the church and the people. No sooner had the early custom of public and
lay confession tended to fall into the hands of the priesthood than it
was found necessary to call attention to the dangers thence arising.
The first council of Toledo, in 398, forbids any familiarity between
the virgins dedicated to God and their confessors.[1488] About the year
500, Symmachus calls attention to the spiritual affinity contracted
between the confessor and his penitent, rendering the latter his
daughter; he alludes to Silvester as having denounced guilty relations
between them, and proceeds to decree not only deposition in such cases,
but life-long penitence.[1489] As sacerdotal confession gradually
became customary, a decretal was forged—whether to give additional
authority to the practice, or to impress upon the minds of confessors
the necessity of prudence—by which the name of Celestin I. was used for
a regulation confiscating all the possessions of the female delinquent
and confining her in a monastery for life, while the seducer was
warned that such sin with his spiritual daughter amounted to a grave
case of adultery, for which he must be deposed and undergo penance for
twelve years, provided, always, that the facts had become known to the
people,[1490] thus indicating that scandal rather than sin was the
danger most dreaded.
It was inevitable that this trouble should continue, as we have seen it
do throughout the whole history of a celibate priesthood.[1491] That it
was the subject of frequent and indignant reprehension on the part of
those who sought to elevate and purify the church we may well believe.
Calixtus II. freely assumes the perdition of the priest who thus
betrays the sacred confidence reposed in him, denouncing him as a lion
devouring sheep, as a bear attacking a traveller who has lost his way,
as a fowler spreading lures for birds and attracting them with sweet
sounds, while the woman he treats not as a partner in guilt, but as an
unfortunate who finds destruction where she is seeking salvation.[1492]
It is observable here that the fault is assumed to lie exclusively
with the confessor, and such is likewise the case in the eloquent
denunciations of Savonarola, who declares that the Italian cities are
full of these wolves in sheep’s clothing, who are constantly seeking to
entice the innocent into sin by all the arts for which their spiritual
directorship affords so much scope.[1493] The extent to which the
evil sometimes grew may be guessed from a case mentioned by Erasmus,
in which a theologian of Louvain refused absolution to a pastor who
confessed to having maintained illicit relations with no less than two
hundred nuns confided to his spiritual charge.[1494]
The view which was taken of this crime during the progress of the
Reformation is set forth in a work on the Criminal Canon Law printed
in Venice in 1543, which intimates that improper relations between
a confessor and his penitents are not much worse than ordinary
concubinage, but that when they become publicly known they should be
severely punished by deprivation and imprisonment, seeing that their
notoriety tends to prevent men from allowing their wives and daughters
to confess, and exposes the sacrament of penitence to the assaults of
the heretics.[1495] It was probably this worldly wisdom which prevented
the Council of Trent from alluding specifically to the matter and
endeavoring to put an end to a crime so heinous, for assuredly it had
not grown less in the ever increasing license of the age. It is rather
curious that in Spain, the only kingdom where heresy was not allowed
to get a foothold, the trouble seems to have been greatest and to have
first called for special remedial measures. Already, in 1556, Paul IV.
