Proving Woman (7 page)

⁷
See AndréDuval, “Le Concile de Trente et la confession,”
La Maison-Dieu
118 (1974): 131–59.

⁸
Lateran IV, c. 3, Tanner, 1:233–34.

⁹
“. . . speciebus panis et vini veraciter continentur, transsubstantiatis pane in corpus et vino in sanguinem potestate divina,”
Lateran IV, c. 1, Tanner, 1:230.

¹⁰
Also note that the opening description of God’s creation of angels as entirely spiritual (hence noncorporeal) was also an
inflected response to the Cathar belief that humans were fallen angels who would eventually be redeemed. See Dyan Elliott,
Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and
Demonology in the Middle Ages
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 136–50.

¹¹
Eventually Peter Lombard’s list of sacraments would be adopted. See Innocent III’s defense of Lombard against the criticism
of Joachim of Fiore (Lateran IV, c. 1 and 2, Tanner, 1:231–32). Canons 51–52 attempt to make marriage less readily dissoluble
(ibid., 1:257–59). Alan of Lille, born in the Midi, where Catharism loomed largest, and whose writings are seen as important
precursors of Lateran IV, anticipates this line of defense. His
De fide catholica contra haereticos
(
PL
210, cols. 305–430) is based on the doctrine of the sacraments, while his confessors’ manual,
Liber poenitentialis
(between 1199 and 1203), constitutes a spirited defense of the sacrament of penance (ed. Jean Long[egrave]re, Analecta Mediaevalia
Namurcensia, 17–18 [Louvain: Nauwelaerts; Lille: Librairie Giard, 1965]). Also see Raymonde Foreville’s “Les statuts synodaux
et le renouveau pastoral nn XIIIe si[egrave]cle dans le Midi de la France,”
Cahiers de Fanjeaux
6 (1971): 136 ff. Cf. Annie Cazenave, “Aveu et Contrition: Manuels de confesseurs et interrogatoires d’inquisition en Languedoc
et en Catalogne (XIIIe–XIVe si[egrave]cles),” in
La Piétépopulaire au Moyen Age
, Actes du 99e congre[egrave]s national des Sociétés Savantes, Besan ç on, 1974 (Paris: Biblioth[egrave]que Nationale, 1977),
pp. 334–35.

¹²
Lateran IV, c. 21, Tanner, 1:245. In addition to circulation at various local councils, c. 21 would also be included in Gregory
IX’s
Decretals
as X.5.38.12, “De poenitentiis et remissionibus.”

¹³
Pierre-Marie Gy resists the association of c. 21 and the detection of heresy (“Le précepte de la confession annuelle [Latran
IV, c. 21] et la détection des hérétiques: S. Bonaventure et S. Thomas contre S. Raymond de Peñafort,”
Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques
58 [1974]: 444–50). Also see idem, “Les définitions de la confession apr[egrave]s le quatri[egrave]me concile du Latran,”
in
Aveu
, p. 286. Gy entertains this possibility in “Les bases de la pénitence moderne,”
La Maison-Dieu
117 (1974): 76. Longe`re, editor of Alan of Lille’s
Liber poenitentialis
, just assumes that the purpose of attention to a stable confessional practice by Alan and Lateran IV alike was to discern
heresy (introd., 1:224, 228).

¹⁴
Bonaventure, opusc. XIV,
Quare fratres minores praedicent et confessiones audiant
, in
Opera omnia
, 8:376.

¹⁵
Foreville assumes that the lists of nonconfessants were passed on to the inquisition, but provides no evidence (“Statuts
synodaux,” p. 129).

¹⁶
This is frequent in the Fournier register. See p. 43, below in the present chapter.

¹⁷
See Gy, “Le precepte . . . et la détection,” p. 445.

18 Lea cites Ulric of Augsburg (d. 973), who urged annual confession on Ash Wednesday (
Confession
, 1:194).

¹⁹
Nicole Bériou, “Autour de Latran IV (1215): la naissance de la confession moderne et sa diffusion,” in
Pratiques de la confession: des P[egrave]res du d
è
sert [agrave] Vatican II. Quinze
è
tudes d
’
histoire
, Groupe de la Bussi[egrave]re (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1983), pp. 75, 80.

²⁰
See Amédée Teetaert,
La Confession aux la
iï
ques dans l
’
è
glise latine depuis le VIIIe jusqu
’
au
XIVe si[egrave]cle
(Wetteren: J. de Meester; Bruges: Ch. Beyaert; Paris: J. Gabalda, 1926), pp. 85 ff. For the correlation between the penitential
system and a focus on the individual, see Colin Morris,
The
Discovery of the Individual, 1050
–
1200
(New York: Harper and Row, 1972). Cf. Pierre Legendre’s assessment in “
De confessis
: remarques sur le statut de la parole dans la premi[egrave]re scholastique,” in
Aveu
, p. 407.

