Erasmus and his followers would do much to lay the intellectual groundwork for the Protestant challenge to confession. Meanwhile, John Calvin was preaching in Switzerland against confession as a kind of butchery (carnificina). In Germany Martin Luther made a frontal attack on the theology of confession with the publication in 1520 of his treatises on the priesthood and the sacraments. That same year, he held a public burning of the Angelica, an important confessors’ manual. The following year he wrote his On Confession: Whither the Pope Has Power to Command It. Priests, he taught, do not have the power to forgive sins; it is not penance that justifies us in the eyes of God, but faith. The Fourth Lateran Council, he declared, was ‘the greatest plague on earth, through which [Rome has] bewildered the consciences of all the world, brought so many souls to despair, and degraded and oppressed all mankind’s faith in Christ.’ Confession, he went on, is a kind of rape, and the pope is the Antichrist who ‘breaks open the bridal chamber of Christ and makes all Christian souls into whores.’18
Christendom was beginning to fragment, and the sacrament of confession, as defined and legislated by Rome, was a crucial centrifugal impetus. In England the question of the validity of confession was heatedly debated between the conservatives, who said the sacrament was instituted by Christ, and evangelicals such as Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, who said it was a human institution. The doctrinal disputes and antagonisms would soon become violent. During the reign of Elizabeth a few decades later, Catholic confessors would be hung and then drawn and quartered for hearing the confessions of devout Catholics.19
Three
Confession and the Counter-Reformers
So many abuses and such grave diseases have rushed upon the church of God that we now see her afflicted almost to the despair of salvation.
—Secret report on the need for a Church council, commissioned by Pope Paul III in 1536, quoted in John W. O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council
FOR TWO DECADES OF THE MID-SIXTEENTH CENTURY, THE ancient walled city of Trent, high in the bracing air of the Tyrol, was the scene for the Church of Rome’s response to the laxities and corruptions within Latin Christianity and the grievances and challenges of the Protestant reformers. A favoured Protestant metaphor speaks of the Council of Trent as the point at which Western Christendom broke into a delta of separated streams, with the Roman flood carrying off the filth and flotsam of the Middle Ages. Rome, however, speaks of that Council as the majestic continuation of Christianity’s authentic mainstream, from which the Protestant churches broke away in heretical discontinuities.1
Pope Paul III had for eight years attempted to find the ideal location for the Council. Mantua, Piacenza, and Cambrai had been suggested and rejected. Trent held appeal because it was at a midpoint between the Papal States and the Germanic imperial territories. On 13 December 1545, the assembled prelates celebrated Mass in the city’s Duomo, invoking the guidance of the Holy Ghost. There were four cardinals, including the Englishman Reginald Pole; four archbishops; twenty-one bishops; five heads of religious orders; and some fifty theologians and canon lawyers. The numbers would expand in time. It was a French prince of the Church, Cardinal Jean de Lorraine, who called on the assembly to acknowledge its responsibility for Christendom’s woes: ‘Whom shall we accuse my fellow bishops? Whom shall we declare to be the authors of such great misfortune? Ourselves; we must admit that much with shame and with repentance for our past lives.’ Cardinal Pole declared, ‘We ourselves are largely responsible for the misfortune that has occurred—because we have failed to cultivate the field that was entrusted to us.’ Before departing from the council, he pleaded with the participants to read the works of ‘our adversaries’ with an open mind. They should not conclude, moreover, that because Luther said it, ‘therefore it is false’.2
There were those who believed that the Council would last no longer than a few weeks. But it would take eighteen years for the conciliar documents to be signed off. There were to be fierce arguments, protracted suspensions, expressions of nationalistic hubris, even physical attacks. When a Franciscan bishop called a Neapolitan prelate a knave and a fool, the indignant Italian pulled out a fistful of the bishop’s beard. In time the Council would settle down peaceably enough. Its work would shape the ethos and discipline of the Catholic Church for the next three hundred years and beyond.
There was a total of twenty-five sessions in three great sittings. The main business was to condemn Protestant heresies while clarifying Catholic orthodoxy across a broad span of doctrines. High on the agenda, and with the practice of confession in mind, was an insistence that the clergy should be better educated; seminaries must be established for clerical formation, with minor seminaries starting at the age of twelve. The disciplines for religious orders, male and female, were to be tightened. The roles of enclosure (keeping monastic inmates in, and the laity out) would be enforced to preclude the lax and scandalous habits that had developed through the Middle Ages. Nuns were instructed to make their confessions at least once a month.
