Publisher's description:

The study of pastoral care in the middle ages has seen a resurgence in recent years. Scholars are now approaching this subject less from their respective ecclesiastical or parochial biases and more out of an effort to understand the significant role pastors (secular and religious) had in the shaping of medieval society at large. This book explores some of the new ways scholars are approaching this topic. Using a variety of sources and disciplinary angles: theology, preaching, catechesis, confessional literature, visitation records, monastic cartularies and the like, these studies show the many and varied ways in which pastoral care came to play such an important role in the day to day lives of medieval people.

Table of Contents:
General Introduction – Ronald J. Stansbury
1. Historiography and the work of Lenoard Boyle – Joseph Goering
PASTORAL CARE AND THE LAITY
2. Teaching the Creed and Articles of Faith in England: 1215-1281 – Andrew Reeves
3. Preaching and Pastoral Care in the Thirteenth Century – Ronald J. Stansbury
4. The Sheep as Shepherds: Lay Leadership in Pastoral Care – William Dohar
5. The Role of Ritual Purity in the 13th Century Attempt to Reform Pastoral Care – C. Colt Anderson
6. Implicit Anti-Semitism in Explicit Pastoral Care: The Role of the Eucharist in Spreading Common Stereotypes – Timothy M. Kovalcik
7. Conflict in the Parish: Antagonistic Relations Between Clerics and Parishioners – Michelle Armstrong-Partida
8. Guido of Monte Rochen’s Manipulus Curatorum and Sermonic Intention – Anne Thayer
9. Three’s a Crowd: Women, Men, and Priests in the Late Medieval Confessional – Beth Allison Barr
10. Grazing in Many Fields and Drinking Bitter Waters: Robert Grosseteste’s Theology of the Pastoral Care – James R. Ginther
PASTORAL CARE IN MALE AND FEMALE RELIGIOUS LIFE
11. “‘Pure religion and undefiled… is this’: Religious Orders and Pastoral Care in the Late Middle Ages – Greg Peters
12. Spiritual Role Models: How Monks Thought Nuns Should Interpret the Old Testament – Laura Michele Diener
13. Crux a cruciatu dicitur: Preaching Self-Torture as Pastoral Care in Twelfth-Century Religious Houses.” – C. Matthew Phillips
14. An Illiterate Pope and his Book: Pope Celestine V and Pastoral Care – George Ferzoco
15. The Informiringheboeck (1510): Spiritual Guidelines for Religious Women – Sabrina Corbellini
16. Practical Pastoral Care: Vowesses in Northern England in the Later Middle Ages – Susan M. B. Steuer
17. ‘Persevere! … God Will Help You!’: Thomas a Kempis’s Sermons for the Novices – Mathilde van Dijk
Bibliography of all Works Cited (Primary and Secondary Sources)
Index.