Course for international guest/part time students

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Organization

BTK Institute of Ethnography and Folklore

Code

BBN-NEP-503.15

Title

Optional workshop of the Folklore Department: Women, healers, adventurers. Inquisition in early modern Iberia and Italy

Usual semester

Spring

ECTS

3

Language

Learning outcomes

The aim of the course is to explore, in the framework of a reading seminar, early modern themes related to the phenomena of early modern popular religiosity and popular culture. The course will support the development of reading comprehension in a foreign language, problem-oriented text processing, the ability to extract the gist of an article or book, the mastery of conciseness and the acquisition of presentation skills.

Course content

The course will deal with the surviving source material of the Spanish, Portuguese and Roman Inquisitions and their historical problematization, mainly through books and studies on the Inquisition trials (in foreign languages) with a historical anthropological and micro-historical orientation.

Assessment method

The assessment is carried out through several sub-tasks during the semester: students make several presentations and write a seminar paper with a comparative presentation of several studies in Hungarian and foreign languages.

Bibliography

1. Introductory lesson (group work): The early modern Spanish, Roman and Portuguese Inquisitions * MOLNÁR Antal (2009): A római inkvizíció. In POÓR János (szerk.): A kora újkor története. Budapest: Osiris, 349–373. In this chapter the author describes not only the Roman Inquisition, but also the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions. The first task of the semester is to form three groups, in proportion to the total number of members, in the CANVAS forum set up for this purpose. The first group will be responsible for the historical-functional presentation of the Roman Inquisition, the second for the Spanish Inquisition and the third for the Portuguese Inquisition. In addition to Antal Molnár's book chapter, other reading material found by individuals will be used. Please collect material exclusively on the early modern workings of the Inquisition! The three groups will cover the following aspects of the Inquisition: some basic historical works, the institutional system, the provincial tribunals, who was tried by the Inquisition and why, what sentences were handed down, how the proportion of the population tried evolved in the different decades, what were the main types of punishment, how social discipline was exercised, but of course they may also include other aspects from their readings. In addition to the book chapter by Antal Molnár, please also refer to other sources and work actively and collectively in groups to develop the 30-minute (projected) presentation. If possible, everyone should speak during the presentation! Some reading material to help you prepare: • A spanyol inkvizíció működéséről ebből a könyvből is tájékozódhatnak magyar nyelven: pl. HENNINGSEN, Gustav (1988): A boszorkányok ügyvédje. Budapest, Kossuth Kiadó For this exercise, please do not use the cases, but the section on general operation! • www.ereticopedia.org/number-of-victims-spanish-inquisition • PÉREZ, Joseph (2006): The Spanish inquisition: a history. London: Profile Books Ltd. • On the subject of Roman Inquisition: BLACK, Christopher F. (2015): The Italian Inquisition. Yale University Press 2. Women: dreams and visions • HAMILTON, Alastair (1992): Heresy and Misticism in Sixteenth-century Spain. The Alumbrados. James Clarke and Co. • ACOSTA-GARCÍA, Pablo: Women Prophets for a New World: Angela of Foligno, “Living Saints”, and the Religious Reform Movement in Cardinal Cisneros’s Castile. In MORRÁS, María – SANMARTÍN BASTIDA, Rebeca – YONSOO, Kim (eds.): Gender and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain. Leiden – Boston, Brill. 136–162. • GAMBRA CORRADINE, Gimena: Models of Female Spirituality in Sixteenth-century Spain: Women Accused of Lutheranism. In MORRÁS, María – SANMARTÍN BASTIDA, Rebeca – YONSOO, Kim (eds.): Gender and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain. Leiden – Boston, Brill. 163–189. • HALICZER, Stephen (2002): Between Exaltation and Infamy: Female Mystics in the Golden Age of Spain. Oxford University Press. • Alumbradismo: GARCÍA ARENAL, Mercedes (2012). A propósito de los alumbrados: Confesionalidad y disidencia religiosa en el mundo ibérico. La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Volume 41, Number 1, Fall 2012, pp. 109–148. • KEITT, Andrew (2005): The Miraculous Body of Evidence: Visionary Experience, Medical Discourse, and the Inquisition in Seventeenth-Century Spain. Sixteenth Century Journal XXXVI/1 (2005) 77–99. 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 suspected impostors, it describes the ways in which medicine could function as a tool of ecclesiastical discipline. The central argument is that by emphasizing the role of physiological factors in the genesis of many seemingly miraculous phenomena, church authorities used medicine as a way of controlling access to the supernatural ealm in what amounted to a medical fideism. 