Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-rdgjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T14:05:13.855Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Learning from the Confessional in the Later Thirteenth Century: Contributions to Human Sexuality, Daily Life, and a Science of Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 August 2019

Irven M. Resnick
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Implementation of the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council dramatically expanded the practice of auricular confession among laypeople. Although the Council's canons also insist upon the seal of confession in order to keep the content of confessions secret, thirteenth-century authorities differ over the boundaries of the seal. As a result, the “secrets” of confession are often revealed in at least general terms in order to provide preachers with entertaining exempla for moral or doctrinal instruction. What is revealed from confession not only provides a window onto medieval private lives, but it also provided confessors with information about human activities—especially sexual practices—that might otherwise be unavailable to them. With such information, learned confessors not only encouraged moral reform but also defended claims of Aristotelian biology on human nature and sexuality.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 88 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 293 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2019 

Canon 21 of the Fourth Lateran Council, which required every adult member of the church to participate in the sacrament of penance and to confess annually during Holy Week, had an enormous impact on ecclesiastical and lay culture. Canon 21 did not originate the practice of auricular lay confession, but it did regularize it.Footnote 1 The practice was criticized or challenged, however, by sectarian Christians, heretics, and Jews.Footnote 2

In the following, I propose to examine the impact of this legislation. First, I shall examine how the revelation of sexual sins might affect both confessor and penitent and how the church sought to protect both the former and the latter from the use or abuse of this information by its insistence upon the inviolability of the seal of the confessional. Despite the punishments prescribed for clergy who violated the seal, I shall show as well that some churchmen interpreted the seal as a more porous boundary that allowed them to share general information learned in confession to produce moralizing exempla. In addition to the information derived from confession to produce the exempla, I shall examine briefly how from confession some churchmen also learned of the sexual behaviors of the laity to help inform their understanding of a science of nature.

I. The Implementation of the Fourth Lateran's Canons on Confession

The implementation of the Fourth Lateran's canons on confession was not simple nor did they spread across Europe with equal rapidity.Footnote 3 Although the Fourth Lateran required laypeople to confess before their parish priest, the dramatically expanded workload for local priests during a single week in the liturgical calendar made the effective fulfillment of the legislation nearly impossible, especially in larger communities. Even though canon 10 attempted to address this problem by commanding that in cathedrals and other churches, appropriate men should be ordained to serve the bishop as assistants and coadjutors for hearing confession and imposing penance,Footnote 4 Bishop Robert Grosseteste's complaint that in England certain priests wrongly delegated the task of hearing confession to their deacons suggests that local priests continued to feel burdened by the legislation.Footnote 5

The increased workload was one factor that contributed to the use of mendicant friars as confessors, despite the sometime opposition of secular clergy.Footnote 6 Grosseteste himself solicited Jordan of Saxony, master general of the Dominican Order, and Elias, minister general of the Franciscan Order, for assistance from their friars to “help in preaching God's word, hearing confessions, and imposing penances” because, he remarked, “there are no assistants I know of for these and other responsibilities so effective as your friars.”Footnote 7

In contrast to these mendicants, secular clergy were often woefully unprepared and untrained to hear confession. In the last quarter of the thirteenth century, Peter Quinel (d. 1291), Bishop of Exeter, still complained of an insufficient number of secular priests available to hear confession and lamented their ignorance. To address this state of affairs, he composed a brief summula for their benefit.Footnote 8 His summula was one of a number of summa confessorum and other instructional aids published to correct clerical ignorance or incompetence.Footnote 9 These typically included instruction on pastoral counsel and instruction on how to elicit a comprehensive list of sins from parishioners during confession (sometimes by proceeding according to the list of the Ten Commandments, the seven capital sins, or sins against the seven sacraments, or of sins assigned to each of the five senses).Footnote 10 These guides also included interrogatories, since the confessor had to ask the confessant specific questions based not only on sex, age, marital status and social rank, but also according to profession (whether secular or religious clergy) and economic roles.Footnote 11 Manuals on eliciting from the penitent a complete account of the circumstances of his or her sin sometimes provided the confessor with the following interrogatory rubric: Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando (who, what, where, through whom, why, how, and when).Footnote 12 Confessors also required detailed guidelines for the imposition of an appropriate penance.

Confession not only provided a forum in which the confessor learned details of the lives of members of the community, it also gave the church a vehicle through which to teach the articles of faith and the parameters of prohibited behavior and especially for instruction on required or prohibited sexual behavior which could not be addressed in public preaching without causing embarrassment or scandal.Footnote 13 Thus Hugh of St. Cher guides the confessor to inquire whether and how many times the penitent was guilty of the sins of fornication or adultery or whether the penitent was guilty of a sin “against nature.” The latter category included not only homosexual acts but also prohibited forms of sexual contact even between married partners, for example sexual intercourse during prohibited times or solely for pleasure and not for the purpose of procreation.Footnote 14 Humbert of Romans reminds the confessor to inquire of women, in particular, whether they have engaged in sorcery (sortilegiis), but also to inquire whether the penitent is guilty of a sin against nature—although he adds that the confessor should proceed cautiously in order not to give new ideas to those not already acquainted with such sins.Footnote 15 The anonymous Sciendum est autem sacerdotibus (Penitens accedens ad confessionem), that is, What Priests Ought to Know ([when] a penitent comes to confession), likely written in the 1220s or 1230s and therefore within one or two decades of the original legislation stemming from the Fourth Lateran Council, pays special attention to sexual crimes under the rubric luxuria—a rubric in which the sins of women figure prominently in confessors’ manuals—but especially cautions the confessor when inquiring into the sin against nature, sodomy.Footnote 16 Bishop Peter Quinel of Exeter likewise instructs the confessor to determine whether the penitent is guilty of magic (prestigia) or sorcery, fornication, adultery, incest, or sodomy, and he also warns the confessor not to provide information on sexual crimes that might lead the penitent into sins not previously performed.Footnote 17 Notwithstanding such caveats, as Pierre Payer remarked, “confessional manuals of the thirteenth century are disproportionately concerned with sexual sins;”Footnote 18 these sins became the “‘overriding preoccupation’ of the confessional literature of the thirteenth century.”Footnote 19

II. Clerical Misbehavior

The concern that the confessor's interrogation might lead the penitent inadvertently to new forms of sinful behavior—especially sexual behaviors—also extended to the confessors themselves. Thirteenth-century texts addressed some of the unforeseen consequences of the ecclesiastical legislation: for example, the punishment of priests who fell into sin with those who had come to confess to them. The Cistercian Caesarius of Heisterbach (d. ca. 1240) describes the fate of a certain priest to whom his abbot had assigned the role of confessor who, led astray by the devil, fell into a sin so grave with his confessant that they were unwilling to reveal it to anyone else.Footnote 20

Other texts also draw attention to the danger the confessor may face from the practice of auricular confession. In his vita of Thomas of Cantimpré (d. ca. 1272), Joannis Gilemans notes that after Thomas's ordination as a priest, he heard confessions for thirty years. Thomas began to fear for his own salvation, however, when he began to be aroused by the very things he had heard from confessants.Footnote 21 It was an especially common worry that priests would become aroused by revelations of sexual misconduct among their parishioners. The Dominican Vincent of Beauvais (d. ca. 1264) notes that the priest who experiences pleasure from a seminal emission while hearing confessions falls into a serious, possibly mortal sin.Footnote 22 The Franciscan Salimbene of Adam (d. ca. 1290) remarks that a friar, Humilis of Milan, heard the confession of a certain woman who described for him that after she had confessed to her priest that she had been raped, the priest was so aroused that he and two other priests gang-raped her behind the altar.Footnote 23 Since hearing her confession made a woman the priest's spiritual daughter, Raymond of Peñafort (d. 1275) assigns to clerics guilty of fornicating with female confessants twelve years penance, and demands the priest's removal.Footnote 24

