Aligning Word and Deed: The Emergence of Confessor as a Priest Who Hears Confession

Abstract

This study traces the polysemy of the word confessor, setting its semantic development in relation to the changing role of the priest, practices of penance, and notions of sanctity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Focusing on the use of confessor to refer to a priest hearing confession, it argues that this meaning was not dominant before the late twelfth century and relates the increased emphasis on oral confession to semantic changes. The author begins by considering Peter the Chanter’s use of the word in his Verbum Abbreviatum, before extending the discussion to consider the presence of Saint Gilles as both Confessor Saint and priest in a group of sculptures depicting the Mass of St. Gilles at Chartres. Occurrences found in the Patrologia Latina are first set alongside the early use of the term to mean a ‘confessor of penitents’ by Augustine; other examples are drawn from Alcuin of York’s Oratio Sancti Gregorii to Walafrid of Strabo and canon law usage such as by the Anglo-Saxon king Aethelstan and the Decretum (c. 1023) of Burchard of Worms. The twelfth-century text of Peter the Chanter, however, shows the earliest consistent use of the term in this sense, and his representation of the confessor reveals the double nature of the term as referring both to ‘martyr’ and ‘confessor of penitents’. Feltman links the adoption of this term to the alignment of word and deed that is central to the priest’s role in penitential practice: the priest acts to restore the linguistic fracture of word and deed caused by original sin, and to do so had to grapple with the inherent instability of words. In needing to assess external appearances and signs and pronounce absolution, he could recognise but also exploit the polysemy of the word ‘confessor’. In such a context, words are shown to be more than mere signs, since the words of prayer had the power of action and encouraged reflection upon the divine.