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In the 15th century, the sacrament of confession, the telling
of sins to clerical authority who were empowered to dispense penance as
well as forgiveness, was common. It appeared to have been a relatively
public event, performed in the open, not in a “confessional box” the standard
practice in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Baptismal fonts give
some indication of the setting. A late 15th-century font of the Seven
Sacraments theme, in the church of St. Nicholas, Denston (Suffolk), shows
a shriving pew. The confessor sits in the pew and parishioners, depicted
as two women, line up to speak with him. A font from Badingham (Suffolk),
c. 1485, shows penance being administered to a kneeling woman surrounded
by a crowd of people. Margery Kempe names specific priests
as her confessors, often mentioning that she would meet the confessor in
a chapel (Ch. 69). When in Rome,
where she had difficulties finding an English-speaking priest, Kempe records
that God took pity and sent a vision of St. John the Evangelist to hear
her confession. (Ch. 32). A sinless
state was a condition for the reception of the Eucharist, hence the importance
of the ritual. (See Ann Eljenholm Nichols, Seeable Signs: The
Iconography of the Seven Sacraments, 1350-1544, Rochester, New York,
1994.)
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