There is one feature in these cases which shows how great was the dread of scandal. We frequently find details of the worst excesses committed in the churches. According to the canon law (Cap. 5, Extra, v, xvi) a church thus polluted required to be reconciled, but there is no trace in any of the records of the observance of this rule. It was presumably for the purpose of averting knowledge of such disgraceful occurrences that casuists discovered that pollution occurred only when the act was public and not occult.[283] * * * * * It was a favorite device, when a confessor had reason to fear that a denunciation was impending, for him to denounce himself, in the expectation of merciful treatment. Roman practice encouraged this by conferring virtual immunity in such cases, as was experienced by the Minim Hilario Caone of Besançon, who fled from Spain, in 1653, and presented himself before the Roman Inquisition, stating that for ten years he had heard confessions in the church of San Francisco de Paula in Seville, and that he had come in post to confess that he had solicited in confession some forty women, mostly with success. When questioned as to belief and intention, he answered satisfactorily and was only sentenced to abjure _de vehementi_, to visit the seven privileged altars of St. Peter's, and for three years to recite weekly the chaplet of the Virgin. This was not exceptional mercy for, in the same year, an equivalent sentence was pronounced on Vincenzo Barzi, who similarly denounced himself, and the existing rule is to impose only spiritual penance on the self-accuser, with advice to avoid in future those whom he has solicited.[284] [Sidenote: _SELF-DENUNCIATION_]