Book 8, Chapter 6: A History of the Spanish Inquisition Vol. 4
The seduction of female penitents by their confessors, euphemistically known as solicitatio ad turpia or "solicitation," has been a perennial source of trouble to the Church since the introduction of confession, more especially after the Lateran Council of 1216 rendered yearly confession to the parish priest obligatory. It was admitted to be a prevailing vice, and canonists sought some abatement of the evil by arguing that the priest notoriously addicted to it lost his jurisdiction over his female parishioners, who were thus at liberty to seek the sacrament of penitence from others. (1) A Spanish authority, however, holds that this requires the licence of the parish priest himself and, when he refuses it, the woman must confess to him, after prayer to God for strength to resist his importunities.
The intercourse between priest and penitent was especially [96] dangerous because there had not yet been invented the device of the confessional--a box or stall in which the confessor sits with his ear at a grille, through which the tale of sins conceived or committed is whispered. Seated by his side or kneeling at his feet, there was greater risk of inflaming passion and much more opportunity for provocative advances. It was not until the middle of the sixteenth century that the confessional was devised, doubtless in consequence of the attacks of heretics, who found in these scandals a fertile subject of animadversion.