Part II
Blunder No. 3
This, which is also connected with St. Bernard, may be briefly dealt with. Dr. Lea, on page 208, declares that St. Bernard “tells us that confession and true repentance are when a man so repents that he does not repeat the sin.” We need not quarrel with the sentiment, and the words undoubtedly occur in the tractate De interiore Domo from which Lea cites them. Unfortunately, more than two-and-a-half centuries ago, Mabillon pointed out that the treatise, though printed among St. Bernard’s works, was not written by him, and no scholar has since contested this verdict.
The matter in itself is of no consequence, but it is entertaining to notice the scorn with which Dr. Lea, two pages further on, castigates the Catholic writers who even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries quoted the De vera et falsa Poenitentia as a genuine work of St. Augustine.
If Lea in quite recent times, with a huge library and all the apparatus of modern criticism at his back, could himself be so careless, his censures on the benighted compilers of the Tridentine catechism must sound a little ridiculous. I cannot help concluding, despite assertions to the contrary, that the American historian possessed little of the scholar’s devotion to accuracy for its own sake.
In matters with which the literary circle he belonged to were likely to be conversant he was relatively careful, but when he was dealing with Catholic beliefs and abuses about which his friends knew nothing and cared less, he took practically no pains at all to keep his strong anti-religious bias under control.
Even the panegyrist who wrote an account of his life and work in the Dictionary of American Biography (1931) permits himself the criticism: “In his [Lea’s] rapidly growing library he gathered such sources as had been printed, though not always in the latest and best editions.” In the present case it matters little whether Bernard or Pseudo-Bernard is cited, but when a saint like St. Ulric of Augsburg, on the sole ground of a notorious and gross forgery, is presented as inveighing against sacerdotal celibacy the case becomes much more serious. See on this case The Month, March 1908, p. 311. Dr. Lea’s blunder about St. Ulric is repeated in the third revised edition of his Sacerdotal Celibacy.
Blunder No. 4
As a result of Dr. Lea’s disregard of “the latest and best editions” a passage may be noted which occurs in his book on page 205. It runs thus: “Early in the twelfth century we are told that Antwerp already was a populous city, and yet it had but one priest, who was involved in an incestuous amour and paid no attention to his duties.”
This, no doubt, is what we read in the life of St. Norbert as printed in Migne’s Patrology and elsewhere. But since the middle of the last century it has been known that there is an older and more reliable text of the same life. This was edited in 1856 for Pertz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, Volume XII.
Consulting this, we discover that the statement that there was only one priest in Antwerp is not to be found in the original form of the biography of St. Norbert, and, as the editor, Wilmans, points out, the insertions made by the later interpolator are by no means historically reliable.[ See Pertz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, vol. XII, pp. 663 and 690.] Dr. Lea’s contention was that in the twelfth century priests were too few to be able to hear many confessions “with the elaborate formula then in use.”
There would be much to say on this subject, but I am content to note here that the statement about Antwerp to which he appeals is taken from an untrustworthy source and lacks any extrinsic confirmation.
Blunder No. 5
This is a much more serious matter. On page 204 Dr. Lea remarks: “In rendering confession obligatory, the Lateran Council (1215) ordered bishops to appoint penitentiaries in all conventual churches, showing that the regulars were no longer to be allowed to consider their chapters as sufficient, and in time, as we have seen in the case of the Benedictines and Augustinian Canons, they were required to confess oftener than once a year.”
Dr. Lea’s assumption, as anyone will see who reads the context and follows his argument, is that this Canon 10 of the Lateran Council was framed with the view of encouraging the practice of confession among the monks themselves, because their chapters were no longer sufficient to maintain discipline.
But even the smallest degree of attention paid to the wording of the enactment will show that its purpose was not to create a staff of penitentiaries for the monks, but for the lay folk who frequented the cathedrals and great conventual churches. It was a question of providing both preachers and confessors, the former need being particularly emphasized.
