La práctica de la confesión en la España moderna a través de la actividad de las órdenes religiosas

Abstract

This work analyzes the manuals of confession written by members of different religious orders in Spain during the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries. Its purpose is to contribute to the knowledge of the devote practices diffused by the clerics during this period. They thought that confession served to control and educate conscience. The article analyses some of the essential problems of the practice of confession during Postridentine period: the critics of the probabilistic system of moral, the use of the strategy of dilation of the absolution and, specially, the construction of conversion throughout the sacramental practice. The investigation remarks two matters: the progressive abandonment of the probabilistic system and the diffusion of a «sentimental» religiosity.