Inventing the Sacred

Imposture, Inquisition, and the Boundaries of the Supernatural in Golden Age Spain
1. Auflage 2005
ISBN: 978-90-04-14581-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 25, 232 Seiten, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 590 g

Reihe: The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World

This volume examines the Spanish Inquisition’s response to a host of self-proclaimed holy persons and miracle-working visionaries whose spiritual exploits garnered popular acclaim in seventeenth-century Spain. In an effort to control this groundswell of religious enthusiasm, the Spanish Inquisition began prosecuting the crime of feigned sanctity, attempting to distinguish “false saints” from their officially approved counterparts. Drawing on Inquisition trial records, confessors’ manuals, treatises on the discernment of spirits, and spiritual autobiographies, the book situates the problem of religious imposture in relation to the Catholic church’s campaigns of social discipline and confessionalization in the post-Tridentine era and analyzes the ways in which conceptual controversies in early modern demonology, medicine, and natural philosophy complicated the church’s disciplinary aims.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Keitt, Andrew

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Kirchengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religiöser Fundamentalismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements. vii
Introduction. False Saints and Scandalous Impostors. 1

Chapter One. The Case of Mateo “the Holy Mat-Maker”. 13
Mateo in Madrid. 14
The Trial of Faith. 19
A Captive’s Audience. 23

Chapter Two. Royal Madrid: New Babylon or Catholic Court. 35
Villa y Corte. 35
Babylonian Madrid. 38
A Sacralized Cityscape. 40
An Inquisition for Madrid. 45

Chapter Three. Visions of Uncertainty. 55
Jean Gerson and the Discourse of Discernment. 56
Embodied Spirituality. 65
From Illuminism to Imposture. 78

Chapter Four. Interiority, Discipline, and “Unconfined Women”. 87
Interiority and Social Discipline. 88
Beatas at the Catholic Court. 91
Spiritual Governance, Popular Piety, and Gender. 99
Publicizing Piety. 107

Chapter Five. Spiritual Plagiarism. 114
Counter-Reformation Self-Fashioning?. 116
The Writings of María Bautista. 118
Impersonating Saint Teresa. 129

Chapter Six. The Miraculous Body of Evidence. 139
Medical Discourse and Visionary Experience. 144
Naturalization and Its Discontents. 151
Deposing the Devil. 172

Chapter Seven. Medicinal Monarchy. 183
Medical Politics. 183
Philip IV and the Construction of Royal Thaumaturgy. 193

Conclusion. 202

Works Cited. 207

Index. 225

Über Autor(innen)

Andrew Keitt, Ph.D. (1998) in History, University of California, Berkeley, is Associate Professor of History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.