“The Secret Sin That One Commits by Thought Alone”: Confession as Private and Public in Seventeenth-Century France

Investigating the theological implications of confessions as private conversations, this chapter delves into the debate between the Jesuit Denis Pétau (1583–1652) and Antoine Arnauld (1612–1694). In response to Arnauld’s work De la fréquente communion, Pétau voiced criticism of the understanding that modern-day Christians should practise public penitence like the ancient church fathers. The response to Arnauld, entitled De la Penitence publique et de la préparation à la communion, opts for a much more limited sense of penitence in public and insists that some forms of penitence require more private modes of confession and more personal acts of satisfaction. By focusing on this appeal to the private sphere of confession in Pétau and in Arnauld, Nørgaard shows how these two works offered different responses to the new attitudes towards private confession.