Frederick Schiller - The Pitaval Casebook

Now, however, a written confession is in principle nothing else than such a translation (internuntia confessionis, as the theologists say). People entrusted to the written confession the recognition of the sins, in the intention of confiding it later to the confessor. The use of a written confession recommended by a confessor whose trust has been called upon, when he is far away, would be totally annulled by Pope Clement VIII, because such confessions were always linked with many difficulties. But, as long as this practice was valid, everyone was obliged to inviolable silence, while all those who, either through inquisitiveness, fortuitously, or as a person exercising an office, learned something of a confession, have to exercise the strictest discretion.

The accusers of the Marquess were themselves convinced by these irrefutable, enlightening truths, that they have found it necessary to take as excuse for their cause, that the controversial papers are not real confessions, but rather only notes to be used for a confession.

“If we also admit that this statement is really valid; yet, even such a note may also not be used as a legal proof. For, by doing so, the confessing person would also, often, find himself in the namely danger. The Church ordered that such confessing person should recognize all his sins; as his memory is weak, he must help himself by putting, little by little, in writing the content of his confession. A process which the confessor himself very often uses! And should it be used against him afterwards? All the theologists have also decided unanimously that neither spiritual, nor worldly judges may make distinctions in consideration of the content which a sinner recognized, that they should exclude rather more the same papers from the legal acts, and should refrain from hearing an accused about them, or ask proofs about the details contained in them.

Without getting ourselves, here, into a broad enumeration of all the writers who have written over this subject, we invoke only what the famous canonist Dominicus Scoto, Charles the Fifth's confessor, said about it: “A certain man,” he says, “lost a paper on which he has written his crimes. This paper fell into the hands of a spiritual judge who, for that reason, filed a legal investigation against him and wanted to hear witnesses about such crimes. But he would be prevented by his superiors to use this irregular procedure to punish someone, and because of the law,“ adds this writer “which states that confession is such a sacred matter that everything leading to the disclosure of the same confession and has a relation to it, must remain buried in the deepest and inviolable silence.” And what he, here, in consideration of the spiritual judges says, should also be applied, according to his instruction, to the worldly ones.

However, the papers of which we talk about here, in fact, are not mere notes drafted by Lady Brinvillier, for her confession afterwards, but rather it is a true confession, written down in the confidence that it should be made known only to God or his servant. This whole incident with these letters shows that it is a true and real confession. It begins with the words: “I recognize before God and you, my honourable father.” The Marquess speaks, in that respect, only with God and her confessor who replaces God, and consequently, as her confession is meant to God alone, hence, God alone should know about it, and no human being has the right to investigate about her confession. The Church itself must be the Marquess' guarantee for keeping the secrecy of this confession, for “the Church has sacredly promised,” as the Cardinal Perron says, “to secure in its midst the secrets of its repenting children's heart, and to preserve their honour and life, that all their sins should remain faithfully and inviolably kept silent; and no one can do anything against it without, at the same time, trespassing all the divine and human rights.

“It is also neither the anointed person of the priest, nor his sacred office of giving the absolution, which contains the fundamental of this secrecy; it is rather more certain that the priest is also obliged to discretion, even if he should find it necessary to deny absolution to the confessing person, and that this duty also binds, in equal manner, any person who is not a priest and either intentionally, when he sits on a confessing chair to hear the dispositions of another person, or fortuitously, when he finds himself in the proximity of a confessional chair, or in case of necessity when a priest is not available, has taken the place of the confessor. Rather, his indissoluble duty to discretion comes uniquely and solely from the essence of confession itself.

“But people may argue that it is out of question to keep secret such writings of the Marquess; whether it is a confession or not, for people already know, indeed, what it contained. This objection is, however, already lifted up by the above demonstrated grounds. It is proven that not only a trial should never be based upon the same recognition, but rather such recognition may also never be used in an already pending trial as proof; and hence, above all, all this legal procedure, according to the same principle, should be considered null and void.

“Apart from these general grounds which show irrefutably the negligence in all the legal procedures based merely upon information obtained from a confession, one even finds in the confession of the Marquess herself a particular detail which sheds an even more enlightening ray about the uselessness of the same confession. Necessitated to flee from her fatherland where embittered enemies have sworn to bring her on the gallows; wandering around in a foreign country, without any assistance, without any advisor, covered with shame of her revealed love relationships with the most shameful of all human beings to all the world; she would, finally, experience a violent fever which confused her mind and put her in a fantasizing and incoherent condition when the sick person accepts the images of her shaken mind as truths, and very often describes acts which she has never once committed, or in which she did not have the least share. This condition is always the consequence of persecution through unfair images of terror and of presentation of horrible and undeserved punishments to a fearful imagination.

This detail proves not, however, that this writing is not a true confession. The whole content of the same letters is dedicated to God, because the beginning of the letter told us immediately that the whole recognition is put before God. To secure her the protection of inviolable secrecy, it is enough that she had the intention of asking for a general absolution which the confessor can also not refuse to the sick person in a state of incoherence, because such confusions are not to be considered as enduring error, but rather as temporary assaults during which lighter moments can also happen. Indeed, a prayer which a human being directs in such condition to God, is a true prayer and not seldom finds His hearing.

“By the way, people can judge from all these details that Lady Brinvillier, as she wrote in these letters, really had a violent fever which deprived her of the free use of her reason. In the state of torments in which her heated blood put her, she could hardly keep the feather. The letters are so clumsy that people cannot recognize her handwriting; and the words can hardly be read. The acknowledgments contained in these letters are proved false. She accused herself of having killed her father who has died calmly in the year 1666.”

These were the precise grounds with which Mister Nivelle defended the Marquess. But the corpus delicti have been perfectly proven. The Marquess' two brothers have really been poisoned, as proven by the report of a doctor, two nurses and a pharmacist. However, that Saint Croix and the Marquess, through the help of LaChaussée, have completed the two murders, is distinctively made clear by the gathered testimonies; and the Marquess' answers contained an even stronger motive against her. We also communicate here the answers from the affidavit itself: