Abstract
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, many ecclesiastical writings of Castile and Portugal were produced to struggle, among other practices, crimes considered fruits of the deadly sin of wrath, like murder or physical and verbal aggression. Taking into account especially religious treatises, the aim of this essay is to analyze the role of the sacrament of penance and of the teaching of the rudiments of Christian faith in the moral formation of men judged violent; people who despised, in the view of the literates, the finest principles of the virtue of justice. Seen in another way, this paper tries to question, from the analysis of a series of religious works in Castile and Portugal, to what extent the sacrament of penance and the sermons of priests were tools critical to the construction of a mild and averse to violence model of Christian.
Keywords
Medieval Portugal and Castile; sin of wrath; penitential confession