Marginalia

The practice of confession has proved a fruitful topic for many different forms of inquiry into medieval experience. Confession was an occasion on which people gave an account of themselves, and its formulae and conventions helped to shape the medieval understanding of introspection and subjectivity. Yet confession was also a moment where people were held accountable by others, subjected to the scrutiny of the church, and provided with instruction in the tenets of the faith. This issue of Marginalia has its origins in the Medieval Reading Group's Confessions Symposium, held at Magdalene College on the 9th June 2007, at which graduate students from around the country discussed these issues in relation to preaching and pastoral care and in a range of literary contexts. Two of the articles collected here, by Helen Birkett and Anna Gottschall, were originally delivered as papers at the symposium, and all three expand upon the themes that were raised.

As is often observed, the practice of annual confession was instituted as part of a wide-ranging program of reform, first by the Fourth Lateran council and subsequently by synodal statues across Europe. Helen Birkett's article, 'Auxiliary Preachers in the Northern Province', investigates the preachers who explained and promoted this reforming project in the North of England in the period before the Black Death. In particular, Birkett focuses on those preachers who supplemented the work of parish priests, men drawn from the mendicant orders, the canons regular and the monastic communities. 'The presence of such exemplary preachers in England', Birkett writes, 'inspired not only the secular clergy to improve their ministry but also the monastic orders, in particular the Benedictines, to reassert themselves among the local community'.

Kristin Noone investigates some literary uses of confession. Her article, 'A King, A Ghost, Two Wives, and the Triumph of Love'. argues that Sir Orfeo and The Gast of Gy may be compared as 'penitential romances', romances where the hero's quest is bound up with the expiation of his sins. Noone contends that both these texts reveal 'the saving power of penance used for secular love', since Orfeo and Gy, in their different ways, offer their confessions in order to save their wives. Confession, Noone writes, 'purifies and brings the penitent titular characters themselves closer to the love of God; but it also provides an avenue for a different kind of salvation: the rescue of the earthly, passionate, marital, and above all secular love of one's life'. The confessions of Orfeo and Gy emerge from Noone's analysis as cautionary and exemplary, reminding readers of the consequences of sin, but also as complex expressions of selfhood and of love.

In 'The Lord's Prayer in Circles and Squares', Anna Gottschall considers how reading strategies and the design of the manuscript page played a role in confessional experience. Gottschall considers tabular presentations of the Pater Noster's different petitions, comparing the famous Vernon manuscript Pater Noster table with a wheel-shaped diagram that appears in Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg iv 32 (f.12v). Her article discusses the ways in which these tables communicate information and the habits of reading they encouraged, and asks how these helped shape a devotional encounter with the Pater Noster. Gottschall argues that 'reading tables and diagrams requires a skill beyond linear reading, encouraging the viewer to draw upon all the elements which carry symbolism and meaning, and to combine them to form a complex religious exercise'.

Thanks are due to everyone on the journal committee and advisory board who gave generously of their time to read and comment on submissions. I should like in particular to thank Miriam Muth for editing the book reviews and Ruth Ahnert for her hard work in putting the whole thing on-line. Special thanks are also due to Mary Flannery, one of the founders of this journal and an original member of its editorial board, for her generosity in contributing both our title image of St Augustine's baptism and a note on the illuminated manuscripts in the Getty Center's permanent collection. This journal owes its continued existence to the interest and commitment of those who attend the Cambridge Medieval Reading Group, and its editors acknowledge their support with gratitude.

Alastair Bennett (on behalf of the Medieval Reading Group)

Š2004 The authors and the Medieval Reading Group at the University of Cambridge
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