²¹
Teetaert,
Confession
, p. 100.

²²
The change is inaugurated by Aquinas, who particularly stresses the importance of the priest’s absolution (Teetaert,
Confession
, pp. 272 ff.; also see n. 130, below).

²³
Robert Blomme,
La Doctrine du p
è
che
é
dans les
è
coles th
è
ologiques de la premi[egrave]re moitie
é
du XIIe si[egrave]cle
(Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain; Gembloux: J. Duculot, 1958), pp. 161–62. Cf. Bériou, “Autour de Latran IV,”
pp. 76–79; Cazenave, “Aveu,” p. 334.

²⁴
Aquinas,
ST
3a, q. 84, art. 3, 60:10–19; Gerson,
De forma absolvendi a peccatis
, in
Oeuvres
, 9:173.

²⁵
Michel Foucault,
The History of Sexuality
, vol. 1,
An Introduction
, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), p. 58.

²⁶
This conundrum would remain unsettled. See Angelo Carletti (d. 1495),
Summa angelica de
casibus conscientialibus
(Venice: Iac. Sanouinum, 1569), ad
confessio sacramentalis
, no. 28, fol. 102r; cf. Pierre Michaud-Quantin,
Sommes de casuistique et manuels de confession du Moyen Age
(XII
–
XVI si[egrave ]cles)
(Louvain: Nauwelaerts; Lille: Librairie Giard, 1962), pp. 99–101.

²⁷
There is disagreement as to when this sequence became common (Louis Braeckmans,
Confession
et communion au Moyen Age et au Concile de Trente
[Gembloux: J. Duculot, 1971], pp. 10–12; Gy, “Les bases,” pp. 73–74).

²⁸
Bonaventure,
Quare fratres
c. 7, in
Opera omnia
, 8:376. Cf. Aquinas’s quodlibet that queries whether a priest ought to believe his parishioner if the latter claims that
he has confessed elsewhere (quodlib. 1, q. 6, art. 3 [12]
Opera omnia: Quaestiones de quolibet
, ed. Ordo Fratrum Praedicatorum [Rome: Commissio Leonina, 1996], 25,2:192–93; on this genre, see chap. 6, pp. 237–38, below);
also see Braeckmans,
Confession
, pp. 14–15, 42–43, 46, 47.

²⁹
Aquinas,
ST
3a, q. 80, art. 4, resp., 59:44 ff. Cf. art. 5, 39:46–53. The priest should not deny a sinner the host, unless the sin is
manifest (3a q. 80, art. 6, resp. and resp. ad 1, 59:54–55).

³⁰
Trent, ann. 1551, session 13, c. 7, Tanner, 2:696; Braeckmans,
Confession
, p. 11. Many eminent confessors’ manuals do not make this association (p. 72).

³¹
This shift was not immediate. See particularly Jacques Berlioz’s analysis of exempla that use the ordeal to promote sacramental
confession, in “Les ordalies dans les
exempla
de la confession,” in
Aveu
, pp. 315–40. Cf. Jacques Chiffoleau, “Sur la pratique et la conjoncture de l’aveu judiciare en France du XIIIe au XVe si[egrave]cle,”
ibid., pp. 341, 343–47.

³²
Peter Brown, “Society and the Supernatural: A Medieval Change,” in
Society and the Holy
in Late Antiquity
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), p. 307. For liturgical rituals of ordeal by cold water,
see
Formulae Merowingici et Karolini Aevi: Ordines
Iudiciorum Dei
, ed. Karl Zeumer,
MGH
,
Legum Sectio V. Formulae
, pp. 621–22. See H. C. Lea’s discussion of the use of the eucharist in
Superstition and Force: Essays on the Wager of Law
—
the Wager of Battle
—
the Ordeal
—
Torture
, 4th ed. (Philadelphia: Lea Bros., 1892), pp. 344–51. Other forms of the ordeal likewise looked to divine providence in the
midst of the quotidian workings of nature, such as the test of burning iron or boiling water. See
Formulae Merowingici
,
MGH
,
Legum Sectio V, Formulae
, pp. 604–17. The ritual ingestion of bread and cheese was also used to detect crimes like theft, the rationale being that
the guilty party would choke on these appropriately consecrated morsels (ibid., pp. 629–36; see Lea,
Superstition
, pp. 300–382; Robert Bartlett,
Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal
[Oxford: Clarendon, 1986], pp. 4–33). See Peter Browe’s interesting collection of primary sources describing actual instances
of ordeals in
De Ordaliis
, 2 vols., Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, Textus et Documenta, nos. 4, 11 (Rome: Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, 1932,
1933).

