Secret sins and the privacy of interior homo in early twelfth-century theological writings

My dissertation, “Secret Sins and the Privacy of Interior Homo in Early Twelfth-Century Theological Writings,” examines early scholastic conceptions of the self and the implications of describing a secret, inner life knowable only by God. A striking aspect of twelfth-century discussions about the soul and interior homo is the concern over who is the proper judge of the inner self and the “secrets of the heart.” As the bearer of God's image, interior homo is rightfully God's unique domain. It is God who “sees there where no man sees,” who “considers not the deed but the mind,” and twelfth-century theological writings from a variety of literary genres abound with images of a special, private relationship between God and the hidden heart or self. But among the same writers who adulate the special relation between God and the soul we find descriptions of a penitential theory which requires that this inner self be revealed through oral confession to a priest. A focus on changes in the exegesis of certain New Testament texts shows that the early schoolmen rejected the teachings found in the inherited Patristic and Carolingian authorities which had allowed sins of thought to be remitted “in the conscience alone.” An attempt to preserve an inner domain which was God's province, coupled with a demand that priestly jurisdiction be increased to include sins of thought, indicates a contemporary ambivalence over the secrecy of the inner self. Exploration of scholastic discussions on the nature of sin and the method of its transmission between body and soul shows that this discomfort over the privacy of the inner self was part of a general disquiet among the schoolmen over the newly complicated region they designated interior homo and of its capacity for affecting not only the outer man but also the church community.