Saint Joan and Confession: Internal and External Forum

Abstract

The Church’s penitential system, as it had developed by the thirteenth century, embraced both the internal and external forum. The internal forum was the realm of sacramental confession, where there was strict confidentiality between confessor and penitent. The penalty for any priest who broke this sacramental seal was life imprisonment, a sanction imposed at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.1 The external forum encompassed the various ecclesiastical courts under the jurisdiction of pope, bishop, archdeacon, and rural dean or archpriest. This forum, too, guaranteed rights of confidentiality for the defendant, which were established in the same Lateran Council when the rules of inquisitorial procedure were set forth.There was a principle that the Church did not judge secret crimes, so that Church courts (and secular courts as well) were not to bring charges ex officio (i.e., in an inquisition) against any person except for sins or crimes that were public. The judge’s first step was to determine the existence of fama publica, which is the belief of reputable persons that the implicated person (defendant) was guilty of a specific public crime. The second step was to establish the truth or falsity of this suspicion.2 If the actual guilt of the defendant could not be proved, the judge had the option of ordering compurgation, a process in which the defendant is required to back up his or her denial of guilt by producing a specified number of character witnesses.3