In Spain, access to the voluminous archives of the Inquisition gives us for the first time an opportunity of acquaintance with these secrets of the confessional which the Church has always guarded so carefully from the profane, thus rendering possible a fairly accurate understanding of its attitude towards soliciting confessors. The Inquisition had accepted in good faith the jurisdiction conferred on it, but it always had a leaning in favour o clerical delinquents, and the rules which it established for this class of cases show how much more benignantly it regarded this particular suspicion of heresy than other suspicions. It is true that no ecclesiastic could be arrested on any charge by a tribunal without referring the case to the Supreme Council and awaiting its orders, so that in this respect confessors had no advantage over their brethren, but, as, in Italy, two independent denunciations of solicitation were required, where one sufficed in ordinary heresy. Where denunciation was so difficult to secure, this was a most important advantage to the delinquents, and saved thousands of them from trial. A woman who chanced in a general confession to mention her sin with a previous confessor might be refused absolution until she denounced him. If she did so, the Inquisitors, after the introduction of postal facilities, sent letters of inquiry to all the other tribunals, to learn whether they had the culprit's name on their register of solicitors. If the replies were in the negative, the papers were filed away, and nothing more was done, unless at some future time another denunciation was made to some tribunal. Meanwhile the woman was left under the impression that her seduction by her confessor was too trivial a matter to require investigation, and the offender was left at liberty to continue his assaults on the virtue of his penitents. return and stand trial at home, and he did so.-MSS. of Royal Library of Copenhagen, 218b, p. 339. Perhaps if, after the lapse of years, a second accusation came, the first accuser was dead and could not make the indispensable ratification of her testimony, so that the culprit had another respite. The records are full of cases in which a second denunciation did not come until ten, fifteen, and sometimes even twenty, thirty, or forty years after the first; and there are many in which three denunciations are specified, showing that the first victim must have died before the second came forward. The prolonged impunity thus enjoyed by offenders whose offences must have been habitual shows how disastrous was the favour thus extended to them. The reason given for this double denunciation was the assumed unreliability of female testimony, but in ordinary heresy all witnesses were welcome, irrespective of sex, character, and almost of age; while, if there was enmity or infamy, the accused, from whom the knowledge of their names was withheld, had to grope his way to identify and disable them. But in these cases the Inquisition saved him from all this and protected him, before it would act on the denunciation, by a searching inquiry into the character of the witness and any possible enmity that might exist.1 Regrets were expressed that female testimony was admitted at all; it was justifiable only because the nature of the crime admitted of no other, and writers like Páramo discredit it in advance with the customary monastic abuse of women.2 Another favour shown to the accused was immunity from torture. While in ordinary accusations of heresy a single witness sufficed to expose the defendant to the rack or strappado, in case of his denial, the confessor was exempt, no matter how many witnesses appeared against him. In the earlier time there was some question as to 1 Archivo histórico nacional, Inquisicion de Valencia, Legajo 365. this, and some dialectics as to fact and intention, but the question was settled on the common-sense basis that it would be a greater infliction for the uncertain than for the certain, as the penalties for conviction were not equal to torture.1 When, however, doctrinal errors led to solicitation there was no hesitation in the use of torture to detect the aberrations of Illuminism, as in the case of the priest Manuel Madrigal, voted to torture to discover intention," por solicitante, Molinista y flagelante," by the tribunal of Madrid in 1725.2 There was also the broad avenue to escape in the strictness with which the formulas of the papal utterances were construed. Solicitation is a purely technical crime, based on inferential misbelief as to the sacrament, and it is wholly unconnected with morals. The Church cares nothing as to the relations between confessor and penitent so long as the confessional and the sacrament are not involved, and even there the confidences deemed necessary in confession, the obligation on the confessor to acquaint himself with all