The Miraculous Body of Evidence: Visionary ...

Sixtrvnth

Cc~t~turyJourtral

X X X V I / l (2005)

The Miraculous Body of Evidence: Visionary Experience, Medical Discourse, and the Inquisition in Seventeenth-Century Spain Atidrew Keitt University cfAlubama at Bir~ninglzam This article analyzes the role of medical discourse in assessing the veracity of visionary experience in Golden Age Spain. Focusing on the Inquisition's prosecution of susit describes the ways in which medicine could function as a tool of pected itr~postors, ecclesiastical discipline.The central argument is that by emphasizing the role of physiological factors in the genesis of many seemingly niiraculous phenomena, church authorities used medicine as a way of controlling access to the supernatural realtn in what amounted to a medical fideism. SPAINchurch off~cialsbecame increasiligly concerned with the IN POST-TRIDENTINE threat of spiritual inlposture-that is, falsifying divine favors such as supernaturally infused visions and n~iraculousrevelations. Over time this concern coalesced into a crime prosecutable by the Inquisition, and by the early seventeenth century cases for feigned sanctity had become a fixture on the dockets of tribunals not only in Spain, but throughout the Catholic world.' Such cases often involved a medical conlponent. In many instances, interior visions were accon~paniedby "rapture," the effects of which could include violent seizures, convulsions, fits of paralysis, palpitations, and involuntary shouts, sighs, and exclan~ations.Consequently, judges charged with ferreting out imposture had to grapple with the issue ofwhether these strange syriiptoms could be explained in purely physiological terms. The human body thus became a body of evidence in the Inquisition's attempt to distinguish genuine holy persons from their fraudulent counterparts. In confronting the thaumaturgic claims of suspected inlpostors, inquisitors often pointed out how physical infirmities and natural forces at work within the human body could simulate supernaturally infused spiritual gifts.This strategy was in keeping with a more general tendency toward applying medical models to spiritual phenomena during the period. If we assume a zero-sun1 game, however, in which an increasing e~ilphasison medical explanations indicates that the reality of the supernatural is being challenged, we run the risk of niisconstruing the role of medical discourse in this specific context. Medicine's role in the vetting of raptures and revelations was not part of a natural paradigm put forth as an alternative to

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is a growing body of scholarship on thc phenomet~ori.See, for example, Gabriella Zarri. P satltitd tra medi~cavoed err1 moderrra (Turin:Rosenberg & Sellier, 1991); Anne Jacobson Schutte.Aq~irittqSaints: I'rctcwse ~f Holitlrss, Irtquisitiurl, arrd Ceudrr itr the Replddii ~fVEtliie, 1618-1 750 (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins Univers~tyI'resq, 2001);and Stephen Hallczer, Berlr~cewExaltatiorl m d O!fanty: Fenlnle hfystics in the Golden Axe qf Spyi~irr(NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1002).

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theological explanations; instead, I will argue, medical discourse functioned as a buttress to theology in the form of a medical fideism. The case of Eugenia de laTorre will serve as a point of departure for an analysis of the issues outlined above. Eugenia, one of a number of men and women accused of feigned sanctity in Madrid and its environs in the decade of the 1630s, appeared before the Inquisition for the first time in the spring of 1639. Shortly thereafter her three confessors-Francisco Lbpez, an Augustinian friar fro111 Alcali de Henares; Juan Lcipez Martinez de Maria, a Discalced Carmelite from the town ofAlgete; and Antonio Bolivar of the Minor Clergy, also from Alcali de Henares-were accused of conspiring with Eugenia to falsify visions, raptures, revelations, and demonic possessions.2 Eugenia began her career as a beata, or spiritually inclined laywoman, some six years before her arrest, and during the intervening years had begun to acquire a reputation in and around Madrid as a visionary. Some of the earliest episodes of her extraordinary spiritual exploits were recounted by a monk named Diego Garcia, a resident at the monastery of O u r Lady of Atocha. Garcia testified that Eugenia would routinely undergo fits of rapture immediately after taking communion in the chapel of the monastery, in front of an altar dedicated to thevirgin Mary. These were so disruptive that he asked her to refrain from such displays on busy days of worship.-?Eugenia was also reputed to have witnessed visions of thevirgin Mary, and claimed revelations enabling her to see souls in purgatory and determine which would be saved and which would be d a m ~ l e d . ~ In addition to her putative spiritual gifts, Eugenia suffered from numerous bodily disorders, some of which her confessors thought to be demonic, while others were considered by-products of her alleged raptures and revelations, and still others adduced as "supernatural illnesses" sent by God to test ~ u g e n i a Providing .~ an accurate etiology of her synlptoms was a central concern of her spiritual handlers. Accordingly, Eugenia's confessors sought the advice of those best qualified to make such judgments: me~nbersof the medical profession. In seeking out medical expertise Eugenia's confessors were following standard practice, as confessor's manuals dealing with the subject of revelations routinely recommended this approach. A typical manual from the period, Ger6nimo Planes's Eatado del examen de revelaciones verdaderas yfalsas y de 10s raptos, provides a case in point. Planes advised spiritual directors to "consult, whenever necessary, those expert and wise doctors, so that a natural illness is not mistaken for divine rapture."6 h he transcript ofEugenia's trial is no longer extant.The records of her confessors'trials, however, contain testimony from many of the same witnesses who appeared at the trial of Eugenid de la Torre as well as the testimony of Eugenia herself, thus making it possible to piece together a version of her story. 3"Proceso de Juan Lopez Martinez," 1640-41; Archivo Hist6rico Nacional (hereafter AHN), Madrid, Inq. leg. 103,exp. 7,74; hereafter "L6pez Martinez."The transcript of the Lopez Martinez trial is unfoliated; subsequent pagination 1s my own. 4"Proceso de Francisco Lopez," 1640-43;AHN, Inq. leg. 103, exp. 6, fol. 225r; hereafter "Lopez." 5 ~ o p e zfol. , 93". 6Ger6nimo Planes,Zatado del rxamen d~ revelaciona verdadcras yf;~ls'~s y de 10s raptos (Valencia, 1634), fol. 380r. "consulte a 10s expertos y sabios medicos: para que no aprueue por rapto, lo que es enferrnedad