had addressed a brief to the Inquisitors of Grenada, calling their
attention to the frequency of the crime and assuming that confessors
who could so abuse their office must hold unorthodox views as to the
sacrament of penitence, which rendered them suspect of heresy and thus
brought them within the jurisdiction of the Holy Office. He therefore
instructed the Inquisitors to prosecute such offenders zealously, but
it was deemed best not to attract public attention to a matter so
delicate, lest the faithful should be deterred from frequenting the
confessional. The investigations were accordingly prosecuted in secret,
and the criminals were privately punished.[1496]
Enough was discovered to show that the trouble was general, and in
1564 Pius IV. issued a Bull addressed to the Inquisitor General,
in which, assuming like his predecessor that the offence must be
heretical, he authorized the Holy Office to prosecute it throughout
the Spanish dominions, and revoked all immunities which the monastic
orders might enjoy exempting them from local jurisdiction.[1497] This
brought the subject formally within the scope of the Inquisition
which thenceforth took charge of it in those countries blessed with
that institution. In some portions of Spain the Inquisitors added the
crime of “solicitation” to the list of offences published in their
annual “Edict of Denunciation,” which required every one, under pain
of excommunication, to denounce to the Holy Office all cases of which
he might happen to be cognizant. Gonsalvo relates that in 1563 this
was done in Seville, when it brought such a crowd of accusing women to
the Inquisition that twenty secretaries were unable to take down the
depositions, within the allotted time of thirty days, and the limit
had to be extended until it reached the term of four months, causing
finally so great a popular ferment and implicating so large a number of
ecclesiastics that the attempt had to be abandoned.[1498]
Llorente considers this to be an exaggeration, as is probably the case,
but he admits that the Conseyo de la Suprema was led to forbid the
inclusion of the offence in the Edict of Denunciation, which greatly
diminished the number of accusations, and this prohibition was repeated
in 1571, in the hope that through the machinery of the episcopal
courts the crime would be suppressed; but this expectation proving
illusory, in 1576 the Conseyo ordered the crime to be reinstated in the
Edict.[1499]
In 1608 Paul V. seems suddenly to have awakened to the necessity of
extending to Portugal the means employed in Spain, and he issued to
the Portuguese Inquisitor General a Bull similar in purport to those
of his predecessors. Little was accomplished, even in these favored
countries, and in 1622 Gregory XV. published a Bull extending to all
Christendom the provisions of the previous ones, and granting to the
episcopal courts full jurisdiction over all accused of “solicitation,”
notwithstanding whatever immunities they might otherwise enjoy;
a single witness was pronounced sufficient, when supported by
circumstantial evidence, and the punishment of those convicted was
left to the discretion of the judge, with the suggestion that it
might extend to perpetual imprisonment or condemnation to the galleys
for life, or even abandonment to the secular arm—that Inquisitorial
euphuism for the faggot and the stake.[1500] Apparently these Bulls
received slender attention, for in 1633 a special decree directs that
they shall be read at least once a year and an emphatic warning be
given in a chapter of each order, and sworn evidence of the fact be
transmitted to the congregation of the Inquisition at Rome.[1501] Even
this was but partially successful. Gregory’s Bull was not published
in either France or Germany, and for a century or more its observance
throughout those regions depended entirely upon such bishops, of whom
there were but few, who might see fit to promulgate its regulations
in their individual dioceses;[1502] although the established rule
of the church protected the criminal by not permitting a woman who
had been seduced in the confessional to name her seducer to another
confessor.[1503]
Even in the kingdoms where the Bull was legally received and published,
its provisions in practice seem to have been held as directed almost
exclusively against those who might be foolish enough to incur
suspicion of heresy by asserting that they were not aware of their
guilt. While the Holy Office stretched its power to convict and punish
all the wretched heretics whom it could bring within its grasp, it
was singularly tender of those whom successive popes denounced as the
worst of offenders. In a learned work on the subject, the author, an
official of the Portuguese Inquisition, urges the caution requisite
in proceedings which affect the honor of ecclesiastics, bringing
scandal and grief to the faithful and glory and joy to the heretic.
