The Deadly sin of lust and the impossible penitential book of the 19th century

Abstract

A lot has been written about the Sacrament of Penance and its evolution through centuries. Numerous scholars studying the practice of Confession focused specifically on penitential books – lists of rules, sins, and penances. However, most of these researchers denied attention to the handbooks for confessors of the 18th and 19th centuries claiming that the ‘literary genre’ of penitential books was declining in that period. Even though this decline is undeniable, yet the reasons behind the fact have not been explained convincingly. This chapter aims at filling this gap by offering a historical profile of the evolution of the ecclesiastical debate on Confession. The contextualization of these books in the coeval doctrinal and scientific debate in conjunction with a study of two representative cases – Jean Baptiste Bouvier’s handbook for confessors Venus and Hymen to the Tribunal of the Penance and St. Alphonse de Liguori’s Avvertimenti a' confessori novelli – makes clear why it was impossible for the Church to approve, distribute and use these manuals after the crisis of the Ancien Régime. First of all, there were moral problems: as a matter of fact, the definition of the case record of lustful acts implied the meticulous description of the acts themselves. Secondly, due to the nature of these texts, they were often produced secretly and without consulting religious authorities reflecting, by consequence, personal interpretations of the doctrine, not the canonized dogma. Finally, with specific reference to the 19th century, the mechanical approach to the definition of the sins and penances was in patent contrast with the position of the Catholic Church that was attempting to reform the Augustinian rigorism adopting a more flexible and conciliatory attitude towards the interpretation of sins.