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T h e interventions of the m e d ~ c a lpersonnel consulted are meticulously described in the trial transcript. Juan L6pez Martinez testified that Eugenia de la Torre had remained mysteriously bedridden for a period of eighteen months, eliciting a great deal of speculation as to the cause of her infirmity. A doctor from Madrid was called in, but he could find no medicine that had any effect whatsoever on her condition. Lbpez Martinez suspected that this was the work of the devil, an opinion bolstered in his mind by Eugenia's equally mysterious sudden recovery7 According to witnesses' testimony, Eugenia's raptures were often accompanied by strange contortions of her limbs, contortions which sometimes lasted for weeks.' In other testimony, Eugenia complained of a violent throbbing in her temples, severe enough to be incapacitating.' It was also reported that Eugenia suffered from a hugely swollen abdomen that lasted a number of months, until it was relieved in a torrent of blood from her vagina. So intense was the hemorrhaging that a surgeon is was interpreted by her confessors as evidence had to be s ~ m m o n e d . ' ~ ' ~ hepisode that Eugenia had been impregnated by evil spirits. T h e quantity and variety of Eugenia's aflictions led her spiritual advisors to the conclusion that God had allowed the devil free rein to test her d e ~ o t i o r i .If~ ~ Eugenia's sufferings were indeed a test, the stoicism with which she bore her various illnesses was adduced by her confessors as further evidence of sanctity. In one instance Eugenia underwent a treatment in which a barber performed surgery for an infestation of worms in her genital area. During the procedure Eugenia lost great quantities of blood and flesh, which prompted Francisco Lbpez to comment that to have withstood such a treatment was "beyond the forces of nature."12 Faced with this kind of evidence, the pressing question for the Inquisition became how to define precisely the "forces of nature" in order to differentiate them from the supernatural. Whereas Eugenia's confessors eagerly interpreted her ailments as heaven-sent, or caused by the devil with divine pern~ission,inquisitors and the authors of manuals on the discernment of revelations tended to be a good bit more skeptical; in contrast to Eugenia's confessors, they used medical discourse as a way of curbing excessive enthusiasm for the supernatural. But what were the actual medical models brought to bear? Explanations proliferated. Not only did doctors write extensively on the subject, but the authors of tracts dealing with revelations commonly included lengthy expositions of relevant medical theory. Because these texts were intended as guides for confessors in the field and were frequently cited in manuals of inquisitional procedure, they can shed light on the ways

natural." All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. Seventeenth-century Spanish orthography does not conform to modern standards.The Spanish texts of my translations in their original form. 7 ~ 6 p e zfol. , 39r, L6pez Martinez, 61-63. XL6pezMartinez, 26. 9 ~ 6 p e zfol. , 24v. l'll.bpez, fol. 225r. " ~ 6 p e zMartinez, 63. 1 2 ~ b p c zfol. , 41v; Lbpez Martinez, 67-68.

