The Sacrament of Penance and Religious Life in Golden Age Spain. By Patrick J. O'Banion. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012. 234 pp. $69.95 cloth.

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Sacrament of Penance and Religious Life in Golden Age Spain . By Patrick J. O'Banion . University Park : The Pennsylvania State University Press , 2012. 234 pp. $69.95 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesThe fourteenth-century Bohemian priest John of Nepomuk was allegedly martyred for his refusal to break the seal of the confessional. Even today U.S. law recognizes the right of a priest to withhold evidence confided to him in the sacrament of confession. How then is it possible for historians to reconstruct the experience of sacramental confession for early modern Spaniards? Patrick J. O'Banion draws on manuals for confessors and penitents, synodal statutes, and Inquisition records to give a glimpse of confession's function and practice in The Sacrament of Penance and Religious Life in Golden Age Spain . His study draws attention to a prominent aspect of early modern Spanish Catholicism, even if he is not fully successful in breaking the silence that surrounds the dialogue between priest and penitent.O'Banion challenges the view that sacramental confession was simply a tool of social control that subjected the laity to the clergy and that reinforced existing ecclesiastical and social hierarchies. He describes a number of loopholes that allowed the laity to escape the parish discipline imposed by ecclesiastical leaders, especially the requirement of yearly confession to one's parish priest. As a result of these loopholes, he argues, the confessional experience was a negotiation between priest and penitent that allowed the laity some leeway in determining when, where, what, and to whom they confessed.O'Banion builds his case in six chapters. The first chapter is based on prescriptive literature, especially the many manuals written in the vernacular to instruct both priests and laypeople in the art of confession. The variety of advice given in these works allowed both sides some freedom in determining what constituted a complete confession, especially in the context of Probabilism, the approach to moral theology that taught that as long as a particular position was taught by at least one authority, it could be accepted as probable. The next two chapters describe the ritual and frequency of confession. Inquisition records suggest that by the end of the sixteenth century, the laity knew the proper behaviors and prayers that accompanied sacramental confession. They also reveal that an increasing proportion of lay people made their yearly confessions to someone other than their parish priest. Although episcopal authorities tried to tighten regulations concerning the required Easter confession, these regulations proved very difficult to enforce. Chapter 4 describes one of the main reasons for this: the proliferation of the cruzado , or crusade bull, which allowed buyers to choose their own confessor. Granted by the pope to allow the Spanish crown to protect the interests of the Church, the cruzado was a major source of royal revenue, but it also undermined the church's attempts to enforce parish discipline. …