The bishops, we are told in the decree, because they cannot be in many places at once and are often either overworked, old, or infirm, need help in their special duty of preaching the word of God to the people and in the administration of penance. It is consequently enjoined that both in cathedrals and in other conventual churches, suitable persons should be ordained (or appointed?) to help the bishop in his work of preaching and hearing confessions.
I should have liked to quote the whole of the canon, but its length will only allow of my reproducing the more relevant words in a footnote.[ “Praecipimus tam in cathedralibus, quam in aliis conventualibus ecclesiis viros idoneos ordinari, quos episcopi possint coadjutores et co-operatores habere non solum in predicationis officio, verum etiam in audiendis confessionibus, et penitentiis injungendis ac ceteris quae ad salutem pertinent animarum. ” The decree is printed in full in Hefele-Leclercq, Conciles, vol. V (1913), p. 1340.] As for Lea’s gross misconception of its purport, I find it almost impossible to believe that he could ever himself have looked at the decree. A man who was capable of that sort of travesty of a perfectly plain Latin text was capable of anything. If I had stumbled upon only one such blunder as this in the ten assigned pages I should consider that the profound distrust I expressed thirty-three years ago was fully justified. The Lateran decree has absolutely nothing to do with the confessions of monks.
One might very reasonably have taxed Lea with two other exhibitions of carelessness which occur in the same paragraph on page 204. He states that Ottoboni in 1268 enacted a decree “inferring that monks should be obliged to confess monthly.” This is by no means accurate. The purport of the injunction was that in the monasteries certain confessors should be appointed who were to report to the abbot once a month if any of the community did not often go to confession and rarely said Mass.
Lea goes on to state that Aquinas “pronounces this improper,” but the passage in the Summa to which we are referred has nothing to do with Ottoboni’s English constitutions, of which St. Thomas is very unlikely to have known anything.
What Aquinas is discussing is the question whether a man who has fallen into sin commits a new sin if he does not go to confession at once when he has the opportunity. St. Thomas decides in the negative, even though the offender should be a monk, but he nowhere says or hints that it would be improper to impose a law on religious requiring them to confess monthly or at any stated interval.
Blunder No. 6
A garbling of the truth in a somewhat different form occurs on p. 206 when Dr. Lea writes as follows: “Yet so vague as yet were the current notions [concerning the remission of sins] that in another passage Honorius [of Autun] describes confession as equal to baptism in remitting sins, without conditioning it on contrition and satisfaction.”
The reader will infer, and is apparently meant to infer, that the laity were encouraged by Honorius and others to think that if only they confessed their misdeeds, the sin was forgiven without either sorrow or any form of penance. Anyone who looks at the Elucidarium[ Elucidarium, book II, chap. 20, in Migne, P.L., vol. 172, cc. 1150-1151. It is by no means certain that Honorius of Autun was the author of the Elucidarium. ]will at once see that this is a mischievous perversion of the writer’s plain meaning. True, the text states that as original sin is remitted by baptism so actual sin is remitted by confession. But in the few sentences immediately following we are told that there is a penance to be imposed by the confessor which is like the sentence of a judge and that, as a wound is never healed so long as the iron remains embedded in it, so no good works, not even penance, can avail to obtain the pardon of sin unless the sin itself is given up. This is surely to insist upon the need of contrition in its most practical form. Moreover, when it is stated a little further on that peccata per poenitentiam et confessionem remittuntur[ Migne, P.L., vol. 172, c. 1173, and note the emphasis laid on the power of priests to bind and loose, c. 1132.] no one can pretend that the avowal of the lips which wins pardon is here unconditioned.
From the nature of the subject I am afraid that the further catalogue of Dr. Lea’s indiscretions is bound to prove a little monotonous. There is a noticeable sameness which pervades the group of blunders now to be discussed, but they are entirely separate blunders, and in each case I would invite the reader to compare the American historian’s statements with the text of the documents to which he himself makes appeal.
