Forgery & Confession

Forgery & Confession

Following are some excerpts from H. C. Lea's A History of Auricular Confessions and Indulgences in the Latin Church, in which he traces the development of the papal doctrine of auricular confession to a priest. These excerpts present evidence of the influence of the forgeries by which that doctrine was established and promoted.

False Decretals and Confession

With the commencement of the Carlovingian decadence came the effort to establish the supremacy of the Church, of which the most conspicuous embodiment is to be found in the False Decretals. With the crumbling of the secular power the way lay open for the Church, which had been enormously strengthened by Charlemagne in his policy of using it as an instrument for the civilization of his empire. In the disintegration of existing institutions and the foundation of the medieval commonwealths which then occurred, the Church had ample opportunity for the development of its ambitious schemes. For the nonce these lay in the direction of temporal supremacy rather than of spiritual, and the full evolution of the latter was postponed until the twelfth century, after the former had been completely established by Gregory VII and his successors. Still the opportunity was not wholly neglected to bring into prominence and to practically exercise the power of the keys, which thus far had been rather a theoretical claim of the high sacerdotalists than an actually conceded authority. In 829 the bishops assembled at the great council of Paris complain that many Christians hold that those who persevere in their wickedness until death are punished only temporarily in purgatory and not eternally in hell, showing how slowly the populations were accepting the idea that sacerdotal ministrations were required to escape damnation. Further remarks coupled with extracts from Bede indicate that absolution for sin was procured by prayer direct to God without human mediation.(1) Evidently some means were necessary to support the claims of the Church as controlling the gates of heaven and hell. Thus in an endeavor to revive the decaying practice of public penance, an Isidorian decretal assumes that it reconciles not only to the Church but to God.(2) Another forgery, attributed to Clement I, is a recital of his ordination as bishop of Rome by St. Peter, in which the apostle formally transmitted to him the power of the keys granted by Christ, showing that the question of transmission was felt to be doubtful and required this authentic corroboration.(3) In the same decretal St. Peter is made to say that bishops are the keys of the Church; they have power to open and close the gates of heaven for they are the keys of heaven.(4) In all this, the attribution of the power to bishops alone and the silence respecting priests are significant. It was Benedict the Levite however, in his collection of Capitularies, who labored most strenuously in this direction. Perhaps the earliest claim to the absolute remission of sins and the absolution of the sinner is his assertion that Christ gave to his disciples and their successors the power of binding and loosing, so that they were able to remit the sins of those who performed due penance, and that he knew this to be a novelty is seen in his explanation that no one should wonder at it, seeing that masters can confer upon their slaves authority over their fellow slaves.(5) This he follows up by assuming in his instructions for the process of reconciliation that in it the sinner is absolved and his sins remitted by the invocation of the Holy Ghost in the prayers of the priest.(6) As up to this time, and for three centuries to come, the only formulas in use were prayers to God to pardon the penitent, Benedict had no hesitation in forging interpolations in papal decretals to show that these prayers had an absolving power. An epistle of Leo I is thus falsified by injecting in it the phrase "by the absolution of the priestly prayers,"(7) and the Synodical Epistle of Felix III has a similar forgery inserted in it.(8) Having thus manufactured papal authority for the absolutory function of the priestly prayers over the penitent he had no hesitation in employing the same phrase in his instructions for the conduct of public reconciliation.(9) It is probably to these efforts that we may attribute the efficacy subsequently ascribed to the deprecatory formulas of absolution until they were replaced by the indicative one which is still in use, for these Capitularies were not issued simply on the authority of Benedict or of the church of Mainz, where he professed to have discovered them, but were presented and received as laws promulgated by Pepin, Charlemagne and Louis le Debonnaire, and thus as entitled to unquestioned respect and obedience. The Capitularies of Benedict were not the least audacious and successful of the great cycle of Isidorian forgeries.… Vol I, pp. 126-29

Burchard of Worms, in his collection of canons, gives the extract from the forged decretal of Clement I already cited, in which bishops are declared to have the power of opening or closing heaven, because they are the keys of heaven,(10) ibid., p. 132

It is true that St. Ivo inserts the exaggerated description of bishops as keys of heaven from the Pseudo-Clement, but he likewise gives the emphatic condemnation of the keys by St. Jerome,(11) … ibid., pp. 133-34

