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]