ghostly father

English

Noun

ghostly father (plural ghostly fathers)

1. (obsolete, Roman Catholicism) confessor (priest who hears one’s confessions)
   • c. 1415-1440 (date written), Charles, Duke of Orléans, reproduced by E. K. Chambers, Early English Lyrics: Amorous, Divine, Moral and Trivial (1907), p. 31:

     My ghostly fader, I me confesse,
       First to God and then to you,
     That at a window,—wot ye how?—
       I stale a cosse of grete sweteness.

   • c. 1591–1595 (date written), [William Shakespeare], […] Romeo and Juliet. […] (First Quarto), London: […] Iohn Danter, published 1597, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]:

     Now will I to my Ghostly fathers Cell, / His Help to craue, and my good hap to tell.

   • 1625, Louis of Granada, translated by Richard Hopkins, A Memoriall of a Christian Life […] , page 184:

     Therfore I saye, that a general confession only in saying to a Ghostly Father, I am a sinner without specifying the deadly sinnes in particular, is no sufficient knowledge for the Ghostly Father to iudge rightly of euery sinner, that demandeth absolution of him, whose sinnes are to be remitted, and whose sinnes are to be retained.

   • 1680, The Papists bloody Oath of Secrecy […] ; republished as Samuel Johnson, William Oldys, editors, The Harleian Miscellany […] , volume 7, 1746, page 274:

     About the latter End of January, 1676, Thomas Thwing, a Priest, and William Rushton, another Popish Priest, who was my ghostly Father, came to my House at Shippon Hall, in Yorkshire […]

   • 1741, Charles Gobinet, The Instruction of Youth in Christian Piety […] , volume 1, page 172:

     The second remedy is frequent confession to a discreet ghostly father.

References

• Marshall, Peter (2017) Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation, Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 8: “‘ghostly father’ (a common name for the priest-confessor)”