Pastoralia (genre)
Pastoralia is a genre of written practical and theoretical aids aimed at pastors, parish priests and curates that proliferated in Western Europe in the later Middle Ages.[1] It was the product of renewed interest in pastoral care after about 1200, especially after the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.[1][2]
Pastoralia as a collective term for this new species of literature was coined by Leonard Boyle.[3] The word may also refer to the theology underlying this literature[4] or even to the techniques and capabilities it was meant to inculcate.[5] In these senses, it is closely connected in meaning with the terms pastoral theology and practical theology.[6]
The main areas of concern in the pastoralia are the sacraments, preaching, anointing of the sick and moral theology.[7] There are many subgenres, such as "guides to hearing confession, catechisms, compendia to canon law, and manuals for parish priests".[8] Boyle provides a diagram of subgenres.[9] Among the named genres he identifies are:
- episcopal constitutions
- distinctiones
- artes praedicandi
- artes moriendi
- summae poenitentiae
- summae confessorum
- summae de casibus
- summae confessionis
- summae confitendi
- confessionalia
Pastoralia were written in Latin for the clergy, but for the interested laity there were vernacular works, sometimes in verse. Those works destined for a lay audience included explanations of the sacraments and of penance.[10]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Dykema 2000, p. 144.
- ↑ Goering 2010, p. 7.
- ↑ Goering 2010, p. 17–18.
- ↑ Louth 2022 defines it as "the branch of theology concerned with the principles regulating the life and conduct of the parish priest."
- ↑ Swinton 2022 glosses it as "those skills and practices that ministers require to be trained in in order to be effective in their pastoral practices."
- ↑ Swinton 2022.
- ↑ Louth 2022.
- ↑ Dykema 2000, p. 145.
- ↑ Boyle 1985, p. 38, with notes at pp. 38–43.
- ↑ Sibson 2013, pp. 10–11.
Sources
- Boyle, Leonard E. (1985). "The Fourth Lateran Council and Manuals of Popular Theology". In Thomas J. Heffernan (ed.). The Popular Literature of Medieval England. University of Tennessee Press. pp. 30–43.
- Dykema, Peter A. (2000). "Handbooks for Pastors: Late Medieval Manuals for Parish Priests and Conrad Porta's Pastorale Lutheri (1582)". In Robert Bast; Andrew Colin Gow (eds.). Continuity and Change: The Harvest of Late-Medieval and Reformation History. Brill. pp. 143–162.
- Goering, Joseph (2010). "Leonard E. Boyle and the Invention of Pastoralia". In Ronald Stansbury (ed.). A Companion to Pastoral Care in the Late Middle Ages (1200–1500). Brill. pp. 7–20. doi:10.1163/ej.9789004183537.i-430.5.
- Louth, Andrew, ed. (2022). "Pastoralia". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.
- Reeves, Andrew (2013). "'The Cure of Souls is the Art of Arts': Preaching, Confession, and Catechesis in the Middle Ages". Religion Compass. 7 (9): 372–384. doi:10.1111/rec3.12058.
- Sibson, Carol Ann (2013). ‘Þys tale rymeth hou men in senne beþ’: A Study of Vernacular Verse Pastoralia for the English Laity, c.1240 – c.1330 (PhD dissertation). Queen Mary University of London.
- Swinton, John (2022). "Practical and pastoral theology". In Andrew Louth (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.
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