2.1. Sebastianism1 (Kingdom of Portugal) • GIVENS, Bryan (2010) Sebastianism in Theory and Practice in Early Modern Portugal. In PITERBERG, Gabriel – RUIZ, Teofilo F. – SYMCOX, Geoffrey: Braudel revisited: the Mediterranean world, 1600–1800. University of Toronto Press UCLA Center for Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Studies and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. p. 127–150. • GIVENS, Bryan (2011): Judging Maria de Macedo: a female visionary and the Inquisition in early modern Portugal. Louisiana State University Press Ezt a két olvasmányt célszerű együtt elvállalni. On February 20, 1665, the Inquisition of Lisbon arrested Maria de Macedo, the wife of a midlevel official of the Portuguese Treasury, after she revealed during a deposition that, since she was ten years old, an enchanted Moor had frequently "taken" her to a magical castle in the legendary land of wonders known as the Hidden Isle. The island paradise was also the home of Sebastian, the former king of Portugal (1557–1578), who had died in battle in Morocco while on crusade in 1578. His body remained undiscovered, however, and many people in seventeenth-century Portugal – including Maria – eagerly awaited his return in glory. In Judging Maria de Macedo, Bryan Givens offers a microhistorical examination of Maria's trial before the Inquisition in Lisbon in 1665–1666, providing an intriguing glimpse into Portuguese culture at the time. Maria's trial record includes a unique piece of evidence: a pamphlet she dictated to her husband fifteen years before her arrest. In the pamphlet, reproduced in its entirety in the book, Maria recounts in considerable detail her "journeys" to the Hidden Isle and her discussions with the people there, King Sebastian in particular. Not all of the components of Maria's vision were messianic in nature or even Christian in origin; her beliefs therefore represent a unique synthesis of disparate cultural elements in play in seventeenth-century Portugal. Because the pamphlet antedates the Inquisition's involvement in Maria's case, it offers a rare example of a non-elite voice preserved without any mediation from an elite institution such as the Inquisition, as is the case with most early modern judicial records. In addition to analyzing Maria de Macedo's vision, Givens also uses the trial record to gain insight into the values, concerns, and motives of the Inquisitors in their judgment of her unusual case. He thus not only examines separately two important subcultures in early modern Portugal, but also analyzes how they interacted with each other. Introducing a unique feminine voice from the early modern period, Judging Maria de Macedo opens a singular window onto seventeenth-century Portuguese culture. 2.2. The dreams of Lucrecia de León • JORDÁN ARROYO, María V. (2007): Soñar la Historia. Riesgo, creatividad y religión en las profecías de Lucrecia de León. Madrid, Siglo XXI de España • JORDÁN ARROYO, María V. (2017): Entre la vigilia y el sueño : soñar en el Siglo de Oro (SIN COLECCION) Tapa blanda – 16 octubre 2017 • BULKELEY, Kelly: Lucrecia the Dreamer. Prophecy, Cognitive Science, and the Spanish Inquisition. Stanford University Press • KAGAN, Richard L. (1991) : Los sueños de Lucrecia. Política y profecía en la España del siglo XVI. Madrid: Nerea • KAGAN, Richard L. (1990): Lucrecia’s dreams: politics and prophecy in sixteenth-century Spain. Berkeley: University of California Press. • KAGAN, Richard L. (1993)*: Lucrecia de León: sueños y política en la España del siglo XVI. Historia 16 (201): 29–44. • OSBORNE, Roger (2002): The Dreamer of the Calle de San Salvador: Visions of Sedition and Sacrilege in Sixteenth-century Spain. Jonathan Cape: Pimlico 2.3. Francisa de los Apóstoles Francisca de los Apóstoles or Francisca de Avila was a devout beata, a woman who sought to lead a life defined by pious devotion to God, a Catholic visionary and religious reformer who lived in Toledo, Spain, amid the Spanish Inquisition. During her life Francisca experienced a series of intense spiritual visions that inspired her to work against poverty and combat inequity. • AHLGREEN, Gilian T. V. (2005): The Inquisition of Francisca. London: University of Chicago Press. 2.4. Saints and impostors • JACOBSON SCHUTTE, Anne (2001): Aspiring Saints: Pretense of Holiness, Inquisition, and Gender in the Republic of Venice, 1618–1750. Johns Hopkins University Press 3. Healers in inquisition trials • CELATI, Alessandra ( 2019): Contra medicos: Physicians Facing the Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Venice. In PIA DONATO, María: Medicine and the Inquisition in the Early Modern World. Brill. p. 72-91. Since the Middle Ages, ecclesiastical authorities considered medical activity worthy of their attention and control. During the Counter-Reformation, they toughened their disciplinary action, aware of the peculiarity of an ars that mixed together the cure of the body with the cure of the soul. Moreover, the authorities became increasingly suspicious of practitioners who were highly involved in the Reformation movement, and who distanced themselves from Catholicism in the epistemological premises of their work. By examining original sources from the Venetian Inquisition archive, this paper discusses the factors that put the Roman Church and the medical profession in opposition to each other in the sixteenth century, and describes the professional solidarity put forward by physicians. It also examines the problematic relationship between doctors and the Inquisition, dealing with the former as effective agents of heretical propaganda. • WALKER, Timothy D. (2005) Doctors, Folk Medicine and the Inquisition. The Repression of Magical Healing in Portugal during the Enlightenment. [The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World, 23.] Brill • PIA DONATO, Maria (2009): Anatomy of a Scandal: Physicians Facing the Inquisition in Late Seventeenth-Century Rome. In PIA DONATO, Maria (ed.): Medicine and the Inquisition in the Early Modern World. London–Boston: Brill. 