It seems desirable, however, to preface this second list with a few words of explanation. Dr. Lea’s fixed purpose to justify his own pet theories at all costs has not a little to do with the numerous perversions of fact which remain to be considered.
The eleven pages (199-211) of the History of Confession, selected more or less at random by Professor G. E. Moore, form part of Dr. Lea’s chapter viii. This section of his work is mainly devoted to proving that auricular confession developed very slowly and very late, so much so that it cannot be regarded as coming into general use until the decree Omnis utriusque sexus, enacted by the fourth Council of Lateran (1215), made annual confession obligatory upon all the faithful. There would be much to say on almost every.aspect of this proposition, but the limits of a C.T.S. pamphlet preclude its discussion here.
One of Dr. Lea’s main arguments in support of his theory is derived from what he alleges to have been the practice of the religious orders. He declares that even among monks and nuns, whose lives were supposedly given up to observances of piety, private confession had no recognized place. No monastic rule enjoined it. Down to the end of the twelfth century, evidence, so he assures us, is lacking that monks and nuns went to confession at stated intervals or that they received absolution in due course after a penance had been imposed by the confessor.
On the other hand, there was an institution common to all orders of monks which bore a somewhat close analogy to the public penance of the early centuries. When the brethren, as a rule daily, assembled in chapter, a notable part of the proceedings was concerned with the correction of offenders.
In Dr. Lea’s words: “The monks thus had adopted the custom of daily chapters or assemblies in which sinners were expected to confess their faults and accept punishment, and where accusations could be brought against those who did not voluntarily accuse themselves, even as in the congregations the faithful were more or less accustomed to do the same This answered all purposes of discipline and private confession would have been a manifest surplusage.” Lea, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences, vol. 1, p. 185.
He adds (p. 197): “In their daily or weekly chapters the brethren assembled and were expected to confess their faults or to be accused, when immediate punishment, usually scourging, would be inflicted. . . . There was nothing in the slightest degree sacramental about this, but it sufficed.” And again, a little further on, we are told (p. 204) that towards the end of the twelfth century the practice of private confession began to be adopted in place of this, or, as our author puts it, “the change was probably hastened by the desire of the monks to substitute the secret confessional, with its rapidly diminishing penances, for the humiliation of self-denunciation and scourging at the discretion of the presiding prelate.”
Dr. Lea is quite right in assuming that the public confession or denunciation in chapter was almost universally prevalent in religious houses and that it was a recognized means of maintaining monastic discipline. What he fails to understand is that private confession did not aim at maintaining discipline and was in no sense a substitute for the public tribunal. The disclosure of sin to a confessor was never an observance imposed as an additional burden, a means of enforcing the rigours of cloister life, but, on the contrary, it was an alleviation, a relief for troubled consciences.
For the most part auricular confession was not a matter of general discipline, but, like private prayer or the choice of spiritual reading, it was left to the discretion of the individual monk. Consequently, it is not mentioned in the Rule as are other details of uniform observance. Public self-accusation in chapter was not abrogated because sacramental confession in private became more frequent or because the latter was now explicitly provided for in later revisions of the monastic constitutions. The two had always gone on concurrently.
Consequently, when Dr. Lea talks of “surplusage” and “substitution,” he is only betraying his own inability to understand the inner life of such good religious as were earnestly bent on attaining purity of conscience. Self-accusation in chapter dealt only with external faults, breaches of monastic rule, or matters giving scandal within the cloister because they were patent to all.
But what really troubled the peace of mind of the more devout monk was the doubt created by evil thoughts, by temptations perhaps imperfectly resisted, by resentful and insubordinate feelings, sins of omission, broken resolutions, and above all by the more or less involuntary results of dreaming. It was never meant that these faults or misgivings should be disclosed to the brethren in chapter. Many of the fears which troubled the conscience of the scrupulous religious could not be declared in public without offence to modest ears. We know that every day the monk prayed at Compline:
Procul recedant somnia
Et noctium phantasmata
Hostemque nostrum comprime
Ne polluantur corpora.
