In the decades since Pope Paul VI first permitted their open consultation in 1988, the registers maintained by the office of the papal penitentiary have provided a focus of considerable academic attention, reflected in a regular and growing stream of articles, books, and calendars. The flow of petitions requesting dispensations from a range of canonical impediments to marriage or ordination, or for licences to circumvent potential problems, have been much mined. Whether in general outlines, in more focussed and specialist studies of particular aspects of the office's activities, or in summaries of petitions submitted from specific territories and the responses they elicited, the study of the penitentiary records has developed as a significant sub-field in work on the pre-Reformation church.
The penitentiary registers, however, start only in 1410--and that first volume is an outlying survivor, with the main run beginning only in the 1440s. They have been quarried, or ransacked, for their revelations; but beyond basic procedural summary the evolution of the penitentiary's office and practices has attracted little attention. There has been some speculation about origins, and occasional forays into evidence of activity before 1410, but little determined investigation. This largely reflects a paucity of sources, with limited evidence from the office itself, and serious obstacles to meaningful examination of its impact at diocesan level within the wider church.
Arnaud Fossier transforms the historiography with his dense and masterful volume, a revised version of his doctoral thesis completed in 2012. As might be expected of a French thesis, it is closely argued, supported by extensive referencing, and based on a truly daunting range of primary and secondary material (the bibliography of printed works runs to sixty-eight pages). Over 507 pages of analysis, he sets out to uncover the origins and evolution of the office, with 1410 as his terminal point, rather than the beginning which it is for much of the other work. Only occasionally does he look later. In the absence of registers of petitions or issued documents (1410 was indeed an archival starting point), his main source, as base and lodestar, is a series of formularies meticulously mined and dissected to draw out and reconstruct the evolving documentary culture of the penitentiary office, and assess its role within the disciplinary and moral structures of the medieval church.
The book's subtitle may not be inherently attractive--only a few will be instantly enthralled by the contemplation of a thick tome on "the scribal activities and administrative practices of the apostolic penitentiary in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries"--but the volume goes far beyond expectations and anticipations (sometimes indeed encouraged by the author himself) of a somewhat nerdish and potentially numbing analysis of the manuscripts. This is in fact a much more engaging volume, with a much larger agenda. Its contextualization of processes, and analysis of background influences, sets the evolution of the penitentiary into a much broader picture of the evolving church, and of its evolving concern with penance and the cure of souls.
The volume develops over eight long chapters (each with numerous sub-sections), preceded by a relatively short Introduction and terminated by an even briefer Conclusion. The chapters fall into four sets of two, although the last four have their own overarching unity. The argument evolves, but its several stages also interlock and resonate across each other, to generate a complex and nuanced analysis with significance far beyond the somewhat narrow field suggested by the book's title.
Chapters 1 and 2 provide the essential chronological and institutional background, split into two periods. The examination of the "Naissance d'un office (v. 1200--v.1310)" in chapter 1 delves into the obscurities of the genesis of the papal penitentiary's role and office. This traces the gradual coalescence of the office from initial ad hoc papal mandates addressed to individuals to an administrative department, and its emerging internal organization. The careers of the early penitentiaries are considered, with the range of their powers and activities. Importantly, setting off a theme which reappears throughout the volume, Fossier points to the shared origins but distinctive evolutions of the office of the "major penitentiaries," which would eventually become the bureaucratic and archival edifice, and the more precisely confessional and penance-imposing functions of the "minor penitentiaries" who dealt directly with pilgrims at the Roman basilicas--a functional but incomplete distinction between the remission of sins and the cancellation (or pre-emption) of penalties.
Those broad themes are continued through the fourteenth century, tracing developments as the papacy went through a century of traumas and relocations. In the shifts of "Rome--Avignon--Rome (v. 1310--v. 1410)" the stability of the Avignon papacy marked a time of increasing bureaucratization of the role of the major penitentiaries, but without generating a fully bureaucratic structure. Petitioners could not expect a definitive resolution of their pleas; the role of the major penitentiary was to authorise others (usually diocesan bishops) to investigate the facts as presented, and then--if those facts were true, and the merits of the petitioner(s) justified it--confirm the desired dispensation from the application of canon law. This made the office increasingly legalistic in its focus, with implications for its personnel, for its fees, and for its manipulation. However, while its procedures were becoming standardized and formulaic, there was still no perceived need for extensive archives: no records were maintained either of petitions received or mandates issued. Meanwhile the minor penitentiaries continued to act in their old fashion in Rome, their role now duplicated at Avignon.
The eruption in 1378 of the Great Western Schism, with its separate papacies at Rome and Avignon, proved transformational. While the Avignon machinery carried on in continuity with the previous decades, the curia at Rome had to create its processes anew. That disruption brought reconstruction, perhaps a more deliberately refashioned office with its own administrative ethos and heightened sense of functional purpose. Certainly the production in 1410 of the first register of supplications (registering both the request and the response which would then be worked up into the actual dispensation)--a register which, Fossier makes clear, was indeed the first one created , not merely the first survivor--marks a major change. It also transformed historiographical opportunities, and provides the obvious end point for the volume (although occasional glimpses of later developments are scattered throughout the book). It is small wonder that Fossier examines the first register in some detail, to illustrate the state of the office and its concerns at that point.
The second pair of chapters turns from the narrative to the sources, and the texts which provide the meat for most of the rest of the volume. (They are, of course, exploited in the earlier chapters; but now come very much to the forefront of attention.) Chapter 3 concentrates on the surviving volumes of model letters, looking at "Les formulaires: instruments d'administration." Chapter 4 burrows further into the formularies, to dissect "Les lettres: modèles ou exemples?" Here Fossier engages with the challenges posed by a text-based administrative system which did not maintain its own archives, because its core function within the full process was essentially facilitative, and the critical steps to implement the actions authorized by the major penitentiaries generally occurred back in the localities. These chapters provide the first, and most extensive, components of a theme which resurfaces intermittently later in the volume, about how the sources should actually be appreciated.