53–71. Érdemes áttekinteni a kötet többi tanulmányát is, ha valaki a gyógyítás témáját választja. • GENTILCORE, David (2001): The Church, the Devil and the healing activities of living saints in the Kingdom of Naples after the Council of Trent. In LEVACK, Bryan P. (ed): Witchcraft, Healing, and Popular Diseases (New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology, Volume 5). 200–221. 4. Inquisition and censorship • BARBIERATO, Federico (2012): The Inquisitor in the Hat Shop: Inquisition, Forbidden Books and Unbelief in Early Modern Venice. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing “Early modern Venice was an exceptional city. Located at the intersection of trade routes and cultural borders, it teemed with visitors, traders, refugees and intellectuals. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that such a city should foster groups and individuals of unorthodox beliefs, whose views and life styles would bring them into conflict with the secular and religious authorities. Drawing on a vast store of primary sources - particularly those of the Inquisition - this book recreates the social fabric of Venice between 1640 and 1740. It brings back to life a wealth of minor figures who inhabited the city, and fostered ideas of dissent, unbelief and atheism in the teeth of the Counter-Reformation. The book vividly paints a scene filled with craftsmen, friars and priests, booksellers, apothecaries and barbers, bustling about the city spaces of sociability, between coffee-houses and workshops, apothecaries' and barbers' shops, from the pulpit and drawing rooms, or simply publicly speaking about their ideas. To give depth to the cases identified, the author overlays a number of contextual themes, such as the survival of Protestant (or crypto-Protestant) doctrines, the political situation at any given time, and the networks of dissenting groups that flourished within the city, such as the 'free metaphysicists' who gathered in the premises of the hatter Bortolo Zorzi. In so doing this rich and thought provoking book provides a systematic overview of how Venetian ecclesiastical institutions dealt with the sheer diffusion of heterodox and atheistical ideas at different social levels. It will be of interest not only to scholars of Venice, but all those with an interest in the intellectual, cultural and religious history of early-modern Europe.” 5. Demonic possession, xenoglossia • KEITT, Andrew (2018): Preternatural Peasants and the Discourse of Demons: Xenoglossy, Superstition, and Melancholy in Early Modern Spain,” In BROCK, Michelle D. – RAISWELL, Richard – WINTER R., David (eds.): Knowing Demons. Knowing Spirits in the Early Modern Period, Palgrave. 79–104. 6. Women as witches • HENNINGSEN, Gustav (megjelent magyarul, de kérem, hogy az angol változatot mindenképpen nézzék meg, mert jóval bővebb) (1980): The Witches' Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition (1609–1614). University of Nevada Press. • SEITZ, Jonathan (2017): Witchcraft and Early Modern Venice. Routledge “In early modern Europe, ideas about nature, God, demons, and occult forces were inextricably connected and much ink and blood was spilled in arguments over the characteristics and boundaries of nature and the supernatural. Seitz uses records of Inquisition witchcraft trials in Venice to uncover how individuals across society, from servants to aristocrats, understood these two fundamental categories. Others have examined this issue from the points of view of religious history, the history of science and medicine, or the history of witchcraft alone, but this work brings these sub-fields together to illuminate comprehensively the complex forces shaping early modern beliefs"—;Witchcraft and the Inquisition in the most serene republic — Blackened fingernails and bones in the bedclothes — Appeals to experts — 'Spiritual remedies' for possession and witchcraft — The exorcist's library — 'Not my profession': physicians' naturalism — Physicians as believers — The inquisitor's library — 'Nothing proven': the practical difficulties of witchcraft prosecution.” • MESSANA, Maria Sofia (2007): Inquisitori, negromanti, streghe nella Sicilia moderna (1500–1782). Sellerio Editore, Palermo 7. The "ladies from outside" • HENNINGSEN, Gustav (1990): The Ladies from Outside. In ANKERLOO, Bengt – HENNINGSEN, Gustav (eds.): Early Modern Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 191–215. • HENNINGSEN, Gustav (1985): A kívülről jött hölgyek. Tündérek, boszorkányok és szegénység a korai modern Szicíliában. Világosság XXVI. 778–785. • GEREMIA, Stella Claudia (2024): The Donna de Fora: A Sicilian Fairy–Witch in the Early Modern Age. https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/15/2/161 8. Gender • SOYER, François (2012): Ambiguous Gender in Early Modern Spain and Portugal. Inquisitors, Doctors and the Transgression of Gender Norms. [The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World, 47.] Brill. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions conducted a number of trials against individuals accused by members of their communities of being of the other gender – men accused of being women and women accused of being men – or even hermaphrodites. Using new inquisitorial sources, this study examines the complexities revolving around transgenderism and the construction of gender identity in the early modern Iberian World. It throws light upon the manner in which the Inquisition, medical practitioners and the wider society in Spain and Portugal responded to transgenderism and on the self-perception of individuals whose behaviour, whether consciously or unconsciously, flouted these social and sexual conventions. • SOYER, François (2023): The „Catalan Hermaphrodite” and the Inquisition. London, Bloomsbury Publishing