Despite the threat of punishment, priests were often accused of pressuring parishioners—especially women—to engage in forbidden sexual contact with them rather than risk disclosure of the content of their confession.Footnote 25 These dangers were real and subjects of repeated ecclesiastical intervention. The possibility that the parish priest would disclose the content of confession not only threatened to undermine the aim of the ecclesiastical legislation, since parishioners were unlikely to confess when they feared that their sins would be made public, but the threat of disclosure also made laypeople—and especially prominent lay figures—subject to extortion from the clergy. In response, the church repeatedly emphasized (and not for the first time) the seal of the confessional: namely, the requirement that priests keep inviolate the secrets of confession.Footnote 26

III. The Seal of the Confessional

Concern for the seal of the confessional is prominent in the legislation of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). After the council imposed on laypeople the requirement of annual confession before the parish priest at Easter, canon 21 addressed the requirement of secrecy:

The priest shall be discerning and prudent, so that like a skilled doctor he may pour wine and oil over the wounds of the injured one. Let him carefully inquire about the circumstances of both the sinner and the sin . . . Let him take the utmost care, however, not to betray the sinner at all by word or sign or in any other way . . . . For if anyone presumes to reveal a sin disclosed to him in confession, we decree that he is not only to be deposed from his priestly office but also to be confined to a strict monastery to do perpetual penance.Footnote 27

Although this canon, according to Kurtscheid, “contains no essential innovation either concerning the Seal or the precept of annual confession,” emphasis upon the seal of the confessional reappears often in thirteenth century guides on hearing confession, as well as in scholastic commentaries on the Lombard's Sentences.Footnote 28 Pastoral writers consistently emphasized the need to avoid scandal that would result from revealing the secrets of confession, reflecting what Dyan Elliot describes as “a quickening interest in scandal” as a religious category.Footnote 29 Among them was Thomas of Chobham, who had studied at Paris and was sub-dean and penitentiary of Salisbury cathedral when around 1216 he composed a very popular Summa “Cum miserationes” (or Summa confessorum), extant in approximately two hundred manuscripts or manuscript fragments, in which Thomas stressed the importance of secrecy and the seal of confession (sigillum confessionis).Footnote 30 These concerns are reiterated in the anonymous Sciendum est autem sacerdotibus (Penitens accedens ad confessionem). This short treatise reveals some dependence on Thomas of Chobham's summa and was composed with an eye toward assisting the parish priest: it gives advice on how to encourage reluctant penitents to make confession and suggests to the priest questions with which to elicit a full confession. But the text also shows a special concern for guarding the secrecy of the confessional, cautions the confessor to avoid the scandal that will follow upon revealing the content of a confession, and directs the priest to avoid questions that may lead to scandal, since confessants may repeat his questions outside the confessional, with damaging results. Furthermore, the text urges special discretion when making inquiries into sexual sins, lest confessors give the penitent ideas for sins that had not previously been contemplated. It warns priests against assigning a penance for adultery, for example, that may allow the spouse to infer the nature of the sin that has been confessed, underscoring a need to safeguard the secrecy of the confession both in word and deed. The text also expounds on the punishment for priests violating the seal of confession:

Priests ought to know, moreover, that the seal of confession has to be so very secret that the priest can do nothing to reveal anything he heard in confession. … just as is written: “Let the offending tongue be cut off.” They who reveal the secret of confession are said to be offenders [delatores] from whom the tongue should be cut off, that is removed, not corporeally but spiritually, namely so that he be suspended forever [from the role of confessor] and so that he can never again have standing as a legitimate person, neither in testimony nor in judgment, nor be able to read or chant the psalms in church.Footnote 31

This need to preserve the secrecy of confession encountered several practical difficulties. One difficulty stemmed from the fact that despite the concern for secrecy, in the medieval church, the practice of confession itself was quite public. The confessional box, which accords both priest and confessant privacy, was not introduced until the sixteenth century. The principal medieval effort to ensure privacy consisted of instruction that the confessor should keep his face averted from the confessant, in order to avoid embarrassment for the latter. Although Humbert of Romans allows that a confessor may hear a magnate's confession in a more private setting if he believes that otherwise the penitent would suffer embarrassment, he explicitly enjoins that confessors should hear the confessions of women only in public spaces and in view of others.Footnote 32 Precisely because confession was performed in a public space, there always remained the disturbing possibility that the content of the confession might be overheard by another.

A concern that the secrets of confession might provide the local priest with inordinate power or social control over his parishioners, and especially his female parishioners, is a frequent theme, perhaps because, as Peter Biller has noted, evidence from the thirteenth century indicates that women attended church and confessed more frequently than did men.Footnote 33 Not only did gender distinctions—the male priest hearing the female confessant—pose a special problem for the administration of the sacrament, but a more scrupulous concern among women for confession likely increased substantially their contact with priests and increased the risk of inappropriate behavior or scandalous gossip. In response to such concerns, Humbert of Romans, master general of the Dominican Order from 1254–1263, cautions that some women—especially those called Beguines—want to confess too frequently and encourages mendicant confessors to temper this practice.Footnote 34 Since confession should precede reception of the Eucharist, Albert the Great extends this same caution to priests who offer the Eucharist daily to women, adding that “those who communicate women every day . . . should be sharply reprimanded, since they render the sacrament base by excessive use, or rather when the desire is thought to be caused by the frivolity of women rather than from their devotion.”Footnote 35

The seal of confession remained, moreover, an asymmetrical device: it required the priest to keep the confessant's secrets, but the penitent is not permitted to keep sins secret from the priest, thereby emphasizing the subordinate and dependent nature of the laity. Moreover, should the priest discover or opine that the confessant had fallen into heretical beliefs or practices, the confessant was no longer protected by the seal of the confessional.Footnote 36 Indeed, the requirement for annual confession promoted by the Fourth Lateran Council coincided with intensifying efforts within the church to identify and to extirpate heresy, and it is not entirely accidental that Dominicans, who would become important confessors in the medieval church, were also charged with identifying heretics through the Inquisition.

The rather public nature of confession in the medieval church was not the only obstacle to secrecy. That the confessor typically heard the layperson's confession in the vernacular presented another difficulty and opportunity for disclosure. Some ecclesiastics, for example Robert Grosseteste, enjoined laypeople both to confess and to recite the confessional formula in the vernacular, while others permitted laypeople to confess in either Latin or the vernacular.Footnote 37 When the confessor was himself not fully fluent in the local vernacular, a translator or interpreter was employed. Thus, Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240) recounts that when he was in Tripoli during the Fifth Crusade, he was compelled to use an interpreter both when he preached and when he heard confession, owing to the language barrier.Footnote 38 The need for an interpreter added another layer of complexity to the effort to preserve the seal of confession, and theologians were compelled to consider the obligation to secrecy for not only the priest but also for the interpreter. The supplement to the third part of Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologiae, which was largely reconstructed from Thomas's earlier commentary on the Lombard's Sentences, recognizes a serious difficulty: namely, the translator or interpreter is not the priest hearing confession and therefore, strictly speaking, is not bound as is the priest by the seal of the confession; nonetheless, the interpreter “is bound to secrecy, though, properly speaking, he is not bound by the seal of confession.”Footnote 39 It remains a sacrilege to reveal the content of confession, whether in word, in deed, or by a gesture.Footnote 40

St. Bonaventure likewise recalled that the essential pastoral purpose of the seal is to encourage the faithful to confess their sins; for this reason the priest must avoid the scandal that would result were he to reveal what he had learned in the performance of the sacrament. Thus “the seal of confession has been so very strictly instituted on account of scandal, and lest wicked priests could contrive to malign [penitents] and, for this reason, the faithful draw back from confession.”Footnote 41 In one of his sermons, Jacques de Vitry condemned certain preachers (Dominicans?), who presented themselves as religious men but

came to those parts in which religion flourished more than in other regions, especially among nuns and other virgins living together in diverse groups, and began to preach and hear confessions. Some of the women mentioned, moreover, revealed to them under the seal of confession, just as if to religious men, their weaknesses and temptations and the fall of [their] frail nature, so as to be aided especially by their prayers. These [preachers] however . . . preached to various communities of clerics and laypeople that the already mentioned congregations of holy virgins were brothels rather than religious communities, and by applying the defects of a few to all . . . they scandalized many.Footnote 42