Whenever he was subject to these infirmities of the flesh he wanted confession-if possible, at once and before Mass. The need was recognized, and the existing constitutions of the twelfth century, not to speak of some much earlier, show that in most cases relief was within his g.asp.
With this much of general explanation, I pass on to present a further instalment of Dr. Lea’s blunders, culled from the eleven pages assigned. Taking the religious orders in turn, he professes to show that their Rule made no provision for auricular confession save possibly in the immediate anticipation of death. As against this a careful examination of the documents proves that in case after case he has grossly misrepresented, or else overlooked, all the evidence unfavourable to the theory he has propounded. The points dealt with need little comment; the facts are patent and may be left to speak for themselves.
Blunder No. 7
On pages 199-200, Dr. Lea discusses the religious observances of the Cluniac order and amongst other things he makes these statements: “We possess a very complete account of the discipline of the mother-house of Cluny about the year 1080, including details as to the semi-annual bathing of the monks, their stated times of blood-letting, etc. … We are told all the signs that were used to replace the voice, so that the holy silence of the monastery might not be broken. . . .
“The daily chapters for confession and accusation were duly held, but so little confidence was felt in the candour of the brethren that discipline and morals were maintained by officials known as circatores-spies or detectives, who had entrance everywhere and who were always moving around to observe and report offences. Yet the only prescription of auricular confession was that the novice when received confessed all the sins committed in secular life, and the monk when dying confessed again as a preparation for extreme unction. Some half a century later in the new Statutes which Peter the Venerable introduced into the Cluniac Rule, there is still no allusion to confession.”
The words “still no allusion to confession” clearly imply that in the earlier code, apart from the time of entrance and of death, confession was not even referred to. But in that very code of A.D. 1080, the Consuetudines Udalrici, to which Dr. Lea gives copious references, lib. II, cap. 12, bears this heading: “How he [the monk] should come to confession,” and in the text of the chapter we read:
“If he has need to go to confession [ad confessionem venire] for something he has done amiss [pro aliquo excessu] he comes to the priest whom he prefers and standing before him he puts his right hand out of his sleeve and places it on his breast, which is the sign for confession. The priest rises and the brother follows him into the chapter-house and first makes a complete prostration before him. The priest bids him rise and when he is seated the brother tells him what he has to say.
“If something has happened to him in the night which we, for modesty’s sake, term ‘fragility,’ let him already before confession have repeated the seven penitential psalms, or the Our Father seven times if he does not know the psalms, and after he has confessed let him perform whatever penance the priest imposes. And on that day he must not kiss the text of the gospel, or come to receive the pax, or take part in the offertory.” Migne, P.L., vol. 149, cc. 706-707.>
Dr. Lea seems to have overlooked this chapter in the Consuetudines, though he gives precise references to seven other chapters, extracting from them anything likely to throw discredit on the monks, such as their “semi-annual bathing” and the alleged “spies,” etc. I can only say that, if he did overlook it, it was a piece of gross carelessness very convenient for his argument. If, on the other hand, he knew of its existence and suppressed all mention of it, such disingenuousness would fully justify a still more severe verdict.
Blunder No. 8
On page 200 we are told that “in the early Rule of the Canons Regular there was no precept of auricular confession.” Whether we possess the exact wording of St. Chrodegang’s original constitution or not, it is certain that we do possess texts written for the Canons Regular early in the ninth century. These direct that the Canons are to make their confession twice a year to the Bishop, while at intervening times facilities were afforded that they might confess either to the Bishop or to the priest whom he should appoint, “whenever they should choose or require it.” Obviously, all this can apply only to auricular confession. Moreover, in this case there was a direct precept that confession should be made at least twice in the year. I have translated the passage in full in The Tablet for March 4, 1905. The Latin in a ninth-century copy is found in the Berne MS. 289. By W. Schmitz the text has been printed from the Leyden Codex Vossianus, Latin 94. See Schmitz’s essay Regula Canonicorum S. Chrodegangi, Hanover, 1889, pp. 10-11.