details, afford ample opportunity for pruriency, which the casuist can approve or condemn with equal facility. All this is one of the incidents inseparable from auricular confession, and the Church can only make the best of it with vague general regulations, construed and enforced by imperfect human nature. The decisive importance attached to locality meets one constantly in the trials of these cases. In that of Fernandez Pujalon, parish priest of Ciempozuelos, before the tribunal of Toledo, in 1744, he confesses to vile indecencies committed with his penitent Sor Cayetana de la Providencia in the convent of Santa Clara, and chanced 1 De Sousa, Aphorismi Inquisit. Lib. I. cap. xxxviii. n. 64, 65; Ejusd. Opusc. circa Constit. Pauli PP. V. Tract. ii. cap. 13, 21.-Biblioteca Nacional, Seccion de MSS. V. 337, cap. xx. § 9.-Archivo histórico nacional, Inquisicion de Valencia, Legajo 61. 2 Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Legajo 876, fol. 208. to mention that once in the parlour of the convent she said that she never indulged in this in the confessional, but that it was bad for Padre Colmenas and Sor Antonia Blanca, who had illicit relations in the confessional. The tribunal commissioned the superintendent of convents, Canon Miguel Barba, to examine Sor Cayetana as to when he should next visit Ciempozuelos, which he did in 1747, but she naturally did not care to implicate herself; Barba discreetly did not push his investigations, and the matter was dropped. So, in the case of Fray Joseph Rives, tried in Valencia in 1741, the evidence of two of his penitents shows the beastliness of the practices employed to inflame the passions of the women, while arguments of his advocate are devoted to prove that the precautions which he took to evade the letter of the papal decrees proved his respect for the sacrament, and that technically he was not guilty. This was unavailing, but he escaped with deprivation of his faculty to confess and three years' exile from Valencia, Bocayente, and all royal residences." It was to meet this customary line of defence that the tribunals, in their instructions as to taking testimony, always laid special stress on ascertaining the exact spot where the incriminating acts occurred; what would be guilt in the confessional would escape animadversion elsewhere. Another favour shown to these delinquents was that, in place of being shut up incomunicado in the secret prison during trial, like ordinary heretics, they were at liberty and could devise means of defence. What these sometimes were is shown in the case of a priest who had been denounced, and who threatened to kill the confessor who had sent the denunciation unless he would write that the women had 1 Archivo histórico nacional, Inquisicion de Toledo, Legajo 229, n. 32. 2 Archivo histórico nacional, Inquisicion de Valencia, Legajo 365, n. 45, fol. 4. In the sentences to temporary exile, which was a favourite punishment for minor offences, Madrid and royal residences are always included. withdrawn their charges. More crafty was Dr. Joseph Soriano, vicar of Vinaroz, in 1796, against whom we find pending in the tribunal of Valencia two prosecutions, one for solicitation and another for the ingenious device of suborning several women to denounce him and then to retract.1 When, in spite of all facilities for evasion, conviction was obtained, the punishment meted out to the criminal was singularly disproportionate to the moral turpitude of the offence and its damage to the Church and to society. In the first place, the dread of scandal shielded him from public reprobation and the shame of exposure, thus exempting him from what in Spain was one of the heaviest penalties visited on other crimes the infamy inflicted on the lineage of one who had been penanced by the Inquisition. There was not only the secrecy in which all the operations of the Holy Office were jealously guarded, but the culprit was not exposed to view in an auto da fe like ordinary offenders-heretics, bigamists, blasphemers, petty sorcerers, and the like. From the earliest period, as soon as the form of procedure was reduced to rule, strict injunctions were issued that the sentence was to be read in the audience-chamber with closed doors, the only witnesses present being a specified number of members of the culprit's Order, if he were a regular, or priests of parish churches, if a secular. The same instructions prescribe as the punishment in all cases abjuration for light suspicion of heresy and perpetual deprivation of the faculty of confessing, to which might be added others suited to the gravity of the offence. Thus for frailes there might be a discipline inflicted in his convent, while the sentence was read in the presence of the assembled brethren, or, if the case were especially 1 Archivo histórico nacional, Inquisicion de Valencia, Legajo 365, n. 46; Legajo 100. |