Deliberations on confession began in earnest when the Council fathers moved temporarily to Bologna in 1547–1548, with the deficiencies of confessors topping the list of priorities. The bishop of Bologna, chairing the discussion, remarked: ‘If we take pains to expel the wicked and ignorant priests, we can easily restore Christianity to its old splendour and dignity; if not, we will waste our energy in devising regulations and statutes.’3
The proceedings continued back at Trent, leading to the completion of the fourteenth session of the Council—which stated that confession had been given ‘great consideration . . . so great are the number of errors relative to this sacrament’. Absolution and penance were necessary at all times for all men ‘who had stained themselves by mortal sin’. The acts of the penitent, namely, contrition, confession, and satisfaction (making good the consequences of the crime, with reparation and penance), constituted the ‘matter’, which brings about ‘reconciliation’ with God as well as ‘serenity of conscience and exceedingly great consolation of spirit.’ The Council condemned the Protestant claim that forgiveness of sin was principally a question of faith rather than penance. For those who objected that confession created a sin-confession-sin cycle, the Council decreed that true contrition must be accompanied by ‘the purpose of not sinning in the future’.
Against critics such as Erasmus, who taught that contrition in one’s heart was sufficient for God’s forgiveness, the Council declared that although perfect contrition might well reconcile a soul to God before the penitent performed the sacrament, ‘a desire of the sacrament’ was also essential. It was granted that, though fear of Hell was ‘imperfect’ (a kind of contrition labelled ‘attrition’), such fearful sorrow was nevertheless ‘a gift from God’ and would prepare a soul for the desire for justice and the reception of God’s grace.
Complete confession of all ‘mortal sins’, one by one, to a priest, who sat as judge and healer, was necessary for valid absolution, hence the need for ‘diligent self-examination’. Venial, or lesser, sins should be told in confession as a matter of piety, but might be omitted in confession without guilt. The Council confirmed that confession ‘should be complied with by each and all at least once a year when they have attained the age of discretion.’ Like the Fourth Lateran Council, the Council of Trent left the age of ‘discretion’, in actual years, unstated.
The enforcement of the decrees of the Council fell to the bishops and religious orders of the Church. Some were more creative and rigorous than others. Given the vast and complex cultural, social, and political differences across the continent, the Council hardly could have imposed universal conformity even had it tried. The obligation to go to confession on pain of excommunication, laid down at the Fourth Lateran Council, was reaffirmed. Registers were to be kept by parish priests. Failure to attend annual confession could mean answering to the Inquisition.
Within the diversities peculiar to local and national conditions, and against the backgr
ound of hostility between Protestant and Roman Catholic communities, confession became a test of inclusion or exclusion across Europe. In the 1550s, not long after the fourteenth session of the Council, Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria used military troops to suppress Lutheranism within the region by imposing obligatory attendance at confession. Neighbours were encouraged to report on non-confessing fellow parishioners.4 Elsewhere in Germany, in Passau and Geisenhausen, parishioners refusing to attend the sacrament were jailed.
In England, where Mary Tudor had acceded to the throne in 1553 after the brief, iconoclastic Protestant reign of Edward VI, and Roman Catholicism was reimposed, mandatory confession became a test of allegiance to the Crown and a token of reconciliation with the old faith. During the Lent of 1555, every adult in the country was instructed to confess to their local parish priest—to ‘reconcile themselves to the churche’ before Easter. An instruction issued by the bishops warned that should any of the faithful disobey, ‘every one of them shall have process made ageynst him, according to the Canons . . . for which purpose the pastors and curates of every parysche . . . [are] to certify me in writing of every mans and womans name that is not so reconciled.’5
In the archdiocese of York, priests were ordered to enquire during confession about specific articles of faith—belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the supremacy of the pope, justification by faith alone or through the sacraments—in order to detect lingering heresy. A measure of the strict enforcement, in May 1556 at least fifteen Kentish people, such as carpenters, weavers, and farm labourers, were arrested for what were deemed heretical opinions and failure to confess. Five of them died of starvation in jail by November of that year. Ten were burnt at the stake in January 1557.6 More fortunate were the many other recalcitrant ‘heretics’, guilty of such crimes as refusing to look at the elevated Host during Mass, who were merely punished with public humiliation. One Margaret Geoffrie of Ashford was forced to kneel in the chancel of the parish church holding a rosary—symbol of Roman Catholic devotion—and disporting herself with reverence before the rest of the congregation.