As the accused had all presumptions in his favor, since he had been
selected for the sacred functions of the confessional, and as women
were by nature inconstant, corruptible, deceitful, mendacious, and
given to perjury, he concludes that the evidence of a single witness is
wholly inconclusive; two witnesses of good character may justify the
seclusion of the accused, either in prison or in his own convent or
house, but four were necessary to his conviction; he decides adversely
the question whether deficiency of evidence can be supplemented by
torture; and he cites Potiphar’s wife to caution his brethren against
lending too hasty credence to accusations which may be only the
revengeful promptings of a baffled tempter.[1504] Casuists were found
to argue that the solicitation must occur during the act of confession
itself to bring the accused within the words of the papal decrees,
which were not applicable even if it took place in the confessional
immediately before the woman commenced to confess, or immediately after
she had received absolution.[1505] The accused who denied, might be
shown the torture, but could not be exposed to it, and if punished,
his punishment must be secret, so as not to give rise to popular
disquiet.[1506] In Spain, when the local tribunal had agreed upon a
sentence, it could not be executed without referring the case and all
the evidence to the Conseyo de la Suprema;[1507] but the sentence which
was thus so carefully to be considered, was not usually severe. Some
instructions on the subject issued in 1577, after premising that there
must be neither public penitence nor appearance in an auto de fé, and
that the sentence, unlike that of heretics, must be made known only to
the ecclesiastics of the place, proceed to state that the penalties to
be imposed on the guilty are at the discretion of the Tribunal, except
that he is obliged to abjure the implied heresy and is prohibited from
hearing confessions in the future. Whether he is to be suspended from
administering the other sacraments, or from preaching, and whether
he is to be imprisoned or banished from the place of his crime, must
depend upon the gravity of the offence. In grave cases, secular priests
may be punished by seclusion, or deprivation of function or benefice,
or pecuniary fines, with discipline, secret prayers and fasting; and
monks may be visited with the discipline, removal from the scene of
their misdeeds, suspension or privation of orders, of the privilege
of voting in their convents, and relegation to the last place in the
choir and refectory.[1508] All this manifests not only a provident
care to prevent scandal among the faithful, but a singular tolerance
of crime when compared with the severity which characterized the
ordinary operations of the Inquisition, in lapses of faith however
slight. A man who asserted that simple fornication was not a mortal
sin was treated as a heretic and “relaxed” or “reconciled,” with all
the tremendous consequent penalties upon him and his posterity; and
it is significant in many ways to observe that a culprit guilty of
prostituting the confessional to seduce his spiritual daughters was to
be punished by being made to take the lowest seat in the choir. This
misplaced lenity was more than carried out in practice. According to
Llorente, the records of the Inquisition show that not ten per cent.
of those accused were convicted; and even when convicted it was not
unusual for the convict, through influences brought to bear on the
Inquisitors General, to obtain a removal of the interdiction of hearing
confessions.[1509] In one case of special atrocity which occurred
under the eyes of Llorente himself, the culprit, in addition to the
discipline, deprivation of vote, and degradation to the lowest seat in
the choir (he had been Provincial of the Capuchins of New Grenada), was
condemned to five years’ imprisonment in a convent of his own order—a
most inadequate penalty for a man who had seduced thirteen nuns in a
convent under his spiritual guardianship.[1510] In the horrible affair
of Corella, which occurred in 1743, it is true that the Abbess, Doña
Agueda de Luna, died under the torture; and her principal accomplice,
Fray Juan de la Vega, after being tortured in his examination, was
declared suspect in the highest degree and was confined in the desert
convent of Duruelo till his death, but in this case the accused were
Molinists, or Illuminati, which of itself rendered them worthy of the
stake, and in addition, besides numerous infanticides, they had entered
into a pact with Satan.[1511]
The nunneries, indeed, appear to have suffered especially from this
cause, particularly when their spiritual directors were monks. This
was a complaint of old standing, and the authors of the “Consilium de
Emendanda Ecclesia,” in 1538, proposed to put an end to the scandals
thence arising by prohibiting members of the conventual orders from
serving in that capacity, which was to be confided in the future to
the Episcopal Ordinaries.[1512] A more partial cure was that suggested
in 1627 by Urban VIII. when he granted a special Bull to Christobal
de Lobera, Bishop of Cordova, depriving the mendicant orders of their
right to papal jurisdiction, and subjecting them to the Ordinary of
the diocese in order to put a stop, if possible, to crimes committed
by them in the confessional.[1513] These monastic troubles were by no
means confined to Spain. When, as we shall see hereafter, the Grand
Duke, Leopold of Tuscany, undertook in 1774 to reform the nunneries
of his dominions, they had for a century and a half been the scene of
the worst disorders, committed by the regular clergy who were their
spiritual directors, and Leopold found his principal opposition in the
court of Rome itself.[1514] In Provence, the canons of Pignan made no
secret of their domination over the bodies as well as over the souls of
the nuns of the district, so that in a single year there were sixteen
declarations of pregnancy officially made by the latter, who seemed
to consider it as one of the duties of their profession. As Michelet
remarks, this at least diminished the monastic crime of infanticide,
for the children were openly put out to nurse and were generally
adopted by their foster-mothers.[1515]
Some statistics, given by Llorente from the archives of the
Inquisition, afford a curious commentary upon the influence of
monasticism. Comparing the number of accusations brought for this
offence with the total census of the secular and regular clergy,
he found that one out of every ten thousand secular priests was
charged with it, while among the monastic orders the proportion
was much greater. The Benedictines, Bernardines, Jeronymites,
Premonstratensians, Basilians, Agonizantes, Theatins, and Oratorians,
and the canons regular of Calatrava, Santiago, Alcantara, Montesa, St.
