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The Social History of confession in the Age of the Reformation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

John Bossy
John Bossy
Affiliation:
Queen's University, Belfast
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Extract

When I offered to read a paper on this subject, I had a particular hypothesis in mind. I thought—perhaps it would be more honest to say, I hoped—it would be possible to show that, during a period roughly contemporaneous with the Reformation, the practice of the sacrament of penance in the traditional church had undergone a change which was important in itself and of general historical interest. The change, I thought, could roughly be described as a shift from the social to the personal. To be more precise, I thought it possible that, for the average layman, and notably for the average rural layman in the pre-reformation church, the emphasis of the sacrament lay in its providing part of a machinery for the regulation and resolution of offences and conflicts otherwise likely to disturb the peace of a community. The effect of the Counter-Reformation (or whatever one calls it) was, I suspected, to shift the emphasis away from the field of objective social relations and into a field of interiorized discipline for the individual. The hypothesis may be thought an arbitrary one: we can but see. I think it will be admitted that, supposing it turned out to be correct, we should have learnt something worth knowing about the difference between the medieval and the counter-reformation church, and something about the difference between pre- and post-reformation European society. If if did not turn out to be correct, we might nevertheless expect to pick up some useful knowledge about something which is scarcely a staple of current historical discourse, though it threatens to become so.

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Research Article
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Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 25 , December 1975 , pp. 21 - 38
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Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1975

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References

1 (Paris, Nouvelle Clio, 1971)Google Scholar; see index. An exception to the generalization made above is Hale, John, Renaissance Europe 1480–1520 (London, 1970), p. 27Google Scholar.

2 A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church (3 vols., Philadelphia and London, 1896)Google Scholar; cited hereafter as ‘Lea’. In this paper I have neglected the subject of indulgences, dealt with in Lea's third volume. Michaud-Quantin, P., Sommes de casuistique et manuels de confession au Moyen Age (xii–xvisiècles) (Analecta medievalia Namurcensia no. 13, Louvain, 1962)Google Scholaris a helpful guide to the authorities cited by Lea up to the 1520s.

3 Poschmann, B., Penance and the Anointing of the Sick (London, 1964), pp. 7 ff, 34, 96–102, 158 ff, 208Google Scholar and passim; Lea, i, pp. 50–54.

4 Jedin, H., Geschichte des Konzils von Trient, iii (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, etc., 1970), pp. 315–36Google Scholar.

5 Concilium Tridentinum, vii, part 1, ed. Postina, A., Ehses, S., Birkner, J., Freudenberger, T. (Freiburg, 1961), pp. 266–69Google Scholar; cf. the views of various opponents, pp. 275, 278, 279, and of Melchior Cano, p. 262, where the comparison with secular jurisdiction is made; cf. Lea, i, 281 ff. Gropper's text was II Corinthians, v, 18–20.

6 Keysersberg, Jo[hannes Geiler von], Navicula Poenitentiae (Augsburg, 1511)Google Scholar fo. 23, col. 1; Lea, i, p. 214.

7 Cf. the 14th-century Augsburg ritual mentioned in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. Höfer, J. and Rahner, K., ii (Freiburg, 1958)Google Scholar, col. 826 (Jungman).

8 (London, 1971), pp. 154–59; cf. Hale, , Renaissance Europe, p. 27Google Scholar. Zeldin, , ‘The Conflict of Moralities’ (see below, n. 39), cites an Oxford D.Phil, thesis by Maraspini, A. L. (1962)Google Scholar which suggests that this may still be true in [? southern] Italy.

9 Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ii, coll. 823 ff. My idea of the practicalities of confession on the eve of the Reformation is derived from Toussaert, J., Le sentiment religieux en Flandre à la fin du Mqyen Age (Paris,1963), p. 106Google Scholar; Decretorium Ecclesiae Gallicanae, ed. Bochelli, L. (Paris, 1609), pp.210–12, 219Google Scholar (councils of Laon 1404, Sens 1524, Paris 1557); Lea, i, p. 250 (council of Seville 1512).

10 The point had struck various observers: e.g. Manning, B. L., The People's Faith in the Time of Wyclif (Cambridge, 1919), p. 33Google Scholar; Toussaert, , Le sentiment religieux en Flandre, p. 119Google Scholar; Thomas, , Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 185Google Scholar; Bossy, J., ‘The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Ireland, 1596–1641’, Historical Studies, viii, ed. Williams, T. D. (Dublin, 1971), p.167Google Scholar. Lea (i, p. 354) reports a model case from the manuals where a wife who brought up her husband's sins received two penances, one for herself and one for her husband.