The avoidance of public scandal, however, is not the only justification for the secrecy enjoined on the confessor. The supplement to Aquinas's Summa theologiae insists that since the obligation of sacramental confession is established by divine law, the priest is bound to preserve the seal of confession because he hears confession not as man, but standing in for God.Footnote 43 Moreover:

There are two reasons for which the priest is bound to keep a sin secret: first and chiefly, because this very secrecy is essential to the sacrament, in so far as the priest knows that sin, as it is known to God, whose place he holds in confession: secondly, in order to avoid scandal.Footnote 44

Should one's own priest, or proprius sacerdos, fail to preserve the seal of secrecy, he is subject to punishment, as indicated by the Fourth Lateran Council.Footnote 45 The problem of indiscrete or gossiping priests surely antedates the Fourth Lateran, since Alan of Lille (d. ca. 1202) had earlier warned confessants to avoid priests who are wont to reveal the sins made known in confession, and to seek out another.Footnote 46 The canonist Hostiensis (d. 1271) condemns priests who gossip or joke about the secrets that they have learned in confession, even if only in a very general way.Footnote 47 These concerns suggest that violations of the seal of confession were not uncommon.Footnote 48 Over time, the penalties for priests who disclosed what they learned in confession seem to expand; perhaps as a reflection of the difficulty of enforcing or interpreting the ban, Robert de Sorbon's (d. 1274) De consciencia remarks that should the priest violate the seal, he should be deprived of his office and benefice and buried alive, or at least imprisoned for life!Footnote 49 Moreover, a concern for the integrity of the seal will sometimes be invoked as a justification for making confession to someone other than the parish priest. The Fourth Lateran Council's canon 21 had already allowed that, “If any persons wish, for good reasons, to confess their sins to another priest let them first ask and obtain the permission of their own priest; for otherwise the other priest will not have the power to absolve or to bind them.”Footnote 50 St. Bonaventure identified the parish priest's failure to preserve the seal as one of the good reasons the Fourth Lateran allowed for confessing to another priest, and remarks: “If anyone should reveal [the content of] confessions, he will be unworthy of sacerdotal rank, and reasonably confession could be made to another and that one avoided . . . ”Footnote 51 Bonaventure's observation allows for the possibility of confessing to a mendicant rather than the parish priest; this was especially a concern as mendicants sought to defend their increasingly important role as confessors.

Albert the Great (d. 1280) explores some of the practical concerns that might arise, moreover, for one who is reluctant to confess to the parish priest. For example, he notes that some assert that the parish priest's ignorance may provide a justification for confessing to another priest, even without seeking permission to do so. In his Commentary on the Sentences, employing leprosy as a metaphor for sin, Albert notes:

Let us propose that his own priest does not know how to distinguish between leprosy and non-leprosy. Since the Lord says at Luke 6.39: “Can the blind lead the blind? do they not both fall into the ditch?” it seems that one will not be bound to confess to him even should he command it. If perhaps one should say that he ought to seek and obtain permission [from him to confess to another]. Contra: Let us propose that he seeks it and cannot obtain it, as often happens; then either he should obey his own priest, or not; if he obeys, he will be in danger and at risk of being cast down, because he is blind; if he does not obey, the premise will be upheld.Footnote 52

Furthermore, Albert remarks, although one may appeal to the parish priest's superiors for permission to confess to another, the distance or expense involved may make this impractical.Footnote 53 Finally, other considerations may appear to justify a decision not to seek this permission from the parish priest, which include the fear that the priest will use confession to press women into sinful relationships. In his De muliere forti, Albert complains that those priests “are not disciples of Christ if when hearing confessions they do not correct the poison of avarice and, what is even more shameful, the poison of lust [luxuria], but even pollute young women in confession, and are polluted by them.”Footnote 54 Another justification for seeking another confessor is the perception that the priest will not guard the seal of the confession:

More, if it is proposed that one's own priest is malicious, just as many are, and will strive in confession to tempt one into consent to sin, just as many priests do, threatening to betray the confession of women unless they give consent to them, reaching out to touch them unchastely in the secret of the confession, and even superiors, namely archbishops and bishops, do likewise, as I know with certainty that many do in several places; it seems that in such cases it is dangerous to seek a dispensation [to allow one to confess to one other than the parish priest] because they will refuse it, and then sin more; therefore it seems that in such a case one ought not obey one's own prelate when it comes to making confession.Footnote 55

Albert's acknowledgement that women in particular may have very good reason to seek out another confessor, but that they may endanger themselves even more by seeking a dispensation from the priest's superior, provides interesting insight into the dilemma the female confessant might face and may have contributed to Albert's observation that a lay man or lay woman can hear confession “in time of necessity”Footnote 56—a determination that Peter Lombard also endorsed when a priest is unavailable.Footnote 57

At the same time, theologians were concerned that granting permission to confess to one other than the proprius sacerdos would lead to “priest shopping”: that is, a practice by which the penitent might seek out a more sympathetic or lenient priest. Robert de Sorbon complains of penitents who seek out priests of bad reputation for hearing their confession—for example, one who, because he had slept with a woman, sought out a priest who kept a mistress or one who, because he was guilty of drunkenness, sought out a confessor who frequented taverns.Footnote 58 Therefore, the church sought to enforce the principle that one could turn to another confessor only with proper permission.

William of Auvergne's (d. 1249) De sacramentis also allows that a woman who feels threatened by her local priest may, with the permission of the bishop, find a confessor elsewhere.Footnote 59 It is revealing, however, that William's text also allows a local priest to direct a female parishioner to another confessor when he feels threatened by her. Although the practice of confession could provide a cunning priest with leverage or a measure of control over his confessants, the opposite could also be true: because priests or confessors sometimes sought to hear confessions from women under conditions that ensured greater privacy and confidentiality, these very conditions could generate accusations of misconduct—as when in 1412 in Salisbury, England, five male parishioners charged their vicar, Alexander Champion, of soliciting wives and servant girls during confession for the sins of fornication and adultery.Footnote 60 For this reason too the Speculum sacerdotale rebuked priests who invited penitents to confess in the privacy of their homes.Footnote 61

IV. “Exceptions” and uses for Secrets learned in Confession

Despite the secrecy enjoined by the seal of confession, the parameters of secrecy were unclear. Could one discuss what had been revealed in confession in general terms, without disclosing the identity of the confessant? On the one hand, Humbert of Romans strictly cautions the confessor not to reveal the secret of confession either directly or indirectly, in general or in specific detail, concerning anything he had learned. To clarify the boundaries of the seal of confession, Humbert insists that one must take care not even to say in a sermon or some other talk: “I heard a case of this sort in confession; because the simple believe that this will constitute a revelation [of the secret]. Nor should one ever say, ‘in that abbey or chapter or town in which I heard confessions, there are many sins, or the like.’”Footnote 62 On the other hand, the Cistercian Caesarius of Heisterbach replied to an inquiry concerning what one may reveal from confession that “in many cases one can reveal the sins of those who confess to him, so long as their names are not revealed.”Footnote 63 For example, he reports that he had heard from another monk, who had himself learned first-hand from a Cistercian abbot, the story of a certain noble woman who had confessed to the abbot that she burned with love for him.Footnote 64 Caesarius clearly interpreted the seal of confession less strictly, especially when the details of confession were kept “in house,” as it were.

