billets de confession

In Roman Catholicism, billets de confession were documents affirming submission to the bull Unigenitus. This bull, issued by Pope Clement XI in 1713, condemned 101 propositions from the Jansenist writer Pasquier Quesnel. Jansenism was a controversial religious movement in the 17th and 18th centuries, primarily in France, that debated the reconciliation of divine grace and human freedom.12

The billets de confession became a point of contention in the mid-18th century. Suspected Jansenists were required by the archbishop of Paris to sign these papers. Refusal meant denial of the last sacraments and burial in consecrated ground. The Parlement of Paris opposed this, leading to a dispute that was ultimately forbidden by King Louis XV in 1754.1