spiritual judge

And the murderers of clerks were given up to the civil courts; for the claim of the Church to punish them was reduced to an absurdity when it sheltered Becket’s murderers from justice, and they were simply punished by such penalties as the Pope, the supreme spiritual judge, could inflict.

Appeals to Rome were almost unknown; the principles which the Conqueror had laid down as defining the relations between the Crown and the papacy were maintained, and the establishment of ecclesiastical courts had not as yet proved mischievous; for in all serious cases the criminous clerk, after having been degraded by the spiritual judge, was handed over to the secular authority.

To be forgiven, a sin must be known and lamented, and confessed in all its details and circumstances to the priest, who, as a spiritual judge, proportions the amount of the satisfaction to be rendered by the penitent to the degree of guilt of the offence, as judged from the facts before him.

Her first deposition was made on the spur of the moment, before the spiritual judge who was sent to take her by surprise.

There was another difficulty: the spiritual judge had no right to make such an arrest save for a rejection of the Sacrament.