Still more illustrative of the vague and uncertain character of thought at this period is the position of Gratian in his authoritative compilation. He does not treat the question directly, though in his section on excommunication he inserts a portion of the passage of St. Jerome and other texts from St. Augustin and St. Gregory the Great which virtually deny the power of the keys, without giving any opposing opinions.(12) When he comes to treat of confession and satisfaction, however, which are recognized as conditions precedent of the exercise of the power to bind and to loose, he gives a long array of authorities to the effect that they are unnecessary for pardon, and then another array arguing their necessity. Between these two he confesses his inability to decide and leaves the question for the reader, merely remarking that each side is supported by wise and pious men. Thus up to this period the Church had arrived at no conclusion: it could not as yet decide whether the sinner should deal directly with God, or whether priestly interposition was necessary: it could not say that absolution was essential and it had not framed a working theory of the mysterious power of the keys.(13) Nay more. This non-committal position offended no one at the time. The Decretum was at once received in the most favorable manner by the great University of Bologna. Though not official its use spread everywhere and it was adopted universally as the foundation of the canon law. From time to time it was added to as papal legislation increased, but no one ever ventured to alter it. We shall see hereafter that Gratian’s conservatism respecting the theory of the sacraments was as pronounced as in regard to confession and the power of the keys, and the fact shows in the clearest light how completely modern Catholic theology is the creation of the University of Paris. Gratian labored in Rome, where the chief concern was to develop a working body of canon law, and where little heed was taken of the speculations which were agitating the University. His compilation shows no trace of their influence and they evidently as yet were regarded by the curia as matters of mere theory, devoid of all interest for the practical churchman.(14)

Yet little as the practical churchman might imagine it, his labors were of small account in comparison with those of the schoolmen who, in the University of Paris, were destined to modify so greatly the whole structure of Catholic belief—to impose, we may almost say, a new religion on the foundations of the old faith. The two great development periods of ecclesiastical power were in the ninth and the twelfth centuries. In the former, the dissolution of the empire of Charlemagne gave rise to an era of social reconstruction during which feudalism and ecclesiasticism clutched at the fragments of shattered sovereignty. It was then that the Church emancipated itself from the State, and, by skilful use of the doctrines promulgated in the False Decretals, formulated the principles which eventually enabled Gregory VII and his successors to triumph over monarchs. ibid., pp. 135-36

Notes:

(1) Con. Parisiens. ann. 829 Lib. II. Cap. x. xii. xiii. (Harduin. IV. 1344, 1347-8).

(2) Ipsam quoque infamiam qua sunt aspersi delere non possumus, sed animas eorum per poenitentiam publicam et ecclesiæ satisfactionem sanare cupimus, quia manifesta peccata non sunt occulta correctione purganda. Pseudo-Calixti Epist. ad Galliæ Episcopos.

(3) Propter quod ipsi trado a Domino mihi traditam potestatem ligandi et solvendi, ut de omnibus quibuscunque decreverit in terris hoc decretum sit et in coelis. Ligabit enim quod oportet ligari et solvet quad expedit solvi.—Pseudo-Clement. Epist. I. Carried into Ivonis Decret. P. XIV. c. 1.

(4) Ecclesiam . . . cujus claves episcopos esse dicebat. Ipsi enim habent potestatem claudere coelum et aperiri portas ejus, quia claves coeli facti sunt.— Pseudo-Clement. Epist. I. Carried into Burchard. Decr. Lib. I. c. 125 and Ivon. Carnotens. Decr. P. v. c. 225.

(5) Et ideo Dominus et magister noster discipulis suis et successoribus eorum ligandi ac solvendi dedit potestatem ut peccatores ligandi habeant potestatem, et poenitentiam condigne agentes absolvi ac peccata cum divina invocatione dimitti queant. Nec mirum etc.—Capitular. Lib. v. c. 116.

(6) Ibid. c. 129, 137.

(7) Ibid. c. 133. He quotes from Leo’s Epist. CLIX. c. 6 “oportet ei per sacerdotalem sollicitudinem communionis gratia subvenire,” injecting after “sollicitudinem” the words “id est per manus impositionem, absolutione precum sacerdotalium.”

(8) Ibid. c. 134. The Epistle VII. of Felix III. in ordering the viaticum for dying penitents says “aut similiter a presbytero viaticum abeunti a sæculo non negetur.” Benedict inserts after “presbytero” “jussu aut permissu tamen proprii episcopi, per manus impositionem, absolutione precum sacerdotalium”

Both these canons are carried in this shape into Isaac of Langres’ collection, Tit. I. c 16, 29.

(9) Ibid. c. 136 (Isaaci Lingonens. Tit. I. c. 17).