Jacques de Vitry also reveals what he learned in confession on occasion, at least in general terms. After becoming Bishop of Acre in 1216, he remarks that a person confessed to him that he raised certain animals in his house from whose dung he extracted a poison with which to kill an enemy at will.Footnote 65 Thomas of Cantimpré, who knew Jacques de Vitry and composed a vita of the well-known preacher, heard confessions for decades, first as an Augustinian canon and then later as a Dominican, and he too was accustomed to discuss in at least general terms what he learned in confession. Alexander Murray has identified at least ten instances in Thomas's Bonum universale de apibus (completed ca. 1260) in which the author reveals information he had heard in confession. These cases often adopt the form, “I have heard very many women in confession who have,” or “I have learned in confession that many men [have].” Of the three hundred fifty-two exempla recorded in this work, Murray reckons that 41% concern laypeople and provide, thereby, an important window on daily life.Footnote 66 Not surprisingly, the information Thomas gleans from confession very often had to do with sexual matters. He remarks, for example, that during the many years he was accustomed to hear confession in Cambrai, he heard from a certain woman that she frequently had intercourse with an incubus.Footnote 67 Or, in another instance, he remarks that the venerable Boniface, formerly bishop of Lausanne who was then the rector in theology at Paris, reported to him and many others that he had heard in confession from a certain cleric that he was accustomed to abuse himself wickedly with illicit touching.Footnote 68 This report provides Thomas the opportunity to explain that in his book On Animals, Aristotle says that no animal but man ejaculates outside the female's womb (that is, outside of heterosexual intercourse); therefore, by doing so he sins against nature.Footnote 69 Thomas also narrates an exemplum of his school companion who fell into just such a sin against nature, and died while experiencing a terrible vision of demons dragging his soul to hell.Footnote 70

Despite concerns for the seal of confession, information concerning parish indiscretions gleaned from confession served the needs of preachers, whose audiences could be entertained and more easily instructed by anecdotes culled from tradition, hearsay, or from one's own experience. Thus was born the exemplum. From these tales important details of medieval daily life enter the historical record, and through them the historian may virtually eavesdrop on private confessions.Footnote 71

Notwithstanding ecclesiastical prohibitions that could be interpreted strictly to forbid this, it is clear from the expanding exempla literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that not only secular but also religious clergy often did reveal in a more or less general way what they had learned in confession and used this material in sermons and moralizing tales to encourage the reformation of the lay community. From these exempla one can learn more about medieval popular piety and religion. For example, the thirteenth-century Dominican Stephen of Bourbon (d. 1261) remarks that when he preached in Lyons, he learned in confession that many women there carried their infirm or dying children to the grave of Saint Guinefort and petitioned him to protect their children. Upon further inquiry, Stephen determined that Guinefort was in fact a dog—a greyhound—who had been killed when protecting an infant, and thereafter Stephen condemned the women for the superstitious rites they performed.Footnote 72

Just as Stephen of Bourbon used material learned in confession to condemn certain “superstitious” practices among women, so other later thirteenth-century sources reveal material from confession in order to advance certain political aims. The Dominican Rudolph of Schlettstadt reported in his Historiae that during the Rintfleish persecution of the Jews in Franconia 1298, Jews appealed to Albrecht I of Hapsburg for aid. Albert dispatched a representative “with royal power and authority to defend the Jews” (qui Judeos regia potencia et viribus defensaret), but his representative suffered a severe injury from a fall as he approached Würzburg. A Dominican prior there, Brother Albert, promised that if the emperor's representative would confess his sins he would be healed. The injured man confessed that he had been appointed Defender of the Jews and sent to protect them, contrary to his own conscience and to the teachings of Christian faith. After resigning his office, as Brother Albert had urged him to do, Albert gave him absolution and the man was miraculously healed.Footnote 73

V. Confession and the New Science of Nature

Information obtained from confessions not only provided cover in political conflicts like the one in Franconia, but preachers also found in confession entertaining materials for moral exhortation. As already noted, moreover, Thomas of Cantimpré appealed to what he had learned from confession to confirm Aristotle's claim that no animal but man ejaculates outside the female's womb in order to establish that only heterosexual activity is consonant with nature. From confessions and from confessors’ manuals, moreover, medieval clergy also learned the realia of daily life and adapted church teaching as a result. Peter Biller has concluded, for example, that evidence from manuals composed about 1300 suggests that confessors encountered with greater frequency the reality that married laypeople engaged in contraceptive practices: for example, coitus interruptus, avoiding intercourse at certain times of the month, and certain post coital movements thought to prevent conception.Footnote 74 In the early thirteenth century Thomas of Chobham had remarked in his Summa confessorum that “doctors say that [even] with light work the foetus is cast out of the womb . . . One reads about a certain woman who wanted to cast out her partus. She gave three jumps from a bench to the ground,” Thomas noted, “and on the third jump the fetus fell out.”Footnote 75 Albert the Great remarks upon such practices and others in his commentary on Aristotle's De animalibus and notes that after intercourse pregnancy may be avoided “if the woman immediately rises and moves about or leaps.”Footnote 76 Albert also remarked on additional aids to contraception, such that “If, after her period, a woman drinks hare rennet for three straight days, some people say that it prevents conception,” or “If two mule testicles are . . . hung on a woman, she will not conceive.”Footnote 77 Even though Albert had sources other than confession for his information—for example he may have learned of the efficacy of jumping about after coition to prevent pregnancy from Avicenna's Canon of Medicine Footnote 78—confessors also learned in confession about practices having to do with human sexuality that might lie outside their personal experience and sometimes turned to consider the basis for these practices in natural philosophy. This should not come as a complete surprise, since confession and natural philosophy were clearly linked: the Fourth Lateran Council's canon 21 urged confessors, who are physicians of the soul, to act as skilled doctors, while canon 22 enjoined physicians to direct their patients to confessors prior to treating their physical symptoms.Footnote 79 Not only was confession a prerequisite for treating the body's health but, as Payer remarked, “there is a long tradition of comparing confession to medicine,”Footnote 80 and confessors themselves were often led to natural philosophy by texts on penance or confession that exhorted them to take into account the penitent's humoral complexion—that is, medical condition—before assigning penance.Footnote 81 Albert the Great compares the priest-confessor's method to a medical practitioner's and instructs priests that, when hearing confession, like a physician they should not inquire after all of the accidents of an illness but only its causes.Footnote 82 Surgeons, conversely, were sometimes advised to establish a patient's medical history by using interrogatories modelled after those employed by confessors, as is evident, for example, in Guy de Chauliac's (d. ca. 1367) Cyrurgie. Footnote 83 Confession and natural philosophy seem to have informed one another.

In many ways, then, revelations from the confessional not only informed the moral exhortations of preachers, but also contributed to a body of scientific or quasi-scientific dialogue and empirical knowledge. This is especially evident in Albert the Great's appeal to “what he heard in confession” to support certain conclusions he had reached regarding female sexuality. Albert, who would have heard confession not only as a well-travelled Dominican but also as Bishop of Regensburg, was especially dependent upon “what he heard in confession” to explore the dimensions of female sexual behavior, since he was himself governed by rules of conduct that strictly limited his contact with women in all contexts outside the confessional. One positive unintended consequence of the Fourth Lateran Council's legislation that required annual confession from the lay community was a contribution to an expanding body of empirical knowledge that a figure like Albert the Great obtained from hearing confession, and not only from his own experience.