Recommended bibliography

AMELANG, James (2012): Sleeping with the Enemy. The Devil in Dreams in Early Modern Spain. American Imago 69. No 3. (Fall 2012), pp. 319-352. BURKE, Peter (1997): The cultural history of dreams. In BURKE, Peter: The varietyies of cultural history. Ithaca: Cornell University GILES, Mary (1998). Women in the Inquisition. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins Press. WEBER, Alison (2016): Devout Laywomen in Early Modern World. New York, New York: Routledge GIORDANI, Maria Laura (1999): Proyecto político y aspiraciones reformadoras en las cartas de una beata del siglo XVI en España. Manuscrits 17. 57–68. Università di Catania Travessera de les Corts KEITH, Thomas: Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971; New York, Scribner 1971; Harmondsworth; London: Penguin, 1973; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978; London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997) PÓCS Éva: https://eastwest.btk.mta.hu/images/pdf/pocs_e_kommunikacio_a_tunderekkel_del-kelet-europaban.pdf ROWLANDS, Alison  (2013): Witchcraft and Gender in Early Modern Europe. In LEVACK, Brian (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 449–67. VALENTE, Michaela (2023): Witch Hunting and Prosecuting in Early Modern Italy: A Historiographical Survey. Religions, 14(5) https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/14/5/610 LEVACK, Brian P. (2016): The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe. London and New York: Routledge. KEITT, Andrew (2004): Religious Enthusiasm, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Disenchantment of the World. Journal of the history of ideas 65. p. 231–250. GILES, Mary E. (ed.) (1998): Women in the Inquisition. Spain and the New World. John Hopkins University Press. CAFFIERO, Marina -  LIROSI, Alessia (2020): Donne e Inquisizione. Storia e Letteratura

Programmes of the course