Priests, books and the devil. Exorcism in Early Modern Catalonia

Smid, Bernadett (2022) Priests, books and the devil. Exorcism in Early Modern Catalonia. In: Lower clergy and local religion in 16 th –20 th century Europe, 2022. június 2-3., Budapest. (In Press)

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Abstract

During the religious renewal and Catholic Reform, Catholic authorities paid greater attention to separating the spheres of illicit folk magic, illicit and licit church-magical practices. They tried to eradicate or reform the criticized practices. These renewal efforts can also be traced in the Spanish demonological treatises from the 16 th Century. The reform-minded Pedro Ciruelo, great defender of catholic orthodoxy and the Franciscan friar, Martín de Castañega, both formulated the objectionable elements they found in contemporary exorcist practices. Of the two treatises, Ciruelo’s work gained greater popularity. Even a hundred and ten years after its first appearance in 1530, it served as a guideline among clergy to decide where the line was between permitted and prohibited religious practices. Ciruelo's treatise also reveals that in addition to the digressions of the priests authorized to exorcise, the practices of exorcists without episcopal licence (so called „spirit extractors”) were also a matter of concern for the Church. Looking at the statistics on superstition trials of the Inquisition of the Court of Barcelona, it is striking that in early modern times repression was more prevalent against man (76.5% according to Juan Blázquez Miguel) than in other Spanish courts. The proportion of ecclesiastical persons, especially the secular clergy is outstanding among them. In connection with my previous inquisition researches, in this paper I would like to present a trial that took place in 1637. This source documents the exorcist practice of the Catalan Father Pere Amich in Tàrrega. The aim of my paper is to present an ordinary exorcism against maleficium, the unorthodox readings and manuscript texts the Father's ritual consisted of in practice. This paper also explain the ritual elements, objects and system of gestures having been used in his healing acts in order to shed more light on the early modern practice of using different manuals and effective texts for exorcism in accordance with the local needs. This case study helps to understand the stratification and diversity of the texts, the importance of exorcism as ordinary healing act against a disease believed to be of harmful magical origin, their magical elements in the early modern Catalonia, their connections with the italian exorcismal literature, and last but not least, the possible role of Saint Cyprian's prayer in the exorcism ritual in the north-eastern part of the Iberian Peninsula.

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