In very general terms, Albert privileges not only his own experience but also information he received in reports from “experts.” In his massive paraphrastic commentary on Aristotle's De animalibus, Albert often provides evidence for a scientific conclusion based on his own experience or the experience of contemporary experts, even questioning the conclusions of traditional authorities. For example, contradicting those who held that female fish follow the males and ingest the male's semen in order to produce fertilized eggs, Albert insists that “while diligently observing and making inquiries of the oldest fishermen of the sea and rivers, I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears that during mating time fish rub their bellies together and spread their eggs and milt alike at contact.”Footnote 84 Similarly, he provides other reports of what he has heard from experti: for example, that the peregrine falcon fashions its nest in areas that are unseen and virtually inaccessible, according to expert falconers;Footnote 85 or that, contrary to the view of many who held that eels generate spontaneously from mud or filth, he had heard “from people worthy of belief” that eels had been caught in Germany that, once cut open, revealed a large number of young inside.Footnote 86

When his personal experience was lacking, then, Albert was quite willing to cite contemporary testimony that he deemed credible. He follows the same procedure when he obtains credible information from confession. In his Quaestiones super de animalibus—a series of disputed questions on Aristotle's De animalibus conducted in Cologne in 1258 and preserved in the report of Conrad of Austria from about the year 1260—Albert provides the following explanation for sexual arousal in the human female:

it is well known that when a woman is stroked on her breasts and belly, this arouses her then for intercourse and, although she may hide the fact, she burns then like fire. And this happens for this reason, that her testicles located in the womb hang down on certain nerves and cotyledons coming from the breasts and the belly.Footnote 87 Thus, when the breasts are touched the sperm is driven out of them and they pour it out into the womb. This effusion into the womb arouses a soporific warmth in her, just like water cascading over limestone. For this reason, women particularly desire intercourse then. Therefore at that time, because of the vehemence of the desire, they secretly urinateFootnote 88 and emit sperm and sometimes cleanse themselves. Therefore crafty suitors, as I heard in confessions in Cologne, tempt women with this kind of trick and touch.Footnote 89

It may be instructive that in this example Albert records the testimony of “crafty suitors” rather than women themselves: although in other places Albert credits the experience or testimony of midwives, in his Quaestiones super de animalibus he reveals a misogyny that seems to render the testimony of women generally unreliable.Footnote 90

Pseudo-Albertus Magnus provides another instance in which information having to do with sexual relations is obtained from confession. In his De secretis mulierum, the author remarks: “During confession one of my comrades asked me why, when he slept with his beloved young girl, he found his abdomen covered with blood up to the umbilicus after the sex act was finished. He did not know the cause of this.”Footnote 91 The query presented to the author empirical information that provided an opportunity to discuss the purposes of menstruation, and to defend as well the position that the bloody flux his companion experienced was in reality not menses at all but the woman's semen, entering, thereby the medieval debate on female seed that posed Aristotle on the one side, and Galen and Avicenna on the other.Footnote 92

VI. Conclusion

Although confessors provided moral and doctrinal guidance to laypeople through the practice of confession and used confession to instruct them in the ordinances of the church, it remains equally true that confessors did not only teach their confessants; they also learned a great deal from them. This was especially true from encounters with women in the confessional. On the one hand, confessors learned the damaging and intimate secrets of members of their community, secrets that might enable malicious clergy to extort their parishioners and threaten them with scandal. Such fears underscored the importance of guarding strictly the seal of the confessional, and confessors were forbidden to reveal even in general terms that which was learned in confession. On the other hand, from their penitents confessors obtained not only stories or exempla that became vehicles for their moral exhortations but also received instruction in matters—especially sexual behaviors—that fell outside their own experience but contributed to a growing body of medieval scientific discovery. In both instances, many confessors seemed to feel that it was permissible to reveal in some measure to one another (and to other members of the church) what had been learned in confession. As a result, despite a threat of severe punishment for violating the seal of the confessional, confession opened a doorway to a world that could not be closed and contributed to an expanding understanding of human behavior that some—especially mendicant—confessors felt compelled to share.

References

1 For evidence of lay confession before 1215, see, for example, Murray, Alexander, “Confession before 1215,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, 3 (1993): 51–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; repr. in Murray, , Conscience and Authority in the Medieval Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 17–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bachrach, David, “Lay Confession to Priests in light of Wartime Practice (1097–1180),” Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 102, vol. 1 (2007): 76–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 For medieval Jewish polemical attacks on the Christian practice of confession, see The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon vetus, ed. David Berger (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America), 233, (par. 236); Chazan, Robert, Fashioning Jewish Identity in Medieval Western Christendom (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 308–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, Hames, Harvey J.. “Urinating on the Cross. Christianity as seen in the Sefer Yoseph Ha-Mekaneh (ca. 1260) and in Light of Paris 1240,” in Ritus Infidelium. Miradas interconfesionales sobre las prácticas religiosas en la Edad Media, eds. Gásquez, José Martínez and Tolan, John Victor, Collection de la Casa de Velázquez 138 (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2013), 209–220Google Scholar, esp. 211–212. In the thirteenth century, Jacques de Vitry reports that in the city of Acre. he encountered Jacobite Christians who would confess their sins to God alone and not to a priest. See Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, ed. R.B.C. Huygens (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 83. The fourteenth-century Book of John Mandeville records that in the Holy Land, Christians, Jacobite and others “say that confession must be made to God alone and not to man.” The Book of John Mandeville with Related Texts, ed. and trans. Higgins, Ian Macleod (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2011), 73Google Scholar.

Medieval heretics also departed from the practice of auricular confession of the laity. The Cathars, for example, allowed for a public confession of the sins of the community but no individual confession of particular sins. See Biller, Peter, “Confession in the Middle Ages: Introduction,” in Handling Sin in the Middle Ages, ed. Minnis, A.J. and Biller, Peter, (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1998), 1–33Google Scholar, esp. 18–23. Waldensians, contrariwise, were criticized for hearing individual confessions even though they lacked ordination. See Audisio, Gabriel, The Waldensian Dissent: Persecution and Survival c. 1170–c. 1570, trans. Davison, Claire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 17–18, 50–52, 94–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 For an argument that the canons on confession entered the Iberian peninsula more slowly, see Mackay, Angus and McKendrick, Geraldine, “Confession in the Cántigas de Santa María,” Reading Medieval Studies 5 (1979): 71–88Google Scholar.

4 Alberigo, J. et al. , eds. Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta (Rome: Herder, 1973), 239–240Google Scholar.

5 The Letters of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, 52, 29, trans. with introduction and annotation by F.A.C. Mantello and Joseph Goering (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 188.

6 For example, a letter of Bishop Robert Grosseteste written ca. 1243–1244 reprimands secular clergy of the diocese of Lincoln “who are not only loath to listen to the sermons of friars of both orders, but also maliciously prevent, as they are able to do, the people from hearing them preach or confessing to them.” The Letters of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, 335.

7 Ibid., 160; 161. These letters date from 1236–1237.

8 Quinel, Peter, Bishop of Exeter, Summula sinodi Exoniensis Diocesis, in Councils and Synods, with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, ed. Powicke, F.M. and Cheney, R.C. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 2:1061–1062Google Scholar. For his sources, see especially Goering, Joseph and Taylor, Daniel S., “The Summulae of Bishops Walter de Cantilupe (1240) and Peter Quinel (1287),” Speculum 67, vol. 3 (1992): 576–594CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As Payer later notes, a tract written in 1240 by Bishop Walter of Cantilupe was “re-issued” in 1287 as the Summula attributed to Peter Quinel. See Payer, Pierre J., Sex and the New Medieval Literature of Confession, 1150–1300 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2009), 30Google Scholar.

9 For these works, see especially Boyle, Leonard, “Summae confessorum,” in Les genres littéraires dans les sources théologiques et philosophiques médiévales, Définition, critique et exploitation (Louvain-la-Neuve: Université catholique de Louvain, 1982): 227–237Google Scholar; and Michaud-Quantin, Pierre, Sommes de casuistique et manuels de confession au Moyen Âge (XII–XVI siècles), Analecta Mediaevalia Namurcensia 13 (Louvain: Éditions Nauwelaerts, 1962)Google Scholar.

