Chapter 17
VIII. spheres of action chapter 6 solicitation part 1 the seduction of female penitents by their confessors euphemistically known as solicitato ad terpia or solicitation has been a perennial source of trouble to the church since the introduction of confession more especially after the lateran council of 1216 rendered yearly confession to the parish priest obligatory it was
admitted to be a prevailing vice, and canonists sought some abatement of the evil by arguing that the priest notoriously addicted to it lost his jurisdiction over his female parishioners, who were thus at liberty to seek the sacrament of penitence from others. A Spanish authority, however, holds that this requires the license of the parish priest himself, and when he refuses it, the woman must confess to him, after prayer to God for strength to resist his importunities.
It was an evil for which repression was impossible, notwithstanding penalties freely threatened. A virtue of uncommon robustness was required to resist the temptations arising from the confidences of the confessional, and so well was this understood that an exception was made to the rule requiring perfect confession, for reticence as to carnal sins was counseled when the reputation of the priest rendered it advisable. few women thus approached whether yielding or not could be expected to denounce their pastors to the bishop or provisor
and for her who yielded the path to sin was made easy through the universal abuse of absolution by her accomplice and this although objected to unethical grounds was admitted to be valid on the other hand the peccant confessor could rely on obtaining absolution from a sympathizing colleague at the cost of penance which had become habitually trivial The intercourse between priest and penitent was especially dangerous because there had not yet been invented the device of the confessional,
a box or stall in which the confessor sits with his ear at a grill through which the tale of his sins conceived or committed is whispered. Seated by his side or kneeling at his feet, there was greater risk of inflaming passion and much more opportunity for provocative advances. It was not until the middle of the sixteenth century that the confessional was devised, doubtless in consequence of the attacks of heretics who found in these scandals a fertile subject for an animadversion. The earliest allusion to it that I have met occurs in a
memorial from Cilicio of Toledo to Charles V in 1547. In 1565 a council of Valencia prescribed its use, and contemporaneously, S. Carlo Borromeo introduced it in his Milanese province, while in 1614 the Roman ritual commanded its employment in all churches. It was easier to command than to secure obedience, for the priesthood offered a passive resistance which even the Inquisition found it almost impossible to overcome. As early as 1625 it forbade parish priests from hearing
confessions in their houses. Between 1709 and 1720 we find it occupied in endeavoring to enforce the use of confessionals and to prevent evasions, such as hearing confessions in cells and chapels, and not in the body of the church. How long continued was the opposition, and how transparent were the artifices to elude the regulations, are visible in an edict of November 3, 1781, which led to considerable trouble. After alluding to the repeated orders of the subject,
and the deplorable results of their disregard, it prescribed that women should be heard only through the gratings of closed confessionals, or of open stalls in the body of the churches, or in chapels open and well-lighted. It forbade the use of hand-gratings or handkerchiefs, sieves, bundle of twigs, fans, or other derisive substitutes, and it prescribed minute and highly suggestive regulations as to oratories and private chapels, while a similar series concerning
male penitents shows the dread of contamination even with them. The crime of solicitation was subject to episcopal jurisdiction and, throughout the Middle Ages, there was no general legislation prescribing its penalties. Some apocryphal canons visited it with well-deserved severity, and in 1217 Richard Poore, the reforming Bishop of Salisbury, threatened it with fifteen years of penance, followed by confinement in a monastery. The spiritual courts, however, were notoriously lenient, and the prevalent sexual laxity tended to sympathy, which disarmed severity in the rare cases coming before them.
When, during the Reformation, this offense afforded a favorite topic for the heretics, there arose a demand for sharper treatment. In 1587, Enigo Lopez de Salcedo gives this as a reason for rigorous punishment, and he greatly lauds Matteo Ghiberti, the reforming Bishop of Verona, for decreeing a series of heavy penalties for attempts on the virtue of female penitence, culminating in deprivation and perpetual imprisonment when they were successful. This virtuous rigor, however, was purely exceptional. The usual tolerant view adopted is manifested in a case which, in 1535 at Toledo, came before the vicar-general, Blas Ortiz, a man so respected that he was promoted to the inquisitorship of Valencia soon afterwards.
