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Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations and Conventions
Introduction
1 How to Be a Counter-Reformation Confessor
2 How to Behave in Confession
3 Regulating the Easter Duty
4 Confession on Crusade
5 Confession at the Intersections of Society
6 Confession and the Newly Converted
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
“Confronting the problem of gaining access to the secrets passed between priest and penitent, Patrick O’Banion turns first to the treatises and manuals produced by theologians and practitioner clerics. We know from ample study in recent decades that proscriptive texts have much to tell us about the thought worlds of clerics. They also illustrate those clerics’ beliefs about what constituted proper thought and action on the part of penitents. O’Banion goes beyond a textbook review of the how-to books by taking a special interest in what they reveal about power relations between confessors and penitents. From text to text, for example, what writers considered normative shows considerable variety. In this finding is revealed a core two-part truth: ‘penitents did not necessarily have the same objectives as the church’ and, thus, ‘local confessors were forced to mediate between institution and individual.’ Much about the sacrament was negotiable.”
—Michael Vargas, Bulletin of Spanish Studies