It was all in vain. Under Elizabeth, who succeeded Mary in 1558, Catholicism became synonymous with Spanish and Popish treachery. Some 200 Catholics were executed in her bid to overturn Mary’s reversion to the Catholic faith, 123 of them priests condemned as spies working in the interests of a foreign power. This was the era of priest-holes—secret hiding places in Catholic homes—and Jesuits flitting from house to house with the Eucharist. For the Elizabethan authorities, confession, with its seal and secrecy, enabled priests to encourage treason by ‘reconciliation’ among subjects who might well appear outwardly obedient to the state.7
AMONG THE ITALIAN PRELATES present at the Council of Trent was a cardinal who led a thoroughgoing reform of confessional practice throughout Roman Christendom. Cardinal Charles Borromeo has been credited with inventing the confessional box—an iconic piece of church furnishing to this day. Speaking to his diocesan priests, Borromeo would declare that confessors ‘have the souls in their hands, as it were, and “speak to Jerusalem’s heart.”’8
Borromeo was endowed from birth with many ecclesiastical and aristocratic privileges. Nephew of Pope Pius IV, he had received the clerical tonsure at age eight, and at twelve he became the titular abbot of a monastery, which he attempted to reform with juvenile zeal. Tall, exceedingly thin, with an unusually prominent aquiline nose, Charles was awarded the red hat at the age of twenty-two and appointed Secretary of State to the Holy See. He was ennobled and wealthy in his own right, but the Church loaded him with even more titles and wealth. He became archbishop of Milan, protector of Portugal and Lower Germany, legate at Bologna, and archpriest of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. He was also granted many parish benefices. Nevertheless, it was said at his funeral that he slept on straw and adopted a regime of austerity and self-denial. Scholar, theologian, and canonist, he was an outstanding administrator in the preparation and proceedings of the Council. These abilities, in combination with a natural charisma and reputation for holiness, put him in good stead as he entered the archdiocese of Milan in September 1565.9
Milan was a vast province stretching from the Veneto to the Swiss Alps. The archdiocese, comprising eight hundred parishes, was in crisis, its priests sunk in ignorance (some knew so little Latin that they could not pronounce the words of absolution, let alone understand them). There were clerics in minor orders—in other words, not ordained priests—who heard confessions invalidly. Borromeo’s hagiographer, Giovanni Giussano, wrote that the cardinal realised that his clergy ‘could not have been more scandalous nor serve as a worse example.’10 Priests wore lay clothes, carried weapons in public, and lived openly with their mistresses. Many priests were absentee pastors, either abandoning their benefices or letting them out to hire. Priests, Giussano wrote, were ‘mean and almost detestable’. Their churches were often leased as storage barns for the crops of Lombardy; monasteries were available for hire as venues for balls and weddings. Calling a series of synods, councils, and other meetings with the heads of religious orders and auxiliary bishops, Borromeo moved to enforce the decrees of the Trent with vigour. First he focused on confession, for this, in his view, was a sacrament that involved more engagement between clergy and faithful than any other. It was a sacrament, he believed that had scope for far-reaching social and moral renewal.
