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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 273.: John XXII Condemns the Theses of John of Poilly in which He Attacked the Friars, 1320. - A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age

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Collection: Primary Sources
Subject Area: History

273.: John XXII Condemns the Theses of John of Poilly in which He Attacked the Friars, 1320. - Oliver J. Thatcher, A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age [1905]

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A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age, ed. Oliver J. Thatcher and Edgar Holmes McNeal (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905).

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273.

John XXII Condemns the Theses of John of Poilly in which He Attacked the Friars, 1320.

John of Poilly, a professor of Theology, attacked the Friars and set forth the following theses, which were condemned as erroneous by John XXII, 1320:

1. That all those who confess their sins to Friars who have only a general licence to hear confession are bound to confess the same sins again to their own priest. 2. That so long as the edict “Omnis utriusque sexus” stands, which was enacted in a general council, the pope himself is not able to release parishioners from the duty of confessing their sins once a year to their own priest, that is, their parish priest. Nay, more, not even God himself can do this, because it involves a contradiction. 3. That the pope has no authority to grant a general licence to hear confession.1

IX.

THE CRUSADES

The following selections are meant to illustrate briefly (1) the religious value attaching to crusading, nos. 274-277; (2) the immediate origin of the crusading movement, nos. 278-280; (3) the disorders and excesses attending the first crusade, nos. 282, 283; (4) the crusade of Frederic Barbarossa, no. 285; (5) the activity of the popes in fostering the crusades, the special inducements offered by them to crusaders, etc., nos. 284, 287, 288; (6) the commercial interests of the Italian cities, nos. 286, 288.

[1 ] The parish priest received a licence to hear confession only in his own parish, while the Friars received a general licence to hear confession everywhere. The decree “Omnis utriusque sexus” (All persons of both sexes) is the twenty-first chapter of the decrees of the Lateran council of 1215, and concerns the duty of making confession. According to its terms every Christian must confess at least once a year to his own parish priest. If he wished to confess to some other priest, he had first to secure the permission of his parish priest to do so.