ABSTRACT
Drawing on the work of earlier scholars like Johannes Geffken, Steven Ozment maintained that the sacrament of penance only served to intensify the feelings of guilt and fear that gripped this anxious age. Ozment attributed the burdensome nature of confession to two factors: the demand that penitents produce real contrition before receiving absolution, and the expectation implicit in late medieval Christianity that laypeople imitate monastic ideals of penitential rigor and sexual purity in order to merit God's favor. This chapter examines the challenges to assess their validity. Drawing on authors' research on private confession in late medieval and Reformation Germany, the author seeks to demonstrate where Ozment's critics have located important vulnerabilities in his argument and also where they are themselves susceptible of correction. Ozment concluded that many laypeople on the eve of the Reformation could identify with Luther's unsuccessful struggle to satisfy his religious longings by becoming a self-described 'monk's monk'.