10 For pastoral counsel and confession, see Murray, Alexander, “Counselling in Medieval Confession,” in Handling Sin in the Middle Ages, ed. Minnis, A.J. and Biller, Peter (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1998), 63–77Google Scholar; repr. in Murray, Conscience and Authority in the Medieval Church, 87–104; for an interrogatory organized according to the Ten Commandments, see Peter Quinel, Summula sinodi Exoniensis Diocesis, 1062–1064. Cf. the text of Hugh of St. Cher, in Michaud-Quantin, Pierre, “Deux formulaires pour la confession du milieu du XIIIè siècle,” Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale 31 (1964): 52–57Google Scholar; and Ps. Thomas Aquinas, “Ad habendum salutiferae confessionis ordinem,” Ibid., 60–62; also, cf. Diekstra, F.N.M., “Robert de Sorbon's Cum repetes (de modo audiendi confessions et interrogandi),” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 66, vol. 1 (1999): 79–153CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Cf. Haren, Michael, “Confession, Social Ethics and Social Discipline in the Memoriale presbiterorum,” in Handling Sin in the Middle Ages, ed. Minnis, A.J. and Biller, Peter, (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1998), 109–22Google Scholar; and Haren, , “The Interrogatories for Officials, Lawyers and Secular Estates of the Memoriale presbiterorum,” in Handling Sin in the Middle Ages, ed. Minnis, A.J. and Biller, Peter (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1998), 122–163Google Scholar.

12 This rubric can be found already in Robert Pullen's twelfth-century Sententiarum 6, chap. 52 (PL 186: 901D). Also cf. Rider, Catherine, “Sciendum est autem sacerdotibus (Penitens accedens ad confessionem): A short Thirteenth-Century Treatise on Hearing Confessions,” Mediaeval Studies 73 (2011): 147–182 (173)Google Scholar; Peter Quinel, Bishop of Exeter, Summula sinodi Exoniensis Diocesis 20, 1069.

13 For confession as a “classroom” for instruction see Wood, Marjorie Curry and Copeland, Rita, “Classroom and Confession,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. Wallace, David (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 376–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 For information on times when sexual relations between married partners was forbidden under the church calendar, see esp. Burchard of Worms, Corrector sive Medicus 155, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: Apud Garniere Fratres, 1844–1855; 1862–1864), 140: 1013B–C (hereafter abbreviated as PL); for sex not directed toward procreation, see Michaud-Quantin, Pierre, “Deux formulaires pour la confession du milieu du XIIIè siècle,” Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale 31 (1964): 55–56Google Scholar. For an overview of the vice or sin against nature, see also Pierre J. Payer, Sex and the New Medieval Literature of Confession, 126–149.

15 Humbert of Romans, Instructiones de officiis Ordinis, chap. 46.2, in Opera, ed. J.J. Berthier (Rome: Marietti, 1956), 2:363. On the unequal role accorded to women in confession, see Elliott, Dyan, “Women and Confession: From Empowerment to Pathology,” in Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 31–51Google Scholar.

16 See Murray, Jacqueline, “Gendered Souls in Sexed Bodies: The Male Construction of Female Sexuality in Some Medieval Confessors’ Manuals,” in Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages, eds. Biller, Peter and Minnis, A.J. (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 1998): 79–93Google Scholar; see also Rider, Catherine, “Sciendum est autem sacerdotibus (Penitens accedens ad confessionem): A short Thirteenth-Century Treatise on Hearing Confessions,” Mediaeval Studies 73 (2011): 147–182 (173)Google Scholar; for this text see Rider, Catherine, “Lay Religion and Pastoral Care in Thirteenth-Century England: the Evidence of a Group of Short Confession Manuals,” Journal of Medieval History 36, vol 4 (2010): 327–340CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In this paper, Rider studied a group of shorter thirteenth-century English manuals to determine both what one can learn about the level of religious knowledge and practice among the laity, and the aim of confessors to instruct the laity with respect to correct religious practice and understanding.

17 Summa sinodi Exoniensis Diocesis 19, 1068–1069; Ibid. 26, 1070–1071.

18 Payer, Pierre J., “Sex and Confession in the Thirteenth Century,” in Sex and the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays, ed. Salisbury, Joyce E. (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1991), 126–144Google Scholar, 129.

19 Pierre J. Payer, Sex and the New Medieval Literature of Confession, 4.

20 Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum dist. 3, chap. 24, ed. Strange, Joseph (Cologne: J.M. Heberle, 1851), 1:141Google Scholar.

21 Thomas of Cantimpré, Bonum universale de apibus, ed. Colvenerius, George (Douai: Baltazar Bellerus, 1627), 1:16–17Google Scholar.

22 Speculum naturale, lib. 31, 21, 2308.

23 de Adam da Parma, Salimbene, Chronica (fol. MS 382B), ed. Scalia, G., Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998–1999), 125:594Google Scholar (hereafter, CC CM).

24 Summa de poenitentia, lib. 3, tit. 34, 44, ed. Xaverio Ochoa and Aloisio Diez, Universa Bibliotheca Iuris (Rome: Commentarium pro religiosis, 1975), 1/B: 844–845.

25 For Jean Gerson's concern over this matter, see the Elliott, Dyan's discussion in Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, & Demonology in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 23–25Google Scholar.

26 Henry Charles Lea argues that it is in the 11th C. that we see the first clear prescription of a penalty for revealing a confession: Burchard of Worm's Corrector (chapter 244) prescribes that a priest who reveals a confession should be deposed and sent on pilgrimage. In the next century, Gratian adds that the priest who reveals the confession should be deposed. See Lea, 's History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church (Philadelphia: Lea Brothers & Co., 1896), 1:418–419Google Scholar.

27 Canon 21, De confessione facienda et non revelanda a sacerdote et saltem in pascha communicando, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner, vol. 1: Nicaea I to Lateran V (London: Sheed & Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 245.

28 Kurtscheid, Bertrand, A History of the Seal of Confession, trans. Marks, F.A., ed. Preuss, Arthur (London: B. Herder Book Co., 1927), 115Google Scholar.

29 Dyan Elliott, Fallen Bodies, 76.

30 Chobham, Thomas of, Summa Confessorum art. 6, dist. 1, q. 5a, ed. Broomfield, F., Analecta mediaevalia Namurcensia 25 (Louvain: Éditions Nauwelaerts, 1968), 257Google Scholar.

31 Rider, Catherine, “Sciendum est autem sacerdotibus (Penitens accedens ad confessionem): A short Thirteenth-Century Treatise on Hearing Confessions,” Mediaeval Studies 73 (2011): 165Google Scholar. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.

32 Humbert of Romans, Instructiones de officiis Ordinis, chap. 45.11, in Opera, ed. Berthier, J.J. (Rome: Marietti, 1956), 2:368Google Scholar.

33 For discussion of canon 21 as a mechanism by which the church could establish social power or control over the behavior of the lay population, see especially Tentler, Thomas B.. “The ‘Summa’ for Confessors as an Instrument of Social Control,” in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, ed. Trinkaus, Charles and Oberman, Heiko A. (Leiden: 1974): 103–126Google Scholar. For criticism of this thesis, see Boyle, Leonard, “The ‘Summa’ for Confessors as a Genre, and Its Religious Intent,” in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, ed. Trinkaus, Charles and Oberman, Heiko A. (Leiden: Brill, 1974): 126–137Google Scholar. For evidence that women confessed more frequently, see Biller, Peter, “Confession in the Middle Ages: Introduction,” in Handling Sin in the Middle Ages, ed. Minnis, A.J. and Biller, Peter, (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1998), 1–34Google Scholar, 13–14.

34 Humbert of Romans, Instructiones de officiis Ordinis, chap. 45.11, 368.

35 De corpore domini dist.6, tract.4, chap. 3, in B. Alberti Magni Ratisbonensis episcopi, ordinis Prædicatorum, Opera omnia, ed. A. Borgnet (Paris: Vivès, 1899), 432b. Hereafter, those of Albert's works edited by Borgnet refer to this edition. For translation, see Albert the Great On the Body of the Lord, trans. Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, The Fathers of the Church, Mediaeval Continuation 17 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2017), 439.

