This book is an early medieval social history based on the early penitentials, with up-to-date translations of these often-ignored or misunderstood texts.

Auteur

Erin Vanessia Abraham is a visiting assistant professor at the Honors College and an adjunct lecturer in the history and religious studies departments at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming.

Contenu

Introduction
1 Little Books of Penance
Introduction to the Sources
The Penitential of Finnian
The Ambrosian Penitential
The Penitential of Columbanus
The Penitential of Cummean
The Burgundian Penitential
The Penitential of Theodore
The Penitential of Ecgbert
The Bigotian Penitential
The Old Irish Penitential
Influences
Community
Penance
Subjectivity in Practice

2The Aetas Infantes
Speech and the Limits of Childhood Innocence
The Language of Childhood
An Age of Infancy
Doli Capax
Little Sinners
Vulnerable Infants
Shared Anxieties

3 The Games of Youth
Puberty, Culpability, and Autonomy
Between Childhood and Autonomy
Youths in Religious Communities
Sexual Oppression and Pollution
A Spectrum of Youth and Culpability
Young Females
Dependence and Autonomy
Sex, Age, and Status

4 Children of Eve
Lawful Marriage and the Regulation of Sexual Intercourse
Regulating Sex in Marriage
Adultery
Challenging Illicit Unions
Dissolution of Conjugal Unions
Religious Vows and Sexual Legitimacy

5 Heirs of Sodom
Sexual Deviance, Pollution, and Community
Lust, Pollution, and Self-Discipline
Pastoral Duties and Temptation
Terminology, Placement, and Equivalence
Transmitting Pollution
Incest and Social Contamination
Women and Deviant Sex
The Sin of Sodom

6 Siblings of Cain
Social Violence and the Gendering of Sin
Maleficia
Abortion as Violence
Violence against Children
Violence as a Gendered Sin
Violence and Status
Reverberations

Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

List of Tables
Table 1 Demographics
Table 2 General Topics
Table 3 Potential Components