sehepunkte 24 (2024), Nr. 9

Élisabeth Lusset / Clément Pieyre: La Pénitencerie apostolique sous Innocent VIII (1484-1492)

In the Middle Ages, the Apostolic Penitentiary was one of the most important papal offices. Its task was to ensure that Christians from all over western Christendom would receive absolution and dispensation if they had cases of conscience to solve. There was a lot at the stake, as without such a possibility, many Christians would have been doomed to Hell.

The historical documentation - copybooks of incoming petitions - of the Penitentiary was not accessible for scholars before 1983, when Pope John Paul II decided to open this very interesting source collection for researchers. Since then, several European countries have taken example from the German source publication series Repertorium Poenitentiariae Germanicum, an initiative of Professor Ludwig Schmugge, and begun to edit documents related to their home countries. Until now, thousands of Penitentiary documents from England and Wales, Norway, Sweden and Finland, Poland, some Italian dioceses and Belgium have been made accessible for scholars through source editions. Unfortunately, Penitentiary documents from one of the central Catholic regions of the Latin West - the Kingdom of France - have not been edited.

Therefore, the edition by Élisabeth Lusset and Clément Pieyre of French Penitentiary documents from the pontificate of Pope Innocent VIII (1484-1492) is a very important contribution to the field. The authors have divided the volume into two: to Introduction (7-51) and Edition (55-476). Additionally, the book contains a very useful and up-to-date list of sources and publications (477-492), indexes for place names (493-499), persons (501-512) and subjects (513-516) as well as list of tables and figures (517) and contents (519).

In the Introduction, authored by Élisabeth Lusset, is first presented shortly the historical trajectory of Penitentiary sources and studies. The presentation begins with the history of the Penitentiary sources after they were transported back to Rome from Paris (where Napoleon had intended to create a central archive for his empire and therefore collected archival sources from all the territories he had conquered) and the Penitentiary registers were almost forgotten in the basement of the Vatican palaces. Then it presents the most important scholars who have worked with the Penitentiary, most notably Emil Göller, Filippo Tamburini and Ludwig Schmugge, but also numerous others.

After that, the Introduction turns attention to the Kingdom of France during the pontificate of Innocent VIII. It first explains the relationship between France and the papal curia in the period and then describes how the contemporary wars devastated the French territory in many ways - which can be seen in the content of the Penitentiary petitions too. Thereafter follows an analysis of the provenance of the 287 French de declaratoriis petitions at a diocese level, which shows that there were petitions from 88 French dioceses, but typically only one or a few from each diocese. Only the diocese of Limoges stands out with more than 20 petitions. This analysis is extremely interesting, and it can be used as comparison with other European countries.

Next, follows the description of the Papal Penitentiary during the pontificate of Innocent VIII: Who were the central persons and officials of the Penitentiary? How did the office register the petitions its officials had approved? What was the bureaucratical iter of a petition in the Penitentiary? What happened to the grace back home, and how were the decisions of the Penitentiary executed?

The introduction also contains a chapter about the different kinds of issues treated in the Penitentiary as declaratory cases. In the French material included in the edition, three kinds of cases stand out: 1) homicides/manslaughters, 2) issues regarding the validity of a marriage and 3) issues regarding the validity of a monastic profession. Lusset explains carefully the regulations of canon law that were essential in the handling of the three different kinds of cases. This is very important, as without knowing these regulations, it is impossible to understand why the Penitentiary took the decisions it took.

The editorial principles are then explained on page 51 before the second part of the volume, the source edition, begins. The source edition is done by Élisabeth Lusset and Clément Pieyre together and it comprises a full text edition in Latin - together with a summary in French - of 287 de declaratoriis documents from the Penitentiary Registers nos 34-41 from the pontificate of Pope Innocent VIII (1484-1492). The earliest document dates from 13 September 1484 and the last one from 11 July 1492. The editorial work is generally done well, although it contains here and there small mistakes, like in the commission part of document 144, where the edition reads cum moderamine inculpa titule instead of how it should be according to the canon law formula: cum moderamine inculpate tutele.

The edited documents form a fantastic source material for historians, as they offer 278 stories, rich in detail, of individuals who had had severe issues with the regulations of the Church. Some of them - mainly men in an ecclesiastical career - had been involved in events that had led to the death of someone and therefore they had been accused of homicide. With the letter from the Penitentiary, they could show that they were not murderers and could continue serving the Church without problems. Some other documents tell the story of men or women, who had been forced to marry or to enter monastic life, and who petitioned to get their marriages or monastic profession annulled. These documents show very concretely, how violent the medieval society could be and how badly the closest relatives could treat young men or women. At the same time these documents show that appealing to the Penitentiary gave these persons a possibility to live the life they wanted despite that other persons had tried to impede them, either by unjust murder accusations or forcing others to unwanted marriage or monastic profession.

The volume edited by Lusset and Pieyre is a welcome addition to the editions of medieval Penitentiary sources, as it is the first one containing material from the Kingdom of France, which was one of the central Christian territories in the Latin West. The 287 de declaratoriis documents from one pontificate represent, however, only a very small part of all the tens of thousands of petitions from France to the Penitentiary in the second part of the XVth century. Let us hope, that this is a beginning of an editorial project so that one day the other French petitions would also be accessible for scholars in an edited form. This is a huge enterprise, but with this volume Lusset and Pieyre have shown that it is certainly worth an effort.