The (late) historical contingency of judiciary and confession

In his 1977-78 lectures (“Security, Territory, Population”, Chapter 8), Foucault observes that the judiciary was forming in the seventh and eighth centuries, and that by the eleventh and twelfth centuries the judiciary had already become “fairly generalized”. In the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) it was established that at certain points in the year confessional was obligatory. This form of pastoral power subjected the individual to the punishment of the church. Whereas formerly the pastor had a responsibility for the salvation of his flock, the Church had come to establish the subjectivity of the individual without in turn being responsible for the individual’s salvation. After 1215 governmentality came to be established through the Church; it continued until what may have been its zenith in the English Revolution of the seventeenth century, after which pastoral functions were taken up by government. Counter-conduct then arose less from religious institutions than political ones.