Overview of Penitence Law in the Kingdom of Bohemia in the Middle Ages

Abstract

In the study, the author focuses on penitence law in the medieval Kingdom of Bohemia, and specifically on the territory of the Prague ecclesiastical province, i.e. in the Prague and Olomouc dioceses. Confession also became the subject of normative regulation in medieval ecclesiastical law, taking on the character of a legal institution. The decree Omnis utiusque sexus, promulgated at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, made it compulsory for each resident in a parish to make a confession to his or her parish priest once a year. The provisions of the conciliar decree were taken into the papal code Liber extra in 1234. Confession thus became an institution of canon law. Confession was regulated more closely at ecclesiastical province and diocese level by provincial and diocesan statutes, the most important of these being the provincial statutes of Arnošt of Pardubice from 1349. A certain set of sins was reserved for the diocesan bishop or the Pope to absolve. Numerous manuals for administering the Sacrament of Penance (summae confessorum, poenitentiale) were used for the theoretical instruction and practical needs of confessors. The most widespread in the Czech lands were Summa de casibus poenitentiae by Raymond of Peñafort and Summa Pisana by Bartholomaeus de Sancto Concordio. Several such penitentials were also created in Bohemia, written by Bishop Robert of Olomouc, Hermann of Prague, Štěpán of Roudnice, Sander Rambow, Matthew of Cracow, Štěpán of Kolín, and Václav of Dráchov.