woman and several others unmarried. The records were examined, and no previous accusation was found against him. Without summoning the witnesses, the tribunal reported the case to the Supreme Council, which ordered it simply to be suspended and the culprit to be reprimanded. The fact that out of so many women solicited not one accused him indicates how few were the denunciations in comparison with the offences. The indifference of the tribunals grew with time. In 1724, Fray Manuel Pablo Herraiz denounced himself to the tribunal of Toledo for a somewhat complicated illicit connection with two penitents. Inquiries were sent to the other tribunals, with negative results. Without further action, the case was laid aside, and in 1732 the fiscal or prosecuting officer reported that there was nothing more to be done with it.' These cases indicate that the only danger incurred by the espontaneado was that some previous denunciation might be lying in the records awaiting a second, provided the tribunal took the trouble to make inquiry.

3

In time even this seems to have been abandoned, and so completely did it come to be understood that the espontaneado was not to be prosecuted that, in 1783, the Supreme Council interrogated the tribunals, asking whether they suspended such cases or dismissed the selfaccuser with abjuration and absolution. So it continued until the extinction of the Inquisition. In 1815, Padre Fray Francisco Gómez Somoerotro, sacristan mayor of the Mercenarian convent of Madrid, denounced himself to that tribunal for solicitation and doctrines suspect of Molinism, and his case was suspended. In 1819 he was denounced for solicitation to the tribunal of Valladolid, and again the case was suspended.*

1 Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion de Santiago, Relaciones de Causas, Legajo 1.

2 Archivo histórico nacional, Inquisicion de Toledo, Legajo 229, n. 40.

3 Ibid. Inquisicion de Valencia, Legajo 16, n. 6, fol. 4.

4 Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Lib. 1002.

1

No class of ecclesiastics, privileged to hear confessions, was exempt from this contaminating sin, but the great mass of culprits belonged to the regular Orders. Llorente explains that the secular priests, having comparative wealth and freedom, were able to gratify their passions in ways less dangerous, and that it was precisely the Orders that were most rigid which produced the greatest number of culprits. To verify this last assertion would require statistics of the different Orders now unattainable, and an accurate knowledge of the degree to which they devoted themselves to the duties of the confessional. A factor in their activity was the special faculties granted to the mendicant Orders to absolve for cases reserved to the Holy See, except those included in the Coena Domini bull and six others specified in a decree of Clement VIII. in 1601-these mendicant Orders being Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, Carmelites, Minims, Jesuits, and Servites. This, of course, rendered their ministrations more attractive, and secured them a larger number of penitents, which helps to explain their undue proportion of offenders. In analysing an aggregate of 3775 cases I find that the great body of the secular clergy, including parish priests, vicars, canons, &c., contributed only 981, while the regular Orders furnished 2794.3

Spain was the only land in which solicitation was systematically prosecuted where the conditions were such as to remove some of the impediments to denunciation, and where the records are accessible. If any methods could reduce the abuse to a minimum, it was there, and, from what we learn as to its prevalence in Spain, we may reasonably infer that in other countries, where no such

1 Llorente, Historia Critica, cap. XXVIII. art. 1, n. 14.

2 Trimarchi,, op. cit. p. 279.

3 Archivo histórico nacional, Inquisicion de Toledo, Legajo 233, MS. 108; Inquisicion de Valencia, Legajo 66.-Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Lib. 1002,

machinery existed for its discovery and repression, it was even more prevalent.

It is thus only in the records of the Inquisition that an insight can be gained into this phase of ecclesiastical development, which has always been shrouded from public view with such anxious care. In exploring these records one seems to live in a world of brutal lust, where disregard of the moral law is accepted as a matter of course by all parties, where the aim of the confessor is to inflame the passions by act and speech, or to overcome resistance by coarse violence; where women regard it as natural that the awful authority of the priesthood is to be exercised to their undoing, and their consciences are to be soothed with pardon granted in the name of God by the hypocrite who has destroyed their honour; and where the inquisitor busies himself, not with the moral and spiritual questions involved, but with ascertaining whether certain technical rules have been violated. I have spared the reader all details, for the most debased pornographic literature can have nothing more foul to offer, and the divorce of morals from religion is complete.

