Sexuality in the confessional : a sacrament profaned /
Stephen Haliczer.
- New York : Oxford University Press, 1996.
- 1 online resource (267 pages) : illustrations.
-
- Studies in the history of sexuality .
- Studies in the history of sexuality. .
Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-252) and index.
Auricular Confession and the Crisis in the Church -- Confession and Confessors in Transition -- The Spanish Inquisition and Its Jurisdiction Over Solicitation -- Trial and Punishment -- The Soliciting Confessor -- Victims and Unwilling Penitents -- Submissive and Ambivalent Penitents -- Carnal Behavior and Sexual Disorders -- Solicitation and Confession in the Anticlerical Imagination.
Drawing upon a wealth of actual cases and trial evidence left by the Spanish Inquisition, this work documents the eroticizing of the confessional between 1530 and 1819. It argues that the Counter-Reformation Church actually helped to foster sexual solicitation in the confessional.