Author: Marie Lezowski, Laboratoire TEMOS (Laboratoire TEMOS), Centre national de la recherche scientifique (National Center for Scientific Research)

Abstract: »The documents produced by the Catholic Church to deal with the “abuse” of the sacred do not focus on sexual violence. For example, the Inquisition’s records on “solicitation” (sollicitatio) focus on the abuse of the sacrament of confession: a confessor who incites a person to commit “shameful” (sexual) acts is abusing the sacrament, not the person. Yet, prior to recent testimonies from victims, the history of such violence relies on these indirect traces of the events. The shift from abuse to violence in the historiography, often hasty, lacks a common methodology. In this article, I propose three criteria for identifying sexual violence committed by clergy in files dealing with solicitation: lack of consent, an oppressive dependence on the confessor that forces resignation to sexual acts, and recognition of the acts as constituting sexual violence by those close to the victim. These criteria, applied to the 191 solicitation files before the Office of Modena between 1605 and 1727 and to 360 relationships of spiritual direction, document 121 cases of sexual violence around confession. Finally, I offer a new perspective on mediation, a process often overlooked in cases where a cleric is the perpetrator of violence. I examine a settlement reached in 1717 to understand how silence prevailed, both among the family members of the victim and within the Church, after a young woman was repeatedly raped by her parish priest. The tools presented here are done so with the aim of initiating coordinated research projects and can be applied to all Mediterranean and imperial contexts where the Inquisition had jurisdiction.« (Source: Annales)

Contents:

	L’histoire des violences sexuelles dans l’Église, entre clergé criminel, violence vécue et domination (p. 12)
	La récurrence des témoignages, clef pour l’histoire des violences dans la durée (p. 15)
	L’ancrage de l’étude à Modène sur un long xviie siècle (p. 17)
	La violence dite par le non-consentement: possibilités et limites du «non» au Saint-Office (p. 21)
	Comment la violence se fait: les dépendances au confesseur (p. 27)
		La dépendance filiale au père spirituel (p. 28)
		Le confesseur obligé (p. 30)
		Échanges forcés en confession (p. 33)
		Maladie et dépendance au confesseur médecin (p. 36)
		De la déviance personnelle à l’histoire des dépendances au confesseur (p. 40)
	La violence en négociation: reconnaissance familiale et occultation publique (p. 43)

Wikipedia: History of Europe: History of Italy / History of early modern Italy | Catholic Church: Catholic Church in Italy / Archdiocese of Modena–Nonantola, Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals in Italy | Sex and the law: Sexual violence / Catholic Church sexual abuse cases