Chapter 3 provides the overview of the formulary volumes as collections of documents which potentially reflect the missives issued by the office of the major penitentiary. This requires an initial overview of scholarship on formularies as a general genre--and the uncertainties inherent in the designation itself. This is an extremely valuable consideration of a classificatory label whose application is often imprecise and potentially perplexing: at what point does a chance accumulation of bureaucratic products become a deliberate collection with a specific purpose and function within an administrative system, and shift from reflecting a personal selection of precedents as practical guidance to providing templates which guide and constrain future practitioners? How are their functions, utility, and utilization, actually to be assessed? Such questions can be posed, speculated on, but not fully answered. Fossier's comments are pertinent, and thought-provoking. Turning more directly to the volumes as evidence for the evolving administrative activity of the penitentiary's office, Fossier offers descriptions of the seven successive collections available for analysis (some in unique exemplars, others in multiple copies): two from the thirteenth century, one from around 1300, three from the Avignon period, and the last from Rome around 1390.
The discussion of the letters in Chapter 4 is an essential part of the source overview, but unavoidably rather dry in its treatment. The opposition of "models" and "examples" is also an opposition of viewpoints: are these texts examples drawn from past practice, or models to constrain the wording of future missives – or both at the same time? The structural components of a missive are worked through, with their variations; the transition to templates noted as the specific import of a copied document dissolves when names, places, and other details are replaced by uninformative initials, indications of alternative wording and application, or the bureaucratic routine implicit in "etc." or "as above." The complete transition is implicit in the formulary compiled at Rome in the 1390s, to provide guidance on institutional practice for a newly established office staffed by clerks lacking relevant previous experience.
One strand in this discussion of sources is a gradual change as the volumes serve decreasingly as stylistic guides and increasingly function as collections of legal forms applicable to specific contexts. That increasing legalism is the central theme of the third pair of chapters. These also open out the discussion in new directions. Details of cases and matters under the penitentiaries' oversight are dissected in chapter 5, examining the legalistic language and its implications as "La qualification juridique." This involves examination of canonistic and Roman law developments from the twelfth century onwards, focussing attention on some specific instances (including violence against clerics, and defects of birth), the distinction between "crime" and "sin," and debates around issues of guilt, intention, and awareness of faults. That the penitentiaries were the source of legal relaxations classed generically as "dispensations" underpins the analysis of chapter 6 as an examination of "Le pouvoir d'exception"--the pre-emptive suspension of legal disqualifications in certain instances (such as the ordination of bastards, or the barriers of kinship and affinity in marriages), or the post facto ratification of actions which breached canonical norms. (These might be the same type of case, yet needed a different procedural response.) Here Fossier works through something of a catalogue, methodically distinguishing between categories. His comparisons and contrasts point to the nuances in the responses of the penitentiaries to individual contexts, but he also emphasises the way in which the overall structure depended on an assertion and acceptance of papal plenitude of power. These dispensations were an essential part of the armory by which papalism pervaded catholicism. However, this did not amount to a totalitarian centralization of authority: delegation meant that many of the dispensation were in reality granted by local authorities, who usually had the last and decisive word on their implementation.
The final two chapters build on and beyond these technical legalistic analyses, moving more into spheres of theology and pastoral care, and in turn examine (in chapter 7) "La censure et le pardon" and (in chapter 8) "La pierre de scandale." These function much less obviously as a pair, yet are not totally disconnected; both deal with ecclesiastical reactions to the failings revealed by the petitions. Chapter 7 concentrates on the practicalities of penance and legal censures: absolution as a sacrament with satisfaction as a major element; excommunication; and the hierarchical division of responsibilities through categories of "reserved" cases. Its final pages introduce the concept of scandal, developed further in chapter 8. This in fact begins with a discussion of the various "fora" invoked within the ecclesiastical system, including those of penance and conscience, with the penitentiaries' remit emphasizing both confession and penance. For the minor penitentiaries that emphasis on the secrecy of confession was paramount within their essentially sacramental role. For the major penitentaries it created an ambivalence between their inherently textual activities and functions sometimes incompatible with recourse to documentary records and witnesses (although with many dispensations their value lay precisely in their documentary validation of a situation otherwise contrary to canonical regulation). "Scandal" itself, the undermining of confidence and trust through bad behavior and infamy (especially on the part of clerics), then becomes the main theme, as a provocation to disciplinary responses, but also as something to be controlled by fraternal correction and (perhaps) cover-up.
These last four chapters function at a different level from the more chronologically-constrained first half of the book. While tracing evolutions through to 1410, and drawing the illustrative evidence from the formularies, the issues addressed challenge that terminal date as an end-point. Much of the argument applies throughout the remainder of the middle ages, giving these chapters usefulness beyond their nominal constraints.
That, though, might be said of much of the rest of the volume as well. The first four chapters certainly provide a pre-history of the penitentiary's office up to the inception of the registers, a prelude to the historiography which they have generated; but only the first two can be considered as wholly and narrowly focussed on it. The second couplet is a valuable contribution to the scholarship associated with Michael Clanchy's "transition from memory to written record," with particular reference to understanding of the complexity and challenge of formularies more widely. The discussion in the last half applies as much to the subsequent period of registration as to the pre-history, its dissections valuable analyses of legal and theological thought with wider ramifications for understanding the late medieval church and its responses to human frailty. In this subtle, comprehensive, rich, and illuminating volume, Fossier admirably confounds the preconceptions and reservations which might be induced by his somewhat dry title.