Blunder No. 9
In the light of this evidence concerning the traditional observance of the Canons Regular it would in any case be difficult to credit Dr. Lea when he assures us (page 200) that about 1115 (i.e., 300 years later) “Peter de Honestis drew up an elaborate account of their discipline, including baths and blood-letting, but the only provision for private confession is on the deathbed.” Here again our historian refers us boldly to the rules formulated by Peter de Honestis as they are printed in Migne, volume 163. Now in lib. I, cap. 30 of that code (Migne, c. 719) we have mention of a certain class of offences which, though worthy of severe punishment, it would be most undesirable to publish to the community in chapter. The offender is exhorted to confess his sin fully to the Prior, with this additional proviso:
“But if, stricken with shame or overcome by terror, he [the culprit] should be unable to bring himself to disclose this to the Prior, let him manifest it to one of the priests whom the Prior has appointed to receive the confessions of the brethren, and let him do penance for his sin as he shall direct.”
There was then, we see, some sort of staff of priests whom the Prior had appointed to hear the confessions of the community. What is more, we are told in lib. III, cap. 15 (Migne, c. 738), of a method of preparing for the greater feasts. There was a public accusation of faults in chapter and a general penance to be performed by all. But a further notification follows in these terms: “If, however, anyone wishes to confess anything privately, let him confess to the Prior, or to the priests who have been appointed by the Prior to this office.” How can we possibly reconcile these phrases “alicui presbyterorum quem prior fratrum confessiones suscipere mandaverit hoc manifestet, ” and “confiteatur priori sive presbyteris per priorem ad hoc officium deputatis” with Dr. Lea’s declaration that in the rules of Peter de Honestis “the only provision for private confession is on the death-bed”? Once again we seem fully justified in declaring that a writer so scandalously negligent in studying the evidence which he himself cites forfeits all confidence.
Blunder No. 10
Not less astonishing is Dr. Lea’s reference to the rules of the Canons at Montfort in the diocese of Saint-Malo. Although he ascribes them to the end of the twelfth century, he assures us (page 200) that they “have no provision for auricular confession, but the public confession and accusation in the daily chapters is in full force, when the Prior grants absolution and adjudges the penance or punishment.” Certainly, as in nearly all the religious communities of the Middle Ages, the public accusation of faults in chapter was maintained, but this in no way conflicted with the practice of private confession. At Montfort full provision was made for such private confession in terms closely resembling those of the Cistercian Rule.
I shall have occasion to quote the Cistercian constitution a little further on, but I may note here how the Montfort Canons are bidden (cap. 2) to spend the time between Prime and Terce “in reading, prayer, and confession” and how in cap. 7 it is stated once more that “at any time set apart for reading before dinner, and again in the interval before Prime, those who before the first stroke of the bell make the appointed signal are free to go to confession.” [“Nam omni tempore lectionis ante prandium et etiam in intervallo ante Primam, qui ante ictum fecerint signum possunt confiteri. ” See Martene, Thesaurus, vol. IV, c. 1220, and cf. c. 1216.]
