Embodied Religion in Early Modern Spain

FAIN: FA-52088-05

Alison Parks Weber
University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA 22903-4833)

This study explores how clergy and laity in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain and its colonies interpreted reported manifestations of divine bodily experiences: visions, voices, and ecstasies. For some, such embodied spirituality was a source of the miraculous power to heal and prophesy; for others, the same signs indicated illness, demonic possession, delusion, or fraud. Although ecclesiastical authorities disciplined some ecstatics and visionaries, there was no consistent effort to suppress them or debunk their thaumaturgical claims. I am interested in the reasons Spanish society failed to come to a consensus on this issue and what this can reveal about the extent and limitations of institutional religious power.