Much stress is laid by modern apologists on a letter of Pope John VIII in 879 to the Frankish bishops respecting those who had recently fallen in battle against the pagan Northmen, as proving the exercise of the power of the keys at this period. There was from an early time a certain, or rather uncertain, amount of influence claimed for the prayers of the Church over the fate of the disembodied soul after death which will be more conveniently treated hereafter when we come to consider the subject of purgatory.

(10) Burchardi Decret. Lib. I. c. 125.

(11) S. Ivon. Carnot. Decr. P. V. c. 225; P. XIV. c. 7; Ejusd. Panorm. Lib. v. c. 86.

(12) Gratian. c. 44, 45, 60, 62 Caus. XI. Q. iii.

(13) Gratian. Decr. post can. 89 Caus. XXXIII. Q. iii. Dist. 1. Gratian’s only allusion to the keys is incidental (P. I. Dist. xx. initio) and there he evidently regards them as belonging to the forum externum—the power of receiving in or ejecting from the Church.

It is a curious fact that a century later, after the power of the keys had been generally accepted in the schools, the authoritative Gloss on the Decretum (Caus. XXXIII. Q. iii. Dist. 1, in princip) gives various opinions as to the remission of sins, without alluding to priestly absolution, and sums up “Si tamen subtiliter intueamur gratiæ Dei non contritioni est attribuenda remissio peccatorum.”

(14) Dante gives to Gratian full meed of praise for his labors—

Quell’ altro fiammeggiare esce del riso
Di Gratian, che l’uno e l’altro foro
Ajuto si che piace in Paradise.—Paradiso, X.

But when the schoolmen had succeeded in revolutionizing theology, canon law underwent a corresponding change, and the compilation of Gratian, as representing an earlier order of things, ceased to have the authority of law. It had done its work and was superseded. The admissions and conclusions which represented the ideas and practice of the twelfth century are unsuited to modern times, and though it retains its place in the Corpus Juris and the papal compilations which follow are merely addenda to it, it is not to be quoted as authority, save in its extracts from the Fathers.—Alph. de Leone, de Offic. et Potestate Confessarii, Recoll. II. n. 55.
H. C. Lea, A History of Auricular Confessions and Indulgences in the Latin Church (1896), Vol I, pp. 126-29, 132-36

Towards the middle of the century Jonas of Orleans repeats the regret of the council of Châlons; public penance was so completely disused that he is obliged to go back to St. Augustin to describe what it is, and he ascribes the wickedness of the age to the neglect of so salutary a remedy.(1) Yet the movement was now on foot out of which, in the ignorance and confusion of the age, the sacerdotal power was to attain a height hitherto undreamed of, and the forgers of the False Decretals did not neglect this in their comprehensive scheme. They recognized the impossibility of reviving its use for all penitents, and they formulated a distinction which continued in force for many centuries, when, in an epistle attributed to Calixtus I (AD. 217-222), public penance is ordered only for those whose crimes are public and notorious.(2) The effort was one certain to find favor with the bishops, as it aided them in retaining the control over penitence, which was slipping into the hands of the priests, and we have seen how strenuously at this period the latter were forbidden to grant reconciliation without episcopal authority. Benedict the Levite, who was so active a promoter of the new movement, promptly accepted this, and prescribed that all public sins shall be visited with public penance; he describes all its details as a matter to be strictly followed, and the adoption of his directions in the collection of Isaac of Langres indicates how ready the bishops were to avail themselves of it. Halitgar of Cambrai, indeed, goes further, and rather grudgingly makes the concession that private penance can win pardon of sin, provided the penitent changes his garments, amends his life and mourns perpetually.(3)

Notes:

(1) Jonæ Aurelian. de Instit. Laicali Lib. I. cap. 10.

(2) Ps. Calixti Epist. ad Galliæ Episcopos.

(3) Bened. Levitæ Capitul. Lib. V. cap. 116, 136.—Isaaci Lingonens. Capit. Tit. I. cap. 17.—Halitgari Poenit. Præfat. (Canisii et Basnage II. II. 89).
ibid., Vol II, pp. 74-75

… The effort to revive the practice of public penance, as we have seen, was a difficult, one and met with only partial success, and the compromise was proposed that it should be reserved strictly for public and notorious offences, while for secret sins, known only through voluntary confession, private penance should suffice. Although authority for this was manufactured in the False Decretals (p. 75), that the rule was a novelty is evident from its being now enunciated for the first time, and from the necessity which Rodolph of Bourges felt of explaining it, which he endeavors to do by pointing out that weak brethren would be scandalized by seeing the punishment of sinners whose sins were unknown.(1)