³³
For early criticisms, see Jean-Philippe Lévy, “La probl[egrave]me de la preuve dans les droits savants au Moyen Age,”
Recueils de la Soci
è
te
é
de Jean Bodin
17, 2 (1965): 141–43; Lea,
Superstition
, p. 395. Also see various theological and canonical objections, beginning in the late eleventh century (in Browe,
De Ordaliis
, 2:70 ff.). But for papally sponsored ordeals throughout the period of the Gregorian Reform, see Colin Morris, “
Judicium Dei
: The Social and Political Significance of the Ordeal in the Eleventh Century,” in
Church Society and Politics
, ed. Derek Baker, Studies in Church History, vol. 12 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975), pp. 95–111.

³⁴
See John Baldwin’s “The Intellectual Preparation for the Canon of 1215 against Ordeals,”
Speculum
36 (1961): 613–36. For lay resistance to ordeals, see R. C. Van Caenegem, “La preuve dans l’ancien Belge des origines [agrave]
la fin du XVIIIe si[egrave]cle,”
Recueils de la Soci
è
te
é
de Jean Bodin
17, 2 (1965): 386–89.

³⁵
Lateran IV, c. 18, Tanner, 1:244.

³⁶
Aquinas,
ST
3a, q. 80, art. 6, resp. ad 3, 59:56–57. Aquinas is using the
Decretum
of Gratian (ca. 1140) (C. 2 q. 5 c. 20). But note Gratian’s uncertainty as to whether this interdict pertains to all ordeals
(dpc).

³⁷
Cf. Brown’s discussion of transubstantiation in “Society and the Supernatural: A Medieval Change,” in
Society and the Holy
, pp. 326–27.

³⁸
Lea,
Superstition
, pp. 344–51. Biblical passages are from the Douai-Reims translation of the Latin
Vulgate
.

³⁹
Aquinas,
ST
3a, q. 79, art. 3, sed contra, 59:10–11; 3a q. 80, art. 4, sed contra and resp. ad 5, 59:42–43, 44–45. See Braeckmans,
Confession
, pp. 14–15.

⁴⁰
Lateran IV, c. 8, “De inquisitionibus,” Tanner, 1:238. For the inclusion of these decrees in Gregory IX’s
Decretals
, see X.3.12, c. un. (1198); X.5.34.10, X.5.3.31–32 (1199); X.5.1.21 (1212), culminating in Lateran IV (X.5.1.24). See Adhémar
Esmein,
A History of Continental
Criminal Procedure with Special Reference to France
, trans. John Simpson (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1913), p. 81.

⁴¹
Esmein,
History of Continental Criminal Procedure
, pp. 9–10. Walter Ullmann points out that the medieval distortion of the accusatorial process, whereby the accuser is penalized
if his/ her accusation is not sustained, facilitated the transition (“Some Medieval Principles of Criminal Procedure,”
Juridical Review
59 [1947]: 10–11).

⁴²
On the coincidence of the inquisitorial procedure, torture, and confession, see R. C. Van Caenegem, “Methods of Proof in
Western Medieval Law,”
Mededelingen van Koninklijke Academie
voor Wetenschappen Letteren en Schone Kunsten van Belgie
ï
, Academiae Analecta
45, 3 (1983): 113 ff.; Edward Peters,
Torture
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), pp. 44 ff. Lea notes that ordeal and torture rarely coexist, canceling each other out (
Superstition
, p. 429; also see pp. 329, 426, 479 ff.). For a concise contrasting of the accusatorial versus the inquisitorial system,
see Ullmann, “Some Medieval Principles,” pp. 4–5. On the migration in meaning from “test” to “torture” in antiquity, see Page
DuBois,
Torture and Truth
(New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 9–34.

⁴³
Lea,
Confession
, 1:207 ff. For the impact of Peter the Chanter and his circle of theologians on Lateran IV, see John Baldwin,
Masters, Princes, and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the
Chanter and His Circle
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970), 1:315–43.

⁴⁴
See Gy, “Définitions,” p. 285. Abelard strove to separate the concepts of penance and punishment in his definition of remorse
(Cazenave, “Aveu,” p. 334; Nicole Bériou, “La confession dans les écrits théologiques et pastoraux du XIIIe sie`cle: médication
de l’ â me ou démarche judiciare? ” in
Aveu
, p. 276).

⁴⁵
Lateran IV, c. 21, Tanner, 1:245.

⁴⁶
See Bériou, “Confession,” pp. 261–82.

⁴⁷
Peter of Poitiers,
Summa de confessione. Compilatio praesens
c. 46, ed. Jean Longe`re,
CCCM
, 51 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1980), pp. 57–58. Cf. Bériou, “Confession,” pp. 271–72. Also see Lester K. Little, “Les techniques
de la confession et la confession comme technique,” in
Faire
Croire
, pp. 94–95.