ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some examples of relationships between male clerics and their female penitents and their literary expression in early modern Spain. There are indeed some cases in which a cleric used his position as spiritual director to manipulate and control a female penitent. The Spanish Inquisition, for example, actively investigated and punished ‘solicitantes’, clerics who solicited sexual favours during confession. Attending closely to these issues of gender and sexuality may help to elucidate one of the most heated controversies of the Catholic Reformation, the debate over frequent and daily communion. Historians and literary critics, are busily transcribing, translating and analyzing the numerous spiritual autobiographies produced by women in early modern Spain and its colonies. Writing the lives of extraordinary women also provided priests with an acceptable channel for treating controversial theological topics. Interestingly, just as these devotional works were being suppressed, spiritual biographies of holy women emerged as a popular form of literature.