36 Raymund of Peñafort, Summa de poenitentia 3, tit. 34, par. 4, ed. Ochoa, Xaverio and Diez, Aloisio, Universa Bibliotheca Iuris (Rome: Commentarium pro religiosis, 1975), 1/B:803Google Scholar.

37 See Mantello, F.A.C., “Notus in Judea Deus: Robert Grosseteste's Confessional Formula in Lambeth Palace MS 499.” Viator 18 (1987): 253–273Google Scholar; for Grosseteste's instructions to penitents to confess in their native tongue, see 257 and 272; Humbert of Romans, Instructiones de officiis Ordinis, chap. 45.9, in Opera, ed. J.J. Berthier (Rome: Marietti, 1956), 2:367.

38 Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, ed. R.B.C. Huygens (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 93.

39 Summa Theologiae, III, suppl., q. 11, art. 3, resp.. Also see Summa Theologiae, III, suppl., q. 11, art. 4, ad 4; cf. In IV Sententiarum. dist. 21, q. 3, art. 1, quaest. 3, arg. 1 (Turnout: Brepols, 2010). The application of the “seal” expanded during the later Middle Ages. The Dominican St. Antoninus of Florence (d. 1459) adds that not only is the translator bound to preserve the seal, but also anyone who should hear the content of a confession inadvertently or while hidden (in the church). See his Summa Theologica, tit. 17, chap. 22 (Verona: 1740; repr., Graz: Akademische Druck-U. Verlangsanstalt, 1959), 3:990, §2.

40 Aquinas, Thomas, Quaestiones quodlibetales 12, q. 11.2 (Rome: Marietti, 1949), 230Google Scholar.

41 St. Bonaventure, Commentaria in quattuor libros Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi, IV, dist. 21, pars: 2, art. 2, q. 3, in Opera Omnia, ed. PP. Collegii a S. Bonaventura, (Quarrachi:1889), 4:569.

42 The Exempla or Illustrative Stories from the Sermones Vulgares of Jacques de Vitry, 80, fol. 71ro, ed. Thomas Frederick Crane (London: The Folk-Lore Society, 1890), 36. As Dyan Elliott points out, Jacques de Vitry and Thomas of Cantimpré were early sponsors of the Beguines and promoted among them confessional “virtuosity.” See Dyan Elliott, “Women and Confession: From Empowerment to Pathology,” 34. The women mentioned here were likely Beguines, who were sometimes attacked for allowing men not bound by religious vows to enter their houses. In the early fourteenth century, Johannes Andreae explicitly compared beguinages to houses of prostitution: quasi prostibulis, sicut sunt hospitia beguinarum. See his Glos. Ord., 216, quoted in Makowski, Elizabeth, “A Pernicious Sort of Woman”: Quasi-religious Women and Canon Lawyers in the Later Middle Ages (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 29Google Scholar.

43 Summa Theologiae, III, suppl., q. 11, art. 3, sed contra.

44 Summa Theologiae, III, suppl., q. 11, art. 4, resp.

45 As Joseph Goering notes, in most cases the proprius sacerdos will be the parish priest. But in some instances it may be another. For example, in a monastery, the prior might hear confession and thus be the proprius sacerdos. Similarly, noble families might receive permission to employ a personal chaplain and confessor for their households, who would then serve as the proprius sacerdos for the household. Furthermore, at the diocesan level, the bishop was the proprius sacerdos for his clergy and for everyone in his diocese; he might exercise his role as confessor personally or appoint a coadjutor. See Goering, Joseph, “The Internal Forum and the Literature of Penance and Confession,” Traditio 59 (2004): 175–227CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 183–184. This paper has been revised in Goering, “The Internal Forum and the Literature of Penance and Confession,” in The history of medieval canon law in the classical period, 1140–1234: from Gratian to the decretals of Pope Gregory IX, ed. Wilfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 379–428. For the proprius sacerdos and others appointed to hear confession, see pp. 381–390.

46 Liber poenitentialis (PL 210: 304B).

47 Aurea summa lib. 5, De poenitentiis, par. 52, (Cologne: 1512), 1617. (accessed at https://books.google.com/books?id=AQtCAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad= 0#v=onepage&q=de%20poenitentia&f=false, 5/22/17)

48 For the “gossiping” priest, see too Phillips, Susan E., Transforming Talk: The Problem with Gossip in Late Medieval England (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), 48–54Google Scholar.

49 De consciencio, redaction A, p. 90, cited in Diekstra, F.N.M., “Confessor and Penitent: Robert de Sorbon and the Cura animarum,” Mediaeval Studies 71 (2009): 162–163Google Scholar, n. 14.

50 Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner, vol. 1: Nicaea I to Lateran V, 245.

51 Bonaventure, Commentaria in quattuor libros Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi, IV, dist. 17, pars 2, dubia circa litteram Magistri, dubium 3, 4:448.

52 Albert the Great, Super Sententiarum 4, dist.17, art. 42, sed contra, 1, ed. Borgnet, A., vol. 30 (Paris: 1893–1894), 729bGoogle Scholar.

53 Ibid.

54 De muliere forti chap.15, §1, ed. A. Borgnet (Paris: Vivès, 1893), 112. The attribution of this work to Albert remains uncertain.

55 Albert the Great, Super Sententiarum 4, dist. 17, art. 42, sed contra, 2. The Franciscan Salimbene likewise allows that one may seek out another confessor if one's own priest is ignorant, malicious, or wont to reveal the secrets of the confession. See Salimbene de Adam, Chronica (fol. MS 381B), CC CM 125, 591.

56 De corpore domini dist. 6, tract. 4, chap. 2, ed. A. Borgnet (Paris: Vivès, 1899), 425b; On the Body of the Lord, 427. In his solution to the question, however, Albert casts doubt on this position. Cf. Albert the Great, De sacramentis, pars 2, q. 2 (De confessione), art. 14, ed. Ohlmeyer, Albert, ed. Colon. 26 (Monasterii West.: Aschendorff, 1958), 105–106Google Scholar. Cf. Teetaert, Amédée, M., O., “La confession aux laïques chez Albert le Grand,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 2 (1925): 530–542Google Scholar, esp. 535–536.

57 IV Sent. dist. 17, ch. 4. For further distinction according to mortal or venial sin, see also Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae Suppl. III, q. 8, art. 2–3.

58 F.N.M. Diekstra, “Confessor and Penitent: Robert de Sorbon and the Cura animarum,” 159–160.

59 Smith, Lesley, “William of Auvergne and Confession,” in Handling Sin in the Middle Ages, ed. Minnis, A.J. and Biller, Peter (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1998), 95–107Google Scholar, 103.

60 Cf. Barr, Beth Allison, “Three's a Crowd: Wives, Husbands and Priests in the Late Medieval Confessional,” in A Companion to Pastoral Care in the Late Middle Ages (1200–1500), ed. Stansbury, Ronald J. (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 213–234Google Scholar, 216.

61 Ibid., 220.

62 Humbert of Romans, Instructiones de officiis Ordinis, chap. 45.12, in Opera, ed. Berthier, J.J. (Rome: Marietti, 1956), 2:368Google Scholar.

63 Dialogus miraculorum dist. 3, chap. 31, 1:148. This view is also expressed by the Franciscan, Petrus Iohannis Olivi (d. 1298), who opines that it does not violate the seal if a confessor says in general “I heard in confession such a crime” or “I heard this in confession,” so long as the penitent's identity is not revealed. See his Quodlibeta quinque, quod. 4, q. 9, in Collectio Oliviana 7, ed. St. Defraia (Grottaferrata: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 2002), 234.

64 Dialogus miraculorum dist. 3, chap. 43, 1: 162–163.

65 Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, 86.