Juan, and of the Holy Sepulchre showed a proportion of one in every
thousand. Among the Carmelites, Augustinians, Mathurins, the Order of
La Merced, the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Minims of St. Francis de
Paul, there was one in every five hundred: one in four hundred among
the barefooted orders of the Augustinians, Mathurins, and Fathers of
La Merced; and one in two hundred among the barefooted Carmelites, the
Alcantarians and the Capuchins.[1516] These results Llorente explains
partly by the greater attention paid by some orders to the duties of
the confessional, but chiefly by the differences in their rules of
discipline. Those who, like the secular priests, had comparative wealth
and freedom were able to gratify their passions without resorting to
indulgence so dangerous, while those whose vows bound them to poverty
and asceticism were most liable to be tempted by the opportunities of
the confessional. It was precisely the orders that were most rigid
which produced the greatest number of culprits. Another significant
fact was that the greater portion of these accusations were brought by
nuns, and from this Llorente seeks to explain the small proportion of
cases in which the accused was found guilty. The inquiries necessary
to confession often appeared to the simple-minded devotee a direct
enticement to sin, and her excited imagination, in dwelling upon them,
would lead her to imagine herself the object of her confessor’s impure
desires—a defence of the system almost as damaging as the facts which
it attempts to extenuate.[1517]
Whatever may be Llorente’s opinion as to the comparative innocence of
the secular priesthood, it does not appear to have been shared by the
church. The local ecclesiastical legislation of the seventeenth century
is surcharged with innumerable minute directions as to the age of the
confessor and the form and structure of confessionals; restricting
female penitents, unless dangerously ill, from being heard except in
church and by daylight, and prescribing the relative positions to be
maintained by confessor and penitent.[1518] In the earlier, though
scarce purer, period of the fifteenth century John Myrc contents
himself with simpler rules—
But when a wommon cometh to the
Loke hyre face that thou ne se,
But teche hyre to knele downe the by,
And sum what thy face from hyre thou wry,
Stille as ston ther thou sitte,
And kepe the welle that thou ne spytte.
Koghe thow not thenne thy thonkes,
Ne wrynge thou not wyth thy schonkes—[1519]
and the attention which was now given to the minutest details of these
matters shows how much men’s minds were excited by the subject, and
how, as usual, the church sought palliatives for the evil to which she
dared not apply a radical cure.
A natural result of the effort made to suppress the evil was a
refinement of ingenuity on the part of the evil-doers to escape the
result of their transgressions, and the subtlety of casuists was
taxed to the utmost in defining with precision all the acts and
motives which would render offenders liable to the penalties decreed
in the Papal Bulls, thus giving rise to quite a literature specially
devoted to the subject.[1520] In 1614, the Roman Inquisition, under
Paul V., was obliged formally to declare that priests who used the
confessional as a place of assignation were liable to the decrees,
even though not engaged at the moment in administering the sacrament
of penitence;[1521] and in 1665 Alexander VII. felt it necessary to
condemn the proposition that a confessor, while hearing a confession,
could give his penitent a love-letter without incurring the guilt of
solicitation.[1522] The mode, however, which offered the surest escape
was for the confessor to absolve his partner in sin, and thus release
her from all obligation to denounce him,[1523] for such an absolution
was good, according to St. Thomas Aquinas.[1524] This gave the church
infinite trouble. It satisfied the conscience of the woman, for the
council of Trent had taken care to declare that priests in mortal
sin did not lose the power of absolution conferred on them by the
Holy Ghost in their ordination,[1525] while so vile a prostitution
of the sacrament could not but bring the whole system into contempt.
