Visión y tratamiento del pecado en los manuales de confesión de la baja edad media hispana

Abstract

The oral confession became the central idea of the pastoral activity during the Late Middle Ages. That is why sin gets a privileged place in the daily task, in what affects its confession and its satisfaction. To this effect, treatises were written for the priests and, in the fifteenth century, also for the faithful. In this article the author informs in detail about the general characteristics of twelve treatises of confession, written in Latin and in several Romance languages, and he analyses their vision and treatment of the problematic of sin, taking into account six different aspects: the notion of sin; ignorance as a means of protection against sin; the typology of sins; the sins that must be confessed; notoriety as an objective aggravating factor for sin, that conveys a certain loss of theological value for it; and confession as an instrument for the control of the faithful.