Overview

"In Sexuality in the Confessional: A Sacrament Profaned, Stephen Haliczer places the current debate on sex, celibacy, and the Catholic Church in a historical context by drawing upon a wealth of actual case studies and trial evidence to document how, from 1530 to 1819, sexual transgression attended the heightened significance of the Sacrament of Penance.Attempting to reassert its moral and social control over the faithful, the Counter-Reformation Church underscored the importance of communion and confession. Priests were asked to be both exemplars of celibacy and ""doctors of souls,"" and the Spanish Inquisition was there to punish transgressors.Haliczer relates the stories of these priests as well as their penitents, using the evidence left by Inquisition trials to vividly depict sexual misconduct, during and after confession, and the punishments wayward priests were forced to undergo. In the process, he sheds new light on the Church of the period, the repressed lives of priests, and the lives of their congregations; coming to a conclusion as startling as it is timely.Based on an exhaustive investigation of Inquisition cases involving soliciting confessors as well as numerous confessors' manuals and other works, Sexuality in the Confessional makes a significant contribution to the history of sexuality, women's history, and the sociology of religion."

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9780195096569

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A major contribution to the history of sexuality in early modern Europe and to the growing literature on the vast database for social and cultural history offered by the records of the Spanish Inquisition. It is the most important contribution to the study of sexual solicitation in the confessional since H.C. Lea's Auricular Confession and Indulgences, published exactly 100 years ago. --Choice<br> We should be grateful to Stephen Haliczer for opening up this new avenue of research --Sixteenth Century Journal<br>,. .Haliczer has been able to reconstruct an intriguing account of the intrusion of sexual desire, and its occasional fulfillment, into the operations of the sacrament of penance in early modern Spain. --American Historical Review<br>,. .this is a richly detailed and informative study of a hitherto obscure aspect of the Spanish Church during the early modern period....the author has developed a well-argued thesis which makes an important contribution to our understanding of the problem of solicitation in the early modern Spanish Church. --The Catholic Historical Review<br>,. .densely textured and rich in detail... --Kathryn Norberg, University of California, Los Angeles<br>

<br> A major contribution to the history of sexuality in early modern Europe and to the growing literature on the vast database for social and cultural history offered by the records of the Spanish Inquisition. It is the most important contribution to the study of sexual solicitation in the confessional since H.C. Lea's Auricular Confession and Indulgences, published exactly 100 years ago. --Choice<br> We should be grateful to Stephen Haliczer for opening up this new avenue of research --Sixteenth Century Journal<br>.. .Haliczer has been able to reconstruct an intriguing account of the intrusion of sexual desire, and its occasional fulfillment, into the operations of the sacrament of penance in early modern Spain. --American Historical Review<br>.. .this is a richly detailed and informative study of a hitherto obscure aspect of the Spanish Church during the early modern period....the author has developed a well-argued thesis which makes an important contribution to our understanding of

A major contribution to the history of sexuality in early modern Europe and to the growing literature on the vast database for social and cultural history offered by the records of the Spanish Inquisition. It is the most important contribution to the study of sexual solicitation in the confessional since H.C. Lea's Auricular Confession and Indulgences, published exactly 100 years ago. Choice

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