Since my letter of the fourteenth of September, to your Excellency, I
have conducted myself with great circumspection on account of the
charges I made to your Excellency against myself for faults committed
against the Holy Tribunal. And as I am hindered from presenting myself
at the feet of your Excellency, I again place myself in the same
condition, under the shelter and patronage of the Holy Tribunal, in
order that your Excellency, as the father of all piety and clemency, may
clear my conscience and soul. Your Excellency must know then, that
during a year which I lived in the town of Cardona as preacher of the
convent, I was in the practice of confessing a certain female named
Vitoria Sala, who was afflicted with many scruples, and in order to
remove them at the pressing instances of her husband, I suffered myself
to be led away by the devil so far as to behave with much impropriety
towards her, as on many occasions when she was at my feet, I uttered to
her very unchaste language, touching her bosom and face with my hands.
This I did to the amount of seventy times or thereabout. Also, being
without the confessionary, I gave her many embraces, and solicited her
to love me. Although it be true that I practised these evil deeds, yet
by the mercy of God I did not injure her honor or reputation.
Furthermore at the same time I was so forgetful of my duty, that,
falling unhappily in company with a female named Marianna Guer y Savall,
who came to the holy confessionary to confess her faults to me, which
faults were committed in my own person, the devil was so crafty that he
caused me, a miserable sinner, to be led away in ten or twelve instances
to speak language of endearment to her, and touch her bosom and face.
These, father of all clemency, are my depraved actions in the Holy
Sacrament of penitence. Instead of directing these two souls in the way
of salvation, I led them to the devil by reason of my incontinence,
malice, and little fear of God. And now, as God has granted me time,
place, and occasion, I throw myself, like another Prodigal Son, at your
feet, that like a loving father you may extend toward me whatever may be
requisite to punish my heavy sins and offences, promising henceforth, to
amend my evil ways, that the light of God may shine more clear. May God
prosper and guard the infinite years of your Excellency.
Barcelona, May seventeenth, 1698.
Your most unworthy servant, who kisses
the feet of your Excellency,
FR. FELIX COLL.
P. S. Although I write from this city, yet I have come hither to throw
myself at the feet of your Excellency. My residence is in the Convent
of St Francisco in Gerona.
* * * * *
In the Imperial College of Tortosa, on the eighteenth day of March,
seventeen hundred, the Inquisitor Licentiate, Don Juan Joseph Hualte
presiding sole in the afternoon audience, having examined the
information and proceedings in this Inquisition against Fr. Felix Coll,
an Ecclesiastic and Confessor, of the Order of St Francisco, and a
resident in the Convent of that order in Gerona,
Ordered that he be reprehended, admonished, and directed to refrain from
confessing females in private; submitting this sentence to the Council.