Blunder No. 11
Special interest attaches to Dr. Lea’s inexcusable misrepresentation of the Carthusian usages, for we have confirmatory evidence of the real conditions in the practice of the great St. Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln. According to Lea (page 200) the earliest statutes of the order were written by Abbot Guigo, about 1128, and then he goes on: “The Rule is very full, ordering the monks to shave six times a year and [be] let blood five times, but its only allusion to confession is on the deathbed, when the dying monk is expected to confess to a priest and receive absolution.” Turning to the reference given, i.e., the Constitution of Guigo as printed in Migne, volume 153, we find that the deathbed of a monk was certainly not the only occasion when confession is mentioned. In cap. 7 (Migne, loc. cit., c. 647) it is stated that: “Every Saturday we meet in the cloister [not, be it noted, in the chapter-house] and we confess our sins to the Prior or to those whom he has appointed.” Again in cap. 42 we read that on the eves of festivals the conversi (lay brothers) come to the church of the monks where they hear an exhortation and “confess their misdoings, if such they have [si quas habent confitentur offensas].”
Of course, the question may quite properly be raised whether this was a public or private confession. But even if Dr. Lea held it to be the former, he has no right to burke inquiry by stating categorically that the only allusion to confession was in connection with the deathbed. And, what is even more to the point, the traditions of this unchanging order definitely affirm that the Saturday confession was private and sacramental from the beginning. [See Le Couteulx, Annales Ordinis Carthusienis, vol. I (1887), p. 349.]
Thus the chaplain and biographer of the Carthusian St. Hugh of Lincoln († 1200) assures us that “throughout life the Saint, once in the week, namely on the Saturday, had recourse to the cleansing tide of a most exact confession. This, in accord with the inviolable tradition of his order, he on no account omitted; in fact, he would often have recourse to it more frequently, directly any scruple out of the common arose in his mind from anything he had done, said, or thought.”
This is recalled by his intimate friend and biographer in connection with St. Hugh’s periodical visits to the Charterhouse of Witham, which the Saint had himself founded, and we are told further that when there the holy Bishop was wont over and over again to make a general confession of all the sins of his life. [Magna Vita St. Hugonis (Rolls Series), pp. 200-201.] In any case I can see no excuse for the writer who, to favour his own controversial purpose, tells us positively that in a certain document there is only one allusion to confession, whereas in point of fact there are three.
Blunder No. 12
As we go on things get worse instead of better. There is perhaps no more flagrant example of Dr. Lea’s interested misstatements veiled under a half-truth than what we find him writing about the Cistercians on page 201. He says of the Usus Antiquiores (c. 1134) of that order:
“They are very prolix and minute, prescribing every detail of monastic life, even for the sudden nose-bleeding of a priest when celebrating Mass. Like other Rules they provide for accusation and self-accusation in the chapter, followed by punishment and absolution, but there is no injunction of private confession, though the abbot, prior, and sub-prior are empowered to listen to those who desire to confess such things as illusions in sleep. Even on the deathbed no formal or detailed confession is prescribed. The dying man merely said ‘Confiteor’ or ‘Mea culpa, I pray you to pray for me for all my sins,’ [Dr. Lea was probably unaware that this is just what commonly happens when Extreme Unction is administered at the present day. The rubric in the Rituale Romanum still stands: “quod si aegrotus voluerit confiteri, audiat illum et absolvat. “] and the absolution was equally informal.”
It is true that there is no injunction of private confession; it is also true that on the deathbed no formal or detailed confession is prescribed. These things were left to the devotion and conscience of the individual monk as he felt he needed this form of help. But nothing can be clearer than the fact that private confession was in full vigour in the order both for those in health and for the dying and also that other priests heard confessions besides the Prior and sub-Prior. In cap. 70, cited-but only in part-by Lea himself, we read that after the conclusion of Prime, during which the public confession of faults had been made and penance imposed or inflicted:
“All leave the chapter-house [exeunt omnes] unless someone linger behind to make his confession or because he is ill. But so long as anyone is making his confession let no one remain there unless it be someone who is similarly employed. For during all the time appointed for reading-though this applies only before dinner and in the interval preceding Prime-they can confess there [i.e., in the chapter-house].