Yet casuists were found to distinguish between the guilt of him who
soothes the conscience of the woman whom he had seduced by absolving
her after the act, in which case he is not exposed to the penalties
of solicitation,[1526] and of him who promises absolution in advance
as a temptation to sin, which brings him within the scope of the
decrees.[1527]
The condemnation issued in 1665 by Alexander VII. of the proposition
that absolution under such circumstances relieves the woman from the
obligation of denunciation[1528] shows the extent of the evil and
the boldness of the perpetrators, but did nothing to cure it. A more
effective step had been taken in 1661 by the provincial synod of
Cambray, which was the revival of the ancient rule that no confessor
should have power in such cases to grant absolution to his paramour
except _in articulo mortis_; a precedent which was followed in 1663
by the congregation of arch-priests of the province of Mechlin.[1529]
This action seems to have aroused considerable opposition and no little
discussion, for, at a convocation of bishops, held at Brussels in
January, 1665, it was the first subject submitted for debate.[1530]
The question, however, remained unsettled, for, although the power
to grant such absolution was specially excepted in all commissions
issued to confessors in the province, the evil continued, and again
came up for discussion at the synod of Namur, in 1698, when the
practice was peremptorily forbidden for the future.[1531] In the
province of Besançon a canon of 1689 declares that although the abuse
had been long prohibited, yet that it continued to flourish; and a
formal enunciation was considered necessary, taking away the power
of conferring absolution in such cases—a regulation which had to be
repeated in 1707.[1532] In 1709 the Cardinal de Noailles, Archbishop of
Paris, issued an order prohibiting it in his diocese, but as late as
1741 Pontas informs us that such absolutions were valid in all places
where they had not been forbidden by episcopal authority.[1533] This
extraordinary confession on such a subject was most discreditable to
the church, and in 1741 Benedict XIV. signalized the commencement of
his pontificate by converting these local regulations into a general
law by his Bull, “Sacramentum Pœnitentiæ,” in which he not only
endeavored to sweep away all the refinements by which casuists had so
nearly nullified the decrees of his predecessors, but he devoted a
special clause to the device by which the sacrilegious ministers of
Satan rather than of God absolved their partners in guilt. This he
absolutely prohibited for the future, except _in articulo mortis_ when
no other priest could be had; he took away the power of administering
the sacrament of penitence in such cases, pronounced absolution null
and void when thus given, and punished the attempt to give it by _ipso
facto_ excommunication removable by the papal court alone.[1534] Four
years later, he relaxed somewhat the rigor of these regulations in a
manner which shows how everpresent was the fear of attracting attention
to the frailties of ecclesiastics, for he permitted absolution _in
articulo mortis_ in all cases where another confessor could not be
called in without attracting attention and causing suspicion and
scandal, which was virtually to remove the prohibition.[1535] In the
same year he also renewed the decree of 1633 requiring the Papal Bulls
on the subject to be read at least once a year in the chapters of
all the monastic orders,[1536] who seem to have been the principal
offenders in these matters; doubtless for the reason which Llorente
says was usually alleged as an excuse by culprits—because they had no
other opportunity of sinning.[1537]
Energetic as was the legislation of Benedict, it by no means put an end
to the trouble. The year after his Bull appeared, in 1742, the synod
of Namur found it necessary to remind confessors that they could not
absolve women whom they had seduced;[1538] and in 1768 the Bishop of
Ypres was obliged to recall to the attention of his clergy the Bulls
of Gregory and of Benedict, and to threaten their transgressors with
excommunication.[1539] The abuse was by no means confined to Europe,
but extended to the missionary stations of the church. In 1775 the
Apostolic Vicar of Cochin China inquired of Pius VI. whether the Bull
of Benedict XIV. applied to the Franciscan missionaries under his
charge, and, if so, whether it could not be moderated, to which Pius
replied affirmatively as to the first question and negatively as to the
second. That the scandal continued is shown by a pastoral letter of the
Apostolic Vicar of Suchuen in 1803.[1540] It is not surprising that
St. François de Sales should have declared that a confessor was to be
selected out of ten thousand, seeing that so few among them were fitted
for the function.[1541]
* * * * *