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in which medical discourse was deployed in the analysis of extraordinary spiritual phenomena. Usually such treatises begin with a definition of terms. A typical exemplar of the genre, Hernando de Camargo y Salgado's L u z clara de la nochr obscura, begins with a basic definition of revelation, classifying it as "knowledge born of light superior to natural forces." Having made this distinction, he rehearses the tripartite hierarchy of revelations proposed by Augustine, and elaborated by Aquinas and countless others. The first, and most primitive, of these three types of revelation is corporeal, which according to Camargo,"is when we see something with the physical eye which we could not have seen unless it had been revealed to us by a higher power." O n e example given is that of Moses and the burning bush.The second type of revelation is imaginative (or "spiritual" in the words of St.Augustine).This is an interior vision in which sensory images represent ideas, without a physical act of perception taking place.These visions are usually of celestial beings, such as Isaiah's vision of God on his throne surrounded by seraphim. Camargo completes the list with the final and highest level of revelation: intellectual.An intellectual revelation is completely devoid of sensory content; it is an unnlediated encounter with the divine essence. Camargo gives the oft-cited example of St. Paul's ascension to the third heaven, described in 2 ~ o r i n t h i a n s . ' ~ These various grades of revelation form a hierarchy because they become increasingly disembodied as they move from the corporeal to the intellectual. Since the intellectual vision is the only form of revelation that does not depend in any way o n the bodily senses, it was considered the most reliable form of visionary experience in a philosophical tradition with a deep-seated preference for the metaphysical over the physical, the transcendent over the immanent. Augustine gives voice to these cultural assun~ptions,characterizing the intellectual vision as taking place in a realm "where transparent truth is seen without any bodily likeness." l 4 Corporeal and imaginative visions, in contrast, were subject to the vagaries of the physical world and the human body, and thus could easily become a source of error. Camargo warns that injuries to the brain, which affect the faculty of the imagination, are a potential source of false visions, as are illnesses brought on by excessive mortification of the flesh. Following the typical scholastic theory of perception, Camargo asserts that these physiological maladies are capable of distorting the perceptual apparatus, "disturbing the species" in such a way that forms in the imagination masquerade as things actually present, thereby persuading the unsuspecting penitent that God has sent a genuine supernatural vision. l5

I 3 ~ e r n a n d ode Camargo y Salgado, L u z tlara de la no(-he obsorra: ilniiu exemplar de cor!frssores, y penitrnrcJs sobre la itlateria de revelnciu~les,y espiritu de profeiitt (Madrid, lh50), 4 and 5. 14cited in RosalynnVoaden, C;odi Li6rds. M/i,merri Dilices:?R~Discernment of Spirits i n thr Writin2 o f Late-Alrdipval W o m e n Visionaries (Rochester, N Y : York Medieval Press, IYYY), 11. IScamargo, L u r rlclra de la rrodre ubsiura, 57. The doctrine of "species," derived from Aristotle's work on perception, was the scholastic attrrnpt to account for the transformation of sensory perceptions of material reality into abstract cognition. Species were representational forms that mediated between

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Theorists put forth many such accounts of how the lesser forms of revelation could be distorted. Juan Francisco Villava, in an early seventeenth-century tract, presents a long list of medical explanations for seemingly supernatural revelations. In a section in which he sets out to demonstrate that "not all raptures and revelations are proof of sanctity,"Villava lists a series of physical disorders that can simulate divine revelation and cites an illustrious cadre of natural philosophers and medical experts, including Marcilio Ficino and the medieval physician Arnau devilanova.16 Likewise, Ger6nilno Planes's treatise on revelations includes a lengthy section entitled "On How the Body Is the Cause of Raptures and Ecstasies," in which he details various syridromes that can approxin~atesupernatural raptures. The first of these Planes identifies as "catalepsis" or "congelation." The human body, subject to numerous miseries arising from imbalances in the four qualities of which it is composed, can cause rapture and the suspension of movenlent and sense perception . . . and among the diseases that suspend sense perception, the most notable is the one that the Greeks call . . . "catalepsis," and we in our colrlmon parlance, "congelation." This is caused when the humors obstruct the part of the brain where the animal spirits reside, and thus impede movement.l7 H e cites as an example the case of a priect who while saying Mass raised his arms heavenward and at that precise moment was struck by the aforementioned condition. Upon seeing this, the congregation inimediately assumed that they were witnessing an episode of divine rapture, but when doctors arrived to examine the priest, they determined that he was in fact suffering from "congelation of the animal spirits."' Planes provides another example, a condition he refers to as "mania." H e defines this as a mental illness caused by an overabundance of the choleric humor. This disorder, Planes claims, can be caused by a disparate set of factors, including deterioration of the brain, excess body weight, sudden vibrations, fasting, and lack of sleep. Those suffering from this disease can experience paranormal visual and auditory effects-resplendent displays of light, shadowy figures, whistling or ringing in the ears, and temporary deafness. They are obsessed with "stinking, dirty things"; they are inclined to lasciviousness; they have indecent dreams; they vacillate between fits of anger and withdrawn silence; when in deep meditation, they mind and matter. For an in-depth treatment, see Leen S p r u ~ tSp