The Church thus accepted private penance as the equivalent of the public penance which it found itself unable to enforce as a general custom; the two were, for the most part, placed on precisely the same footing, though neither was as yet sacramental, and they were to a considerable extent interchangeable until the distinction between public and private sins had crystallized and become universally recognized.(2) It was a period of transition, however, and the old customs did not give way to the new without considerable vacillation in practice. There is a formula of this period, used in the diocese of Constance, which shows that public penance alone was recognized as efficient, and that private penance was merely a temporary substitute; if the sinner, it says, be unable through any cause to present himself on Ash Weduesday, or if he is stupid, or timid, or ashamed, or borne down by a multitude of sins, and cannot be persuaded to come forward, the priest, after a secret confession, can enjoin on him private penance, until the divine monition, and the example of the fathers, and the instructions of the priest, may induce him to seek the bosom of Mother Church by reconciliation.(3) The bishops, moreover, did not abandon the control of private sins to the priests without a struggle. A decretal was forged and attributed to Pope Eutychianus (275-283), which declares that the episcopal command is necessary before priests can reconcile sinners for secret sins, except on the death-bed, when they can absolve them, and the preservation of this in the collections of canons up to the middle of the twelfth century shows how loth were the bishops to abandon their ancient prerogatives.(4)

Notes:

(1) Rodolph. Bituricens. Capit. cap. xliv. Cf. Poenit. Ps. Theodori cap. xli. § 1 (Wasserschleben, p. 610).

(2) In the effort to elude the unsacramental character of the old reconciliation, Binterim (Denkwürdigkeiten IV. III. 6) argues that public penance at this period lost its sacramental function while private penance retained it, and, with the curious intellectua1 strabismus which distinguishes these apologetic efforts, he quotes from Benedict the Levite a passage which proves the contrary—that both were regarded as precisely similar, and that reconciliation, not absolution, is the object to be attained by either. “Si vero occulte et sponte confessus fuerit, occulte faciat. Et si publice et manifeste convictus aut confessus fuerit, publice ac manifeste fiat, et publice coram ecclesia juxta canonicos poenitet gradus. Post peractam vero secundum canonicam institutionem poenitentiam, occulte vel manifeste, canonice reconcilietur et manus ei cum orationibus quæ in Sacramentario ad reconciliandum poenitentem continentur imponatur.“—Capitul. Lib. V. cap. 116.

He also cites Concil. Arelatens. ann. 813, cap. 26 (Harduin. IV. 1006), which has no bearing on the point in question. In fact, all the schoolmen and manuals of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries treat public and private and solemn penance as of precisely the same character.

(3) Pez, Thesaur. Anecd. II. II. 611. Another Ordo, probably of the eighth or ninth century, instructs the priest, if the penitent is stupid, to reconcile him at once: if he is intelligent, to prescribe penance, after the performance of which he is to return for reconciliation.—Morin de Poenit. Append. p. 19.

(4) Ut presbyteri de occultis peccatis jussione episcopi poenitentes reconcilient et sicut supra præmisimus infirmantes absolvant et communicent—Burchardi Decr XVIII. 16—Ivon Decr. XV. 38.—Gratian. Cap. 4 Caus. XXVI. Q. vi.

We see here a reminiscence of the old rule, that the dying penitent could receive the viaticum without being reconciled in case of his recovery. The word “absolution” evidently here means absolution from excommunication and a ceremony inferior to reconciliation. Sacramental absolution had not yet been invented.
ibid., pp. 96-97

Pseudo-Augustine and Confession

… Evidently at Rome no one as yet dreamed of the divine origin of confession or of its being an indispensable part of a sacrament. Paris, however, took a truer view of its importance to the new theology which was evolving itself in the schools, and Peter Lombard boldly reconciled the conflicting views which Gratian abandoned in despair; the sinner must confess first to God and then to the priest, without which he cannot hope for paradise.(1)

In proving this the most conclusive authority on which he relied was a spurious tract, bearing the revered name of St. Augustin, which mysteriously came into circulation about this time, when such aid was so much needed by the sacerdotal school. Gratian had drawn from it the strongest evidence which he was able to produce in favor of confession, but admitted that it could not overcome the array on the other side. The Paris schoolmen felt no such misgivings; they found in it exactly what they required in teaching authoritatively the power of the keys and the indispensable functions of the priest in their ministration. It is through the priest that God must be approached; the penitent must submit himself to him in blind obedience and must be prepared to follow his commands in order to obtain salvation, as though he were seeking to escape from bodily death.(2) The extent of the citations from the tract in the works of the schoolmen shows the inestimable service which it rendered in furnishing ancient authority for the new theories, and the eagerness with which they availed themselves of the unexpected reinforcement. Few forgeries in the history of the Church, which owes so much to such means, have been so successful or have left a deeper impress on its dogmas. It was virtually the foundation on which the new superstructure was reared.

