RELIGIOUS PRACTICE AND POWERS AT THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES: THE CONFESSIONAL LITTERAE OF THE APOSTOLIC PENITENTIARY

The registers of petitions to the Apostolic Penitentiary preserved from the 15th century include a chapter mainly devoted to "letters of confession", and, then, at century's end to other privileges relating to sacramental practice. Given their variety, these letters at once allow us to describe how the privatization of late medieval religious life was expressed with regard to belonging to a parish and to analyse how the papacy used the devout aspirations of a social elite to manifest its sovereignty and position as head of the hierarchical Church beyond the territorial divisions which characterize Latin Christendom. A free choice of confessor granted to the faithful, giving priests competencies for absolving episcopaly reserved cases, possession of a portable alter, authorization to celebrate mass in private contexts even in periods of interdict, are all privileges men and women, mainly clerics and nobles, solicited the Apostolic Penitentiary for, manifesting their membership in the elite both by this "private" practice and by the tangible bond with the pope that the "letter of confession" represented.