9 - The Papal Penitentiary

Summary

The papal penitentiary was the highest office in the later medieval Church concerned with matters of conscience. It granted absolution in cases where this was reserved to the papacy, notably for grave sins such as assaults on clergy, and it issued other graces that were also a papal monopoly, such as dispensations, notably for marriages within the prohibited degrees of kinship, and special licences, especially to appoint a personal confessor. Laity and clergy across later medieval Europe petitioned the office for these favours. The papal penitentiary hence represented a significant point of contact between the papacy and individual Catholics. Its origins were obscure but partly lay in the long tradition of penitential pilgrimage to Rome. Minor penitentiaries heard confessions of penitent pilgrims at Rome’s major basilicas, including Saint Peter’s. By the early thirteenth century, the ‘major penitentiary’ in charge of the office was appointed by the pope from among the cardinals and received growing faculties to concede graces on the pope’s behalf. By the fifteenth century, the office that he headed was a major department of papal government and substantial source of revenue for the papacy.