The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession

by John Cornwell

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  NOTES

  Prologue

  1. See the document issued by the Catholic Church, Congregation for the Clergy, entitled The Priest, Minister of Divine Mercy: An Aid for Confessors and Spiritual Directors (Vatican City, 2011), www.clerus.org/clerus/dati/2011-05/20-13/Sussidio_per_Confessori_en.pdf. The document opens citing Pope Benedict XVI’s allocution to the Tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary in 2010: ‘It is necessary to return to the confessional as a place in which to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but also as a place in which to “dwell” more often, so that the faithful may find compassion, advice and comfort, feel that they are loved and understood by God and experience the presence of Divine Mercy beside the Real Presence in the Eucharist.’ See also Hans Küng and David Tracy, eds., Paradigm Change in Theology: A Symposium for the Future (London, 1989).

  2. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Library, MS 148. For commentary and translation into English, see Michael Haren, ‘Confession, Social Ethics and Social Discipline in the “Memoriale Presbiterorum” and “The Interrogatories for Officials, Lawyers and Secular Estates of the ‘Memoriale Presbiterorum’ and Secular Estates of the ‘Memoriale Presbiterorum’”’, in Peter Biller and A. J. Minnis, eds., Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, UK, 1998), 123ff. See W. A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, UK, 1955), Chapter 9, ‘Manuals for Parish Priests’, 189ff.

  3. Fourth Lateran Council, 1215. See John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1985), 49. Bossy finds evidence for a lowering of the age of confession from puberty to seven in the early fifteenth century, yet this practice appears to be localised and temporary. For a wider survey of child confession, see Henry Charles Lea, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, vol. 2 (London, 1896), 400ff.

  4. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, scene 1.

  5. William Wordsworth, ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’, 1804.

  6. For a discussion of this contention, see Leslie D. Weatherhead, Psychology, Religion and Healing (London, 1951), 329.

  7. Conversation with Paul Vallely, author of Pope Francis: Untying the Knots (London, 2013).

  8. Marie Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church: Gender, Power, and Organizational Culture (Oxford, 2012), 162–169.

  9. Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), ‘The Sacrament of Reconciliation’, n.d., http://cara.georgetown.edu/CARAServices/FRStats/reconciliation.pdf. The testimonies quoted from my research in various chapters of this book are from correspondence I received in response to my article in The Tablet on 18 August 2012 entitled ‘Where Are the Penitents?’ at www.thetablet.co.uk/article/163100 and are in my personal files.

  10. Carol Ann Duffy, ‘Confession’, in Mean Time (London, 2013), and ‘Ash Wednesday 1984’, in Standing Female Nude (London, 1998); Christopher Logue, Prince Charming: A Memoir (London, 1999), 33.

  11. Logue, Prince Charming, 12.

  One: Early Penitents and Their Penances

  1. In the Latin rite, ‘Memento homo quia pulvus es et in pulverem reverteris’, deriving from God’s curse on Adam after his and Eve’s disobedience recounted in Genesis 3.19: ‘You are dust, and to dust you shall return.’

  2. Psalm 51.3, 102.9; Jonah 3.6; Steven T. Katz, ed., Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4, The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period (Cambridge, UK, 2006), 941; Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions, trans. John McHugh (London, 1962), 507–510.

  3. Luke 7.47; Henry Charles Lea, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, vol. 1 (London, 1896), 3–4.

  4. See L. Duchesne, Christian Worship: Its Origin and Evolution (London, 1904), 435–443; John Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (Oxford, 1989), 2–5; Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century AD to the Conversion of Constantine (London, 1986), 336. For quotations from the clergy and laity, see Duchesne, Christian Worship, 443. For quotation from St. Jerome, see Michel Foucault, ‘Christianity and Confession’ (lecture), in Foucault, The Politics of Truth (Los Angeles, 1997), 207; see also Chloë Taylor, The Culture of Confession from Augustine to Foucault: A Genealogy of the ‘Confessing Animal’ (New York, 2009), 18–19.

  5. For Tertullian on the body, continence, and misogyny, see Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (London, 1988), 76–82. For Bishop Cyprian’s conclusion, see B. Poschmann, Penance and Anointing of the Sick (London, 1964), 55.

  6. Ludwig Bieler, ed., with an Appendix by D. A. Binchy, The Irish Penitentials (Dublin, 1975), 97.

  7. Ibid., 107.

  8. Ibid., 219.

  9. Ibid., 223.

  10. See Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 198
1).

  11. Gregory VII, The Register of Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085, trans. H. E. Cowdrey (Oxford, 1972), 3.10a; see also Tom Holland, Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom (London, 2008), xviff.

  12. For Abelard’s life and writings, see Jeffrey E. Brower and Kevin Guilfoy, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Abelard (Cambridge, UK, 2004).

  13. See Pierre J. Payer, Book of Gomorrah: An Eleventh-Century Treatise Against Clerical Homosexual Practices (Waterloo, Ontario, 1962).

  Two: Confession into Its Own

  1. H. J. Denzinger and A. Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum et Definitionum (Barcelona, 1963), 813; John Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (Oxford, 1989), 19.

  2. See J. P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina, vol. 187 (Paris, 1833).

  3. Chloë Taylor, The Culture of Confession from Augustine to Foucault: A Genealogy of the ‘Confessing Animal’ (New York, 2009), 51.

  4. Henry Charles Lea, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, vol. 1 (London, 1896), 400.

  5. See Chapter 1 on confession in late medieval Germany in W. David Myers, ‘Poor, Sinning Folk’: Confession and Conscience in Counter-Reformation Germany (London, 1996).

  6. Taylor, Culture of Confession, 56.

  7. Thomas Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of Reformation (Princeton, NJ, 1977), 141ff; Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ (London, 1952), 236.

  8. Taylor, Culture of Confession, 55ff.

  9. David Hugh Farmer, Oxford Dictionary of the Saints (Oxford, 1987), 139; Dyan Elliott, Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, 2004), 88–111.

  10. For more information on the Beguines, see Walter Simons, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Low Countries, 1200–1565 (Philadelphia, 2001), 35–60. James of Vitry is quoted in Elliot, Proving Woman, 51.

  11. On the matter of Catherine’s confessions, see Friedrich von Huegel, The Mystical Element of Religion, vol. 1 (London, 1923), 117ff.

  12. For the development of the concept of Purgatory, see Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (London, 1984), 4–7, 12.

  13. Stephen Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional: A Sacrament Profaned (Oxford, 1996), 11.