11 Matthew, xviii, 15–18.

12 Lea, ii, pp. 41 ff; Angelus de Clavasio [Angelo Carletti of Chivasso], Summa Angelica (n.p. or d. in the edn I have used, Brit. Mus. 847. m. 9; 1st edn 1486), fo. IIIv; Concilia novissima Galliae, ed. Odespun, L. (Paris, 1646), pp. 94Google Scholar(council of Melun 1579; from Milan), 232 ff (council of Reims 1583: Post confessionem absolutio nemini concedatur, qui nonfuerit reconciliatus cum proximo, si quem oderat, saltern in voto). Cf. Bossy, J., ‘The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe’, Past and Present, 47 (1970), p. 56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Lea, i, pp. 285 ff, 349 ff, with enormous lists of authorities; also p. 454 for a melodramatic textbook case from sixteenth-century Spain where a murderer confessed accidentally to his victim's brother. Myrc, John, Instructions for Parish Priests, ed. Peacock, E. (E.E.T.S., 1868, revd. edn 1902), 11. 717 ffGoogle Scholar.

14 Lea, i, pp. 439, 447; ii, pp. 43–58 (Bonaventure, p. 46; note the declining interest from seventeenth century, p. 53), 187 (marriage as penance; examples in Grosso, M. and Mellano, M.F., La Controriforma nella arcidiocesi di Torino (3 vols., Rome, 1957), iii, p. 274)Google Scholar; Geiler, Navicula Poenitentiae, fos 43, col. 2–58, col. 2 (passage cited fo. 46, col. 3; quotation above, from Scotus, fo. 43, col. 4). There is a discussion of restitution in sexual offences in Martin de Azpilcueta [Navarrus, ], Enchiridion sive manuale confessariorum et poenitentium (Antwerp, 1581 ednGoogle Scholar; 1st edn Coimbra, 1553), pp. 263 ff. A case which would be worth a study in itself is that of restitution and the adulterine child: Lea, ii, pp. 50 ff; extended discussion in Hostiensis, , Summa Aurea (Lyon, 1548 edn), fo. 285v; Geiler, op. cit., fo. 51, coll. 3–4Google Scholar.

15 For the Babylonian Captivity, I have used the translation in Martin Luther: Selected Writings, ed. Dillenberger, J. (Garden City, N.Y., 1961), passage on confession at pp. 314–24Google Scholar; also Luther's Works, ed. Pelikan, J. and Lehmann, H. T., vol. 35 (Philadelphia, 1960), p. 21Google Scholar; vol. 39 (1970), pp. 39–34; Lea, i, pp. 515–19; James, v, 16. Although Luther described the work of confessional writers like Prierias as ‘bilgewater’ he was not above competing with them on their ownground; compare his treatment of the case of the adulterine child in Babylonian Captivity, p. 337, with that of Hostiensis cited in the previous note. I should have thought this was a good instance of ‘utopian traditionalism’.

16 Evennett, H. O., The Spirit of the Counter-Reformation (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 32 ffGoogle Scholar; Erasmus, , Enchiridion, militis Christiani, in The Essential Erasmus, ed. Dolan, J. P. (New York, 1974), passim esp. p. 90Google Scholar: ‘The only person that can harm a Christian is himself.’ Fenlon, Dermot, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 106 ffGoogle Scholar.

17 Häring, B., The Law of Christ (Cork, 1961 edn) pp. 16 ffGoogle Scholar; Lea ii, pp. 375–86 (quotation at p. 375), 184 ff, 229 ff (satisfaction); for an example of Jesuit confessional practice which seems to contain no satisfactory element see John Gerard: the Autobiography of an Elizabethan, ed. Caraman, P. (London,1956 edn)Google Scholar, passim. For de Sales, François, see his Advertisement aux Confesseurs, in Œuvres complètes, vi, [ed. Peltier, A. C.] (Paris, 1865), pp. 129–146Google Scholar; discussed in Broutin, P., La réforme pastorale en France au XVIIe siècle (2 vols., Tournai, 1956), i, pp. 90 ffGoogle Scholar.

18 Acta ecclesiae mediolanensis…Federici Card. Borromei…iussu…edita (I have used the Milan, 1843–1846 edn, 2 vols. with continuous pagination)Google Scholar. Apart from various decrees of synods, etc. (pp. 16 ff, 98 ff, 229 ff, 312 ff, 447 ff), the chief texts are the instructions in the Sacramentale ambrosianum, pp. 579–95 (ritual pp. 584 ff; penitential canons pp. 586 ff), the section dealing with the confessional in the Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae, pp. 645–47, and the Avvertenze or Monita ad confessarios, pp. 868–904. A convenient recent edition of the Instructiones abricae is in Trattati d'arte del Cinquecento, ed. Barocchi, P., iii (Bari, 1962), pp. 1–113Google Scholar: confessional at pp. 63–68, and n. on p. 447 ff.