“Accordingly, after they [the Prior and the penitent] have taken their seats, let the Prior say Benedicite and the other Dominus. The Prior rejoins with Deus sit nobiscum, and then let the other answer Amen and briefly confess the faults for which he asks forgiveness. His tale being ended, let him at once add, ‘Of these and all my other sins I confess myself guilty and implore pardon.’
“Then let the Prior, after pronouncing an absolution over him [facta super eum absolutione], enjoin him a penance. After that he can, if he wishes, encourage him, warn him, or scold him, as he thinks most expedient, but only in a few words. If anyone, wishing to make his confession, should, after the signal for Mass is given, detain one of those who hear confessions [aliquem eorum qui confessiones audiunt] [The more accurate text published by Guignard Monuments primitifs de la Règle Cistercienne prints audiunt where Migne’s edition (vol. 166, c. 1446) incorrectly gives audivit. ] or again should call one of them away from Mass into the chapter-house, let him confess briefly while they [confessor and penitent] both remain standing.”
What I complain of is that from the whole context of the passage in Lea’s book the reader must inevitably infer that auricular confession among the Cistercians in 1134 was practically unrecognized, whereas an examination of the “Usus” themselves shows that it formed part of the monk’s daily life and that the external ritual had been legislated for in a compendious form which rendered it thoroughly workable. Moreover, a casual proviso inserted at the close of cap. 88 makes it clear that confession at the approach of death, despite Lea’s statement to the contrary, was a normal practice in the order. Punctuality at community duties was greatly insisted upon, and those, for example, who “lost their verse,” i.e., were not present in the refectory before the second versicle of the grace was pronounced, suffered a suitable penalty. But there were exceptions, and in cap. 88 we have a clause providing that the penalty does not apply to late-comers who are engaged in receiving guests or “who are taking Communion to the sick, or are anointing them, or are hearing their confession when they are at the point of death.”
Blunder No. 13
On page 202 Dr. Lea states that “the only allusion to confession in the rules of Stephen of Grammont is a prohibition to confess to anyone outside of the order; the brethren might, if they so chose, confess to each other, and, as many of them were laymen, there was no recognition of the sacramental nature of such practice.” Upon this I will only remark that the reference to the words of the Epistle of St. James (5:16) does not convey the slightest suggestion that the brethren were free to confess to those who were not priests.
We are bidden, Stephen says in effect, to confess to one another (confitemini invicem peccata vestra), not to people outside the order. On the other hand, in the Antiqua Statuta of Grammont we have a clear indication that this ministry of penance was regarded as proper to priests alone. Cap. 5 directs that “when priests pronounce upon the brethren the judgments of penance [cum judicia poenitentiae sacerdotes fratribus injungunt] they must not speak of other matters which are not to the point.”[ See Martene, Thesaurus, vol. IV, c. 1231.] It is, therefore, in any case, untrue that the only allusion to confession is a prohibition to confess to externs.
Blunder No. 14
I can here only point out very shortly how Dr. Lea (page 202) declares that Adam the Scot (c. 1180) knew nothing of any “precept of sacramental or auricular confession” among the Premonstratensians, but considered that the system of public self-accusation in the chapters sufficed for all needs. This, however, is ridiculous, for Adam’s treatise, Soliloquia, proves at great length that the practice of private confession was a matter of vital interest in the order. That the confession made to the Superior or priest was private is shown by the horror which Adam expresses at the suggestion that the Superior could possibly reveal to others the sins which had been confessed to him.[ See Migne, vol. 198, cc. 865-869. Adam declares that any such revelation of confession would be an “abominabilissimum et prorsus diabolicum scelus” (c. 869, A.), with other strong language to the same effect.]