Notes:

(1) P. Lombard Sententt. Lib. IV. Dist. xvii. §§ 3, 4.

(2) Ps. Augustin. Lib. de Vera et Falsa Poenitentia cap. xv. n. 30.—“Ponat se omnino in potestate judicis, in judicio sacerdotis, nihil sibi reservans sui ut omnia eo jubente paratus sit facere pro recipienda vita animæ quæ faceret provitanda corporis morte.”

The date and sources of this forgery have naturally been the subject of some discussion. To me it seems unquestionably to be the work of two writers at widely different periods. The earlier portion, up to the end of chap. IX bears the mark of the teaching of the fifth century; through true repentance the penitent reconciles himself to God and washes away his sins with his tears. With the exception of chapters XIII, XVI and XVII the latter half of the tract is in direct opposition to this and is undoubtedly a work of the middle of the twelfth century. Some schoolman of the period probably met with an anonymous and forgotten exhortation to repentance and after interpolating and adding to it the new theories in their most absolute expression launched it on the schools as a book of St. Augustin’s, to whom it was the fashion to attribute a vast variety of spurious writings.

As early as the close of the sixteenth century the authenticity of the tract was questioned by Abbot Trithemius, who recognized that the style is not St. Augustin’s and that the saint himself is quoted in chapter XVII. The truth of this was soon generally conceded, but the work was not on that account abandoned. In 1525 Latomus quotes it as St. Augustin’s and argues that its genuineness is of no importance for it represents the period and having been inserted in the canons it has the full force of law (Jac. Latomus de Confessione secreta, Antverpiæ, 1525). The Catechism of the council of Trent (De Poenit. cap. 6, 12, etc.) cites it without an intimation of its unauthenticity. Azpilcueta (Comment. de Poenit. Dist. I. pp. 1-2, Rome, 1581) says that in his first and second editions of 1542 and 1569 he did not wholly dissent from its spuriousness, but now he does, for the reference to St. Augustin may have been a gloss inserted by a copyist and the style is no criterion, moreover, tradition should not be set aside and the book is a most useful one. Even after its genuineness ceased to be defended it continued to be quoted as St. Augustin’s at least until the close of the seventeenth century (Clericati de Poenit. Decis. XVIII. n. 2.—P. Segneri Instructio Confessariorum, Dilingæ, 1699, p. 31), and subsequently with more or less admission of the fraud (Amort de Indulgentiis, II. 183).

Another spurious tract circulated under the name of St. Augustin (De Visitatione Infirmorum Lib. II. cap. 4, 5) continued to be quoted until the middle of the seventeenth century in proof of the antiquity of confession. See Marchant, Tribunal Animarum Tom. I. Tract. I. Tit. 1, Q. 14, concl. 1 (Gandavi, 1642).

A grosser forgery, with the object of popularizing confession, was perpetrated in the thirteenth century by the manufacture of the Sermones ad Fratres in Eremo under the name of St. Augustin. There was safe presumption on the ignorance of the age when he was represented as relating his disputes with Arius and Fortunatus and his adventures in Ethiopia (Serm. xxxvi. xxxvii.). The people are told not to hesitate to confess their sins for they are at once obliterated from the memory of the confessor, and the supreme virtues of the act are set forth with eloquent exaggeration—“Hæc est enim salus animarum, dissipatrix vitiorum, restauratrix virtutum, oppugnatrix dæmonum, pavor inferni, lumen et spes omnium fidelium. O sancta et admirabilis confessio! tu obstruis os inferni et aperis paradisi portus!” (Sermo XXX.). No fraud was too clumsy if it contributed to advance sacerdotalism. So uncritical was the age that these sermons were accepted and quoted as St. Augustin’s (Astesani Summæ Lib. V. Tit. xxii. Q. 4), and despite the exposure of the imposture by Erasmus, they continued to be so till the seventeenth century (Alonso Perez de Lara, Compendio de las Tres Gracias, p. 18).
ibid., Vol I, pp. 209-11

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