19 As indeed he made clear himself: Acta, p. 886; Lea, ii, p. 179.

20 Lea, i, pp. 54, 393 ff; Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ii, col. 826. The express stipulation about the little finger seems to have been first made by a decision of the Roman Congregation of Bishops an d Regulars in 1645, but it is clearly implied by Borromeo's instruction that the holes in the grille were to be ‘about the size of a pea’.

21 Acta, p. 230.

22 Ibid., pp. 645 (1573), 871 (1575), 229 (1579); Rituale romanum (Rome, 1952 edn), pp. 141 ffGoogle Scholar.

23 Acta, pp. 581, 645, 872, 877.

24 Ibid., p. 581; cf. my ‘The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe’ (above, n. 12), pp. 55–56.

25 Cf. Ploechl, W. M., Geschichte des Kirchenrechts, iv (Wien/München, 1966), pp. 148 ffGoogle Scholar, where Borromeo is described as the ‘juristic initiator’ of the confessional; Lea, i, pp. 394–94; Dictionnaire de droit canonique, ed. Naz, R., iv (Paris, 1949)Google Scholar, col. 63. The first reference I have seen dates from 1551, council of Narbonne—quae vulgo confessionalia vocantur: Concilia novissima Galliae, p. 751.

26 Gli atti delta visita apostolica di San Carlo Borromeo a Bergamo (1575), ed. Roncalli, A. G. and Forno, P. (2 vols. in 5 parts, Florence, 1938–1957)Google Scholar. Of the three parts of vol. ii, which deals with the rural parts of the diocese, the first makes scarcely any mention of confessionals at all; in the other two, which cover 141 parishes, there is no mention in 73 cases either in the comperta or the decrees, 2 are mentioned in the comperta as having a confessional wrongly constructed or in the wrong place, in 55 cases the subject is not mentioned in the comperta but the decrees require one to be constructed in due form, and 11 are mentioned in the comperta as having none. An idea of the situation in neighbouring dioceses may be got from Grosso and Mellano, , La controriforma nella arciftocesi di Torino, i, p. 172Google Scholar; ii, pp. 80, 272; iii p. 200, etc, and Mellano, M. F., La controriforma nella diocesi di Mondavi (Turin, 1955), pp. 139 ff, 165, 255, 299Google Scholar. It seems clear from Torino, ii, pp. 80, 272, that a non-visual confession was very difficult for the average peasant to manage.

27 In Rome and the Papal States nothing much seems to have happened until the days of Bernini and Borromini: Enciclopedia cattolica, iv, coll. 225–26 and tavola ix; Wittkower, R., Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600–1750 (Baltimore, 1958)Google Scholar, plate 69a—Borromini's confessionals at S. Carlo [Borromeo] alle Quattro Fontane. For the south I have nothing beyond a council of Cosenza, 1579 (Lea, i, p. 395) and the private information, which I have not checked personally, that a semi-enclosed confessional permitting the impositio manus is still in use in Sicily. Alessandro Sauli does not seem to have tried to introduce the confessional in Corsica: Casta, F., Evêques et curés corses… 1570–1620 (Corse historique, Ajaccio, 1965), pp. 134 ffGoogle Scholar; cf. p. 141 for evidence of the imposiiio manus. For Spain, see Lea, i, p. 396.

28 Dictionnaire de droit canonique, iv, coll. 64 ff; Concilia novissima Galliae, p. 523 (Aix-en-Provence, 1585Google Scholar; Toulouse, 1590): it would appear from Baccrabère, G., ‘La pratique religieuse dans le diocèse de Toulouse aux XVI–XVIIe siècles’, Annales du Midi, lxxiv (1962), pp. 287 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar, that the decision of the latter council remained a dead letter; Broutin, , La réforme pastorale en France au XVIIe siécle, i, pp. 104, 229, ff 276, ffGoogle Scholar; ii, pp. 374, 395; Delumeau, , Le catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire, pp. 279 ffGoogle Scholar.

29 Toussaert, , Le sentiment religieux en Flandre, pp. 104, 684, n. 1Google Scholar; Lea, i, p. 394 (Mechelen, 1607, with indications of resistance from clergy); compare Estius, G., In quattuor libros sententiarum commentaria (4 vols., Paris, 1637–1638), iv, p. 203Google Scholar, assuming an impositio manus visible to others; Ploechl, , Geschichte des Kirchenrechts, iv, p. 149Google Scholar. Note the evidence in Lea, i, p. 396, that the confessional was generally regarded as an entirely optional device in 1630.

