaic prayer
might sum up what was needful. A small twelfth-century prayer book in
Bologna includes two prayers for making a good confession.^114 The second
and longer of these prayers rehearses each of the capital sins in turn, thus
helping the penitent who uses it to make a complete confession. Confession
was to be complete and candid. Devotional texts addressed this requirement
by providing formulaic confessions, sin lists. Some general confession prayers
were themselves sin lists, litanies of particular sins rather than expressions
of proper dispositions.^115 Occasionally, particular sins might be organized
according to the five senses, a practice that came into greater vogue in the
late Middle Ages.^116
An explosion of confessional literature followed the Lateran Council of
- Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana,msY 5 Sup., fol. 107 r: ‘‘Sit simplex, humilis, confexio, pura,
fidelis, vera,frequens, nuda, discreta, libens, verecunda, integra,sancta, lacrimalis, accellerata,fortis,
accusans, et sit parere parata.Qualis debeat esse confessio in hiis versibus notatur.’’ - On this practice, see Roberto Rusconi, ‘‘Ordinate Confiteri: La confessione dei peccati nelle
‘Summae de Casibus,’ ’’L’aveu: Antiquite ́et Moyen Aˆge(Rome: EFR, 1986 ), 297 – 313. - ‘‘Il deca`logo,’’Poesie lombarde del secoloxiii, ed. Bernardino Biondelli (Milan: Bernardoni, 1856 ),
195 – 210. - Ibid., 209.
- E.g., the Franciscan Jean of La Rochelle,Summa de Vitiis et Virtutibus,Florence, Biblioteca Medi-
cea Laurenziana,msConv. Soppr. 145 (xivcent.), fol. 146 v. - Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana,msN 43 Sup., fol. 55 v.
- Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria,ms 2858, fols. 8 v– 10 r, and 14 v– 18 r.
- As in Cesena, Biblioteca Comunale Malatestiana,msD.xvi. 3 (earlyxivcent.), fol. 342 v.
- For a vernacular example, see Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria,ms 2530( 1308 ), fols. 31 r– 32 r.