In 1565 Borromeo commissioned the Jesuits in Milan to write a treatise, entitled ‘On the Examination of Confessors’, to explore the best way of ensuring the authentic administration of the sacrament and protecting the rite from future scepticism. Foremost in his mind was the issue that had driven the Donatist heresy of the fourth and fifth centuries: the belief that sacraments performed by a priest in a state of mortal sin were invalid. Theologians in the Middle Ages had insisted on the principle ex opere operato—that the state of a priest’s soul did not affect the efficacy of the sacraments he bestowed. Yet dissatisfaction with sinful confessors, leading to widespread anticlericalism, had been cited as a chief reason for neglect of confession and a consequent decline in Mass attendance, participation in the Eucharist, and other devotions throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As one parishioner in the diocese put it bluntly: ‘I don’t want to confess to one who is more of a sinner than I am’.11
While conscious of the need to avoid the Donatist position, Borromeo concentrated on the education and formation of future priests. There would be careful recruitment of candidates for the priesthood, frequent examinations, and chastisement of those who erred. And there would be visitations of parishes and religious houses, regular reports on progress, and tribunals for complaints. Above all, Trent had called for episcopal control of confessors, whether they were parish priests or monks and friars. Supervision and transparency were to be the order of the day. In Milan, which promoted itself as a model for dioceses throughout the Catholic world, special examinations were established for confessors. Only those who passed could receive a written licence to administer the sacrament.
Crucial to Borromeo’s strategy was the publication of his Avertenze (Admonitions) to confessors in 1574.12 These instructions outlined the scope of the bishop’s authority—his right to set standards, impose conformity, reserve to the bishops the absolution of certain sins (especially those of priests), and withdraw licences, or ‘faculties’, to hear confessions. The instructions stressed the avoidance of familiar medieval abuses, such as sexual solicitation, sale of absolution, loose living, and ignorance of canon law. Borromeo was shaping a professional class of clergy which in time would be known as ‘Tridentine’ clericalism. His ultimate aim was to improve the spiritual lives of the faithful. Confession, for Borromeo, provided a window onto individual consciences, a crucial means of improving the moral lives of the faithful, which in turn, he believed, would improve civil society.
Mindful of widespread sexual abuse in the practice of confession, Borromeo resorted to a practical scheme to prevent confessors and penitents
from coming into contact in the course of administering the sacrament. Before Trent, as we have seen, the priest would sit on a chair with the penitent at his feet—thus making it easy for the confessor to touch the penitent, and for the penitent to lean on the lap of the confessor. At times the confessor would hold the penitents’ hands, or even encourage an embrace. Absolution, moreover, usually ended with the priest laying hands on the head of the penitent; eye contact was common, as evinced by warnings against its dangers in the medieval confessional manuals. The physical, potentially tactile, face-to-face proximity of the confessional relationship had offered ample opportunity for intimacy, and therefore ‘occasions of sin’. Cases against soliciting confessors had come before the inquisitors involving kissing, touching penitents’ breasts, and mutual masturbation during the very administration of the sacrament.13
We get an impression of the state of affairs in a report to the Roman Curia written in 1575 by Borromeo’s former assistant, Niccolò Ormaneto: ‘From all sides zealous people approach me to lament the great abomination of many impious men who violate the sacrament of penance by attempting to satiate their unbridled and bestial appetite with their spiritual daughters, during or outside the act of confession.’ Ormaneto faced the stark fact that it was not worldly pursuits alone—such as drinking, dancing, and immodest speech and dress—that acted as occasions of concupiscence, but the circumstance of the sacrament of confession itself.14
Against this unseemly background, Borromeo now commissioned an item of church furniture to set a physical barrier between confessor and penitent. In 1576, members of the faithful entering the Duomo in Milan were struck by the presence of several unfamiliar wooden booths. The confessional box had arrived. Borromeo’s text on their design is to be found in a set of special instructions (Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae). The confessional was composed of a chair for the confessor and a kneeler for the penitent. The confessor was enclosed by wooden panels on three sides, but there was a door (or doors) left open into the body of the church, so that he would be on view to the faithful. The panel that divided the confessor from the penitent had a grille and a curtain. The primary significance of the design was to show the confessor in his guise as judge, with the penitent kneeling before him in an attitude of contrition and humility. The grille and the curtain emphasised ‘custody of the eyes’. Although confessor and penitent communicated at close quarters, they were not meant to see each other (although an attentive confessor would have known who was entering the confessional next, or recognised the voice). The Borromeo confessional would be adopted throughout Western Europe, although it was to take a period of more than two centuries to become the norm; the expense of the items required for the box was an obstacle in the poorer parishes. Meanwhile, the habit of hearing confessions in the privacy of sacristies, the quarters of priests, and the cells of monks continued—although it was discouraged by diocesan bishops.15
The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession Page 5