Blunder No. 15
Finally, I cannot forbear adding to this list what I regard as the outrageous suggestio falsi conveyed in Lea’s remark on page 20I that “not long after this [1134] passages in sermons of St. Bernard justify the assumption that confession and communion at Easter were becoming customary. ” I have italicized the offending words which are sufficiently refuted by the quotations occurring in the earlier pages of Lea’s own volume. For example, in 822, three centuries earlier than this, as our author admits (page 188), the statutes of Corbie order a holiday at the beginning of Lent “so that the labouring folk may have time to confess” and thus prepare themselves by penance for their Easter Communion. [“Statuta Antiqua Abbatice Corbiensis, ” lib. I, cap. 2, in D’Achery, Spicilogium, vol. I, p. 587.]
References to “shrift” are of frequent occurrence in our Anglo-Saxon laws, and the normal Communion days were three, Easter, Whitsuntide, and Christmas. But the evidence, going back to the time of Archbishop Egbert, Bede, and Alcuin, is far too copious to be outlined here. Such non-Catholic authorities as Hauck, .aspari, and Liebermann fully admit its force.[ I have dealt with the question in some detail in The Tablet, February and March 1905.]
I can only refer briefly to a passage in the contemporary life of St. Margaret of Scotland († 1093). The whole context shows that she found the Scottish people very barbarous and ill-instructed in the matter of Church observances. She asked them “why it was that on the festival of Easter they neglected to receive the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ according to the usage of the holy and apostolic Church. ” They excused themselves by quoting St. Paul’s words that he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh judgment to himself. Thereupon the Queen explained:
“It is the man who, without confession and penance, but carrying with him the defilements of his sins, presumes to approach the sacred mysteries, such a one, I say it is, who eats and drinks judgment to himself.” [Acta Sanctorum, June, vol. II, p. 327.]
The practice, as she shows further, then and long before, was that the people confessed at Shrovetide, performed their penance (generally a much more serious matter than in later times) during Lent, and received Communion at Easter.
I submit, then, that by the exposure of the above fifteen blunders Dr. Coulton’s challenge has been fairly met. What perhaps impresses me most is the fact that on the surface Dr. Lea presents a case which to the normal reviewer, indolent or otherwise, seems entirely convincing and satisfactory.
Even Dr. Coulton, who has given his life to mediaeval studies, after reading the section selected, was so persuaded of its impregnable accuracy that he wrote to me in terms which awaken memories of Bombastes Furioso: “I defy you to find even a single patent blunder in all these twelve pages.” The blunders only come to light when, after much toil and waste of time, one investigates the sources appealed to and finds that they say something entirely different from what the American controversialist had read into them.
That was my experience thirty-six years ago when I first had occasion to study Dr. Lea’s volume on indulgences. [I may refer to an article of mine in The Dublin Review, January 1900.] It has been my experience again during these last weeks in dealing with another.aspect of his work. From one point of view I have occasion to be grateful to Dr. Coulton,[ I have been informed that Dr. Coulton is aggrieved because in first publishing these comments I marked with a [sic] two mistakes which occur in a letter he sent to me. I can only say that the two miswritten words occur in the last sentence of this hand-written letter, immediately above what I assume to be his own signature. How could I quote the passage otherwise, if I was to quote it at all? I am now informed that the letter in question was dictated. Be it so, but if Dr. Coulton does not take the trouble to read the letters which he signs, he is none the less responsible for their contents. I have taken little notice of Dr. Coulton’s handwriting, and, being rather blind and unobservant, I took it for granted that the whole was written by himself. Dictated letters are usually typed, and that was not here the case. That I have not wished to make capital out of trivialities will be clear from the fact that I have made no reference to the misprints or slips of the pen in Dr. Lea’s selected pages. On p. 210 he speaks of Trithemius as living “at the close of the sixteenth century” he, of course, intended to write fifteenth century; on the same page “aperis paradisi portus” is printed instead of portas; on p. 204, note 2, 1216 is given as the date of the Lateran Council; it should be 1215; and so on.] for he has enabled me to reaffirm with renewed conviction that such attempts as I have made to follow up Dr. Lea’s trail “have always ended in a more deeply rooted distrust of every statement made by him.”