Morals, in fact, have nothing to do with solicitation as viewed by the Church. The priest can indulge his passions with his penitents in safety, so long as he commits no technical offence and so long as the danger of scandal is not incurred. The Church sees nothing specially sinful in solicitation itself, notwithstanding the vehement rhetoric of papal utterances. In the forum of conscience it is classed with simple fornication—a mortal sin indeed, for in lust there is no parvitas materiæ, but one not calling for any special reprobation. Heinous offences are distinguished by being "reserved"-that is, absolution for them can be obtained only from the Holy See or from the sinner's prelate. The Holy See has never reserved to itself the sin of seducing a penitent in the confessional.

Bishops have power in their dioceses to reserve to themselves what sins they choose, and occasionally some puritan prelate has done so with this. In 1635, while the bull of Gregory XV. was still the subject of discussion, Trimarchi tells us that it was thus reserved in the provinces of Geneva and Benevento, and in some dioceses of Naples, but nowhere else.1 The consequence of this is that absolution can be given by any confessor, and the culprit is told that he need only confess to simple fornication, without mentioning that it has been with his spiritual daughter. He therefore obtains pardon from God on the easiest possible terms, his conscience is clear, and he is ready to repeat the offence. This forms a strange contrast with the excommunication directed against the victim who fails to denounce her seducer, for this is reserved to the Holy See, and we are expressly told that the censures of the bulls are directed against her and not against him.2 May we not attribute all this to a callousness engendered by the prevalence of concubinage among a celibate priesthood, where the woman must in almost all cases necessarily be the penitent of the priest and thus be his spiritual daughter?

1 Trimarchi, op. cit. p. 272.

2 Trimarchi, p. 273.-Ant. de Sousa, op. cit. Tract. II. cap. xx.-Joh. Sanchez, Disputationes Selectæ, Disp. xi. n. 3, 4 (Lugduni, 1636).—Potestatis Examen. Ecclesiasticum, T. II. n. 601 (Venetiis, 1728).

For the modern aspect of this subject see below, in chapter XXXII.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION

If the Council of Trent had thus failed utterly in its efforts to create that which had never existed-purity of morals under the rule of celibacy-it had at length succeeded in its more important task of putting an end to the aspirations of the clergy for marriage. With the anathema for heresy confronting them, few could be found so bold as openly to dispute the propriety of a law which had been incorporated into the articles of faith, and the ingenious sophistries and far-fetched logic of Bellarmine were reverently received and accepted as incontrovertible. Urbain Grandier might endeavour to quiet the conscience of his morganatic spouse by writing a treatise to prove the lawfulness of priestly wedlock, but he took care to keep the manuscript carefully locked in his desk. A man of

1 When Grandier was arrested and tried for sorcery, his papers were seized, and among them was found an essay against sacerdotal celibacy. Under torture, he confessed that he had written it for the purpose of satisfying the conscience of a woman with whom he had maintained marital relations for seven years (Hist. des Diables de Loudun, pp. 85, 191). The manuscript was burnt, with its unlucky author, but a copy was preserved, which has been printed (Petite Bibliothèque des Curieux, Paris, 1866). In it Grandier shows himself singularly bold for a man of his time and station. The law of nature, or moral law, he holds to be the direct exposition of the Divine will. By it revealed law must necessarily be interpreted, and to its standard ecclesiastical law must be made to conform. He evidently was made to be burned as a heretic, if he had escaped as a sorcerer. The promise of chastity exacted at ordination he regards as extorted, and therefore as not binding on those unable to keep it; while he does not hesitate to assume that the rule itself was adopted and enforced on purely temporal grounds-"de crainte qu'en remuant une pierre on n'esbranlat la puissance papale; car hors cette considération d'Estat, l'Eglise romaine pense assez que le célibat n'est pas d'institution divine ni nécessaire au salut, puisqu'elle en dispense les particuliers, ce qu'elle ne pourroit faire si le célibat avoit esté ordonné d'en haut" (pp. 34-5).