Alonso de Val de la Mar, parish priest of Alma de Var, was charged with a black catalogue of offenses. Theft, blasphemy, cheating with crusada indulgences, charging penitents for absolution, frequenting public brothels, and solicitation. It was in evidence that he refused absolution to a girl unless she would surrender herself to him, that he seduced a married penitent whose husband was obliged to leave Amadovar in order to get her away from him, while Doña Leonor de Godoy
admitted that he repeatedly used violence on her in the church itself. His sentence, rendered February 26, 1535, stated that the fiscal had fully proved his charges, but for all these crimes he was punished only with 30 days penitential reclusion in his church with a fine of 10 ducats, besides four reales to the fiscal, a ducat to the episcopal advocate, 10 days wages to the notary who went to Almudavar to take testimony and the cost of the trial. From this the fiscal appealed to the
archbishop, but the next day withdrew the appeal. Val de la Mar accepted it and was sent back to his parish to pursue his course of profligacy. Evidently the episcopal tribunal was more concerned with the profits of its jurisdiction than with the suppression of solicitation. It may be inferred from this that peccant confessors were not likely to be prosecuted, unless there were other circumstances or offenses to stimulate action,
and this is confirmed by another case, about the same time, which also shows the readiness of the tribunal to claim jurisdiction. Pedro Bermúdez, incumbent of Ciemposuelos, employed a priest named Pareja as vicar from 1525 to 1529. They quarreled.
Pareja was dismissed, found employment at Valdemoro, and commenced suit against Bermúdez. The latter retorted by instigating a certain Catalina Roldan, who had borne a child to Pareja, and her mother, to complain to Romero, a visiting inquisitor from Toledo, about the seduction, asking that he be forced to provide a dower and find a husband for her. Romero took up the case. Bermudez busied himself in collecting testimony
and was aided by a priest named Solorzano, whose enmity had been excited by Pareja, having served as commissioner and taking evidence as to his seduction of a married woman, for which he was prosecuted at Alcalá.
The proof collected against Pareja was conclusive. Two of his penitents admitted to having yielded to him, and several others testified as to his advances in the act of confession. When one of them was asked whether she confessed to him their mutual sin, she said that he told her not to do so, and afterwards admitted her to communion.
There was also evidence as to his violating the seal of confession, and to irreverence in administering the sacrament. The trial pursued the usual course, the main charges being his misdeeds with his female penitents, which he admitted more or less explicitly.
When the papers were sent to Suprema, it returned them, saying that the charges for the most part were beyond the competence of the tribunal, and appertained to the episcopal court, to which they should be transferred, while the tribunal could proceed with the little that remained. The charges, thus, after omitting the solicitation, were reduced to four, that he persuaded his accomplices that
their mutual sin need not be confessed, that he told them that they could take the sacrament without confessing, that he said it was better to have masses celebrated than to pay debts, and that almost all the witnesses held him to be a bad Christian, a heretic, and an evil man. Pareja and his advocate argued that the case was outside of inquisitorial jurisdiction,
but the tribunal pushed it to the end on these subsidiary points, and, on May 23, 1532, sentenced him to perpetual deprivation of hearing the confessions of women, to a fine of twenty thousand maravadis, and to have Toledo as a prison for two years, during which he was to fast and recite psalms on Fridays. As he was not required to abjure, even for light suspicion, the charge of heresy was abandoned, and as solicitation was not included in the sentence, he was liable to further
prosecution by the ordinary. Yet the character of the penalties shows that solicitation was the real gravamen over which the tribunal was seeking indirectly to acquire jurisdiction. Evidently, if there was to be any cure or mitigation of this corroding cancer, some less sympathetic tribunal than the episcopal court was requisite, and the inquisition was eager to supply the want. Yet matters were allowed to drift for a quarter of a century longer. Possibly it may have been the
Lutheran alarm of 1558 that led Archbishop Guerrero of Granada to seek the remedy, and to call to the attention of the Holy See the frequency of the crime and the need of its more energetic repression. His appeal was heard, and Paul IV, in a brief of February 18, 1559, expressed his sorrow at learning that certain priests of Granada misled their penitence and abused the sacraments. wherefore he granted to the inquisitors of granada jurisdiction over the heresy implied in the crime and withdrew all exemptions of the religious orders what activity the granada tribunal manifested in the exercise of its new function is not recorded but the field thus thrown open was sufficiently inviting for valdes in fifteen sixty one to obtain from pious the fourth a brief granting to him and to his delegates throughout spain the same faculties
It required some ingenuity to bring the crime within the purview of the Inquisition, but it was alleged that no one whose faith was correct could thus abuse the sacraments of the Church of God. The point is not without importance, for it made the matter one of faith and not of morals, leading, as we shall see, to a notable limitation in the efficacy of the reform attempted. End of Section 17