66 “Confession as a historical source in the thirteenth century,” in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays presented to Robert William Southern, ed. R.H.C. Davis and J.M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981): 275–322 (292–294); repr. in Alexander Murray, Conscience and Authority in the Medieval Church, 49–86.

67 Bonum universale de apibus 2.30.3–2.34.

68 Ibid., 2.30.6.

69 Ibid., 2.30.7. I have been unable to find this claim explicitly in De animalibus. For Thomas's knowledge and use of this text based on Michael Scot's translation from the Arabic, see Hünemörder, Christian, “Der Text des Michael Scotus um die Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts und Thomas Cantimpratensis III,” in Aristotle's Animals in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, eds. Steel, Carlos, Guldentops, Guy, and Beullens, Pieter (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1999): 238–248Google Scholar.

70 Ibid., 2.30.8.

71 “Confession as a historical source in the thirteenth century,” 287.

72 Stephen of Bourbon/Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus de diversis materiis praedicabilibus tit. 7, 370, in Anecdotes Historiques, Légendes et Apologues tirés du recueil inédit d’Étienne de Bourbon, ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1877), 325–328. For the story of St. Guinefort, see Schmitt, Jean-Claude, The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century, trans. Thom, Martin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

73 Rudolf of Schlettstadt, Historiae Memorabiles zur Dominkanerliteratur und Kulturgeschichte des 13. Jahrhunderts, 14, ed. Kleinschmidt, Erich (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1974), 61–62Google Scholar.

74 Biller, Peter, “Confessors’ Manuals and the Avoiding of Offspring,” in Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages, eds. Biller, Peter and Minnis, A.J. (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 1998): 165–187Google Scholar; Biller, , The Measure of Multitude. Population in Medieval Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 185–212Google Scholar.

75 Thomas of Chobham, Summa confessorum VII.iv.9a.15, 463–465, cited by Peter Biller, The Measure of Multitude, 189. Berenger Frédol the Older (d. 1323) likewise mentions women who move about in a certain way to avoid conception in his confessional booklet, In primis debet sacerdos; see Biller, The Measure of Multitude, 200.

76 See De animalibus 10.2.1.46, in Albertus Magnus De Animalibus Libri XXVI, ed. Hermann Stadler, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters 15 and 16 (Münster: Aschendorfsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1916–1920) 15:748. For this translation, see Albertus Magnus On Animals. A Medieval Summa Zoologica, trans. Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. and Irven M. Resnick (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 1:845, now available in a revised ed., Albertus Magnus On Animals. A Medieval Summa Zoologica, trans. Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. and Irven Michael Resnick (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2018). Hereafter the translation will be abbreviated as SZ. Note that Albert is not entirely credulous; after examining certain practices used to determine whether it is the male or the female who is sterile or infertile, Albert concludes “all these things seem absurd to us.” (Ibid., SZ 1:845).

77 Ibid. 22.2.1.111, 118 (SZ 2: 1517, 1521). For medieval birth control, see also Riddle, John M., Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 101–110Google Scholar. The Trotula also provides numerous suggestions to prevent conception, including advice that a woman fashion a sort of amulet from the testicles of a weasel. See The Trotula. A Medieval Compendium of Women's Medicine, §86, ed. and trans. Monica H. Green (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 96–99.

78 Avicenna, Liber canonis medicine lib. 3, tr. 2, fen 21, chap. 17 (Venice: 1527; repr. Brussels, 1971), 292vb.

79 Even before the Fourth Lateran, Alain de Lille (d. 1202) had identified his Pentiential Book (Liber poenitentialis), dedicated to Archbishop Henry Sully of Bourges and composed as a guide for priests and confessors, as “a book called the Corrector and the Physician, which most fully contains corrections for bodies and medicines for souls, and instructs each priest how . . . or when priests ought or can invite the people committed to them to penance and provide aid, just like a faithful physician.” de Lille, Alain, Liber poenitentialis, prol., ed. Longere, Jean, Analecta mediaevalia Namurcensia 18 (Louvain: Editions Nauwelaerts, 1965), 2:15Google Scholar. For Canon 22, Quod infirmi prius provideant animae quam corpori, see Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner, vol. 1: Nicaea I to Lateran V, 244–246.

80 Pierre J. Payer, Sex and the New Medieval Literature of Confession, 23.

81 de Lille, Alain, Liber poenitentialis 1.17, 2:31; Robert Grosseteste, Templum Dei 19.9, ed. Goering, Joseph and Mantello, F. A. C. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984), 64Google Scholar

82 Albert the Great, Super Sententiarum 4, dist. 16, art. 25, resp., p. 596a.

83 See The Cyrurgie of Guy de Chauliac 6.1.2, ed. Margaret S. Ogden, Early English Text Society, 265,1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 381. This fifteenth-century Middle English translation is adapted from Guy de Chauliac's Inventarium seu collectorium in parte cyrurgicali medicine; cf. Rawcliffe, Carole, Leprosy in Medieval England (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006), 182Google Scholar.

84 De animalibus 5.1.2.18 (SZ 1:496)

85 Ibid., 23.8.57 (SZ 2:1581)

86 Ibid., 24.1.8 (SZ 2:1660)

87 In De animalibus, the term cotyledon is used primarily to indicate lobules on the placenta that receive nourishment from the veins. It is also commonly used to indicate the point of juncture where a stem meets a piece of fruit. Some similar point of intersection must be envisioned here.

88 Urinating immediately after intercourse was also a potential contraceptive, Albert notes elsewhere, since the lubricating quality of the urine can cause the male semen to “slip” from the womb. See De animalibus 10.2.1.46 (SZ 1:845).

89 “Unde et subtiles proci, ut in confessionibus Coloniae audivi, cum tali cautela [et] tactu temptant mulieres.” Italics are mine. Quaestiones super de animalibus 13, q. 18, ed. Ephrem Filthaut, in Opera Omnia, 12 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1955), 248. For this translation, see Albert the Great's Questions Concerning Aristotle's ‘On Animals’, trans. Irven M. Resnick and Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr., Fathers of the Church, Medieval Continuation 9 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 411 (hereafter abbreviated QDA).

Albert spent much of his life in Cologne. Perhaps he heard this in confession during his second period in Cologne, during which he taught and helped to define the course of study for Dominicans, after he had served from 1254–1257 as prior provincial of the Dominican Order. In January 1260, however, he was appointed Bishop of Regensburg.

90 For the testimony of midwives, cf. De animalibus 9.1.4.45, 9.1.7.68, 9.2.5.128; 18.2.6.82 (SZ 1: 790; 799; 823; SZ 2: 1321). For an illustration of misogyny in the Quaestiones, see Quaestiones super de animalibus 15, q. 11 (QDA, 454).

91 Women's Secrets: A Translation of Pseudo-Albertus Magnus's De secretis mulierum with Commentaries, chap. 11, trans. Helen Rodnite Lemay (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), 135. Cf. El de secretis mulierum atribuido a Alberto Magno. Estudio, Edición Crítica y Traducción, chap. 9, ed. and trans. José Pablo Barragán Nieto (Porto: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2012), 462–464: “Audivi enim semel in confessione societatis ab uno inquirente a me causam quare esset quod, quando ipse dormiret cum sua dilecta, et iuvencula et ipse iuvenis fuit, quod tunc ipse facto coitu inveniret ventrem suum usque ad umbilicum sanguine perfusum.”

92 For the ancient and medieval debate, see Preus, Anthony, “Galen's Criticism of Aristotle's Conception Theory,” Journal of the History of Biology 10 (1977): 65–85CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Musallam, Basim, “The Human Embryo in Arabic Scientific and Religious Thought,” in The Human Embryo. Aristotle and the Arabic and European Traditions, ed. Dunstan, G.R. (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1990): 32–45Google Scholar; and, Connell, Sophia M., Aristotle on Female Animals. A Study of the Generation of Animals (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 93–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.