30 Acta ecclesiae mediolatunsis, pp. 588–93.

31 E.g., Lea, ii, pp. 43 ff; i, 417; ii, 233 ff for mortal sin.

32 Expounded in Noonan, , Contraception (below, n. 40), pp. 240 ffGoogle Scholar.

33 The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. Robinson, F. N. (London, 1957 edn), pp. 229–64Google Scholar; Coghill, version, The Canterbury Tales (London, 1960 edn), pp. 505–06Google Scholar.

34 Summa Aurea, fo. 277r.

35 Lea, i, pp. 285 ff, 349, 382 ff.

36 Ibid., pp. 382 ff; Ploechl, , Geschichte des Kirchenrechts, iv, p. 146Google Scholar; Acta ecclesiae mediolanensis, p. 447.

37 Lea, ii, pp. 262 ff. There is a classic exposition of the supra-sexual view in T. de Vio Caietani…de peccatis summula (Paris, 1530 ednGoogle Scholar; 1st edn Rome, 1526), fos 58–62. The German priest to whom belonged the copy of Azpilcueta's Etichiri-dion which I have used (above, n. 14) was evidently unfamiliar with the term, and translated it langsamer list oder listigkeit.

38 ‘Mariage tardif et vie sexuelle’, Annales, 27 e année (1972), pp. 135 ff— Flandrin suggests a connexion between this and an assumed rise in the age of marriage; Ariès, Philippe, Centuries of Childhood (London, 1962 edn), pp. 106 ffGoogle Scholar; Gerson, Jean, Œuvres completes, ed. Glorieux, P., viii (Paris, 1971), pp. 71–74Google Scholar.

39 Compare Gerson's rigorous inquisition with the comparatively mild remarks in Summa Angelica, fo. 258r and Azpilcueta, , Enchiridion, p. 257Google Scholar; Lea, i, p. 374. Noonan (see following note), p. 270, remarks that Gerson was ‘hypersensitive’ in sexual matters, and not typical; cf. ibid., pp. 372 ff. Concern with the subject does seem to have become ‘rampant’ in the eighteenth century: Zeldin, Theodore, ‘The Conflict of Moralities: Confession, Sin and Pleasure in the 19th Century’, in Conflict in French Society, ed. Zeldin, T. (London, 1970), p. 50Google Scholar. Contrast the following story from a collection attributed to a country priest in Tuscany and published about 1515. A young peasant comes to confess at Easter, and after confessing a whole string of thefts, including that of a quantity of corn from the priest, pauses overcome with embarrassment. Encouraged to continue, he finally confesses that when he was 15 he used to go out in the meadows to masturbate, which gave him great pleasure. The priest told him to masturbate whenever he felt like it, but keep his hands off other people's property, and above all give him back his corn: ‘Menati il tuo batisteo quando tu voi, e piu non rubare; lascia istare la roba d'altri, e sopra ogni cosa rendimi il mio pram’. Motii e facezie del piovano Arlotto, ed. Folena, G. B. (Milan/Naples, 1953 edn), pp. 34 ffGoogle Scholar. I hope the reader will be as grateful to Peter Burke as I am for this charming illustration, as for the information above n. 27.

40 Noonan, J. T., Contraception: a history of its treatment by Catholic theologians and canonists (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), pp. 168 ff, 178Google Scholar.

41 Ibid., pp. 360–64, 349 f, 372 f, 379, 383. There is not much of interest for our period in Bergues, H. and others, La prévention des naissances dans la famille (Paris, 1960), except (pp. 340–47)Google Scholarsome evidence for the diocese of Liège which helps to show that the relative lack of interest among confessionalwriters is not necessarily explained by a lack of experience among the population.

42 It would appear from Zeldin's discussion (above, n. 39, e.g. p. 19), that this had become the case by the nineteenth century, at least in France; cf. Delumeau, , Le Catholicisms entre Luther et Voltaire, p. 321Google Scholar, and the classification of mortal sins by the nineteenth-century Jesuit Jean Gury in Lea, ii, p. 259.

43 Estius, Thus, In quatuor libros sententiarum commentaria (above, n. 29), iv, p. 183Google Scholar.

44 Lea, i, pp. 155 ff, 400 ff; Acta ecclesiae mediolanensis, pp. 312, 645 ff, 869, 875 (education). On the precepts of the church note Gury in Lea, ii, p. 259.