El mundo visionario en la España moderna: manifestaciones y problemas. Una aproximación desde la tratadística y la Inquisición stars

Resumen

In this doctoral thesis we analyse the visionary world as one of the keys in the social and cultural dynamics of modern Spain. In this sense, we propose to study the visionary realities that are inserted within a Christian confessional society, such as the Hispanic one, influenced by the Counter-Reformation. In order to achieve it, we have to consider the fact that men and women of Modern Age considered the visionary world as a real part of their lives. They searched for explanations in the wonderful for all kinds of personal and collective situations. Simultaneously, the supernatural approached them to divinity, to what they directed their existence. Among the visionary category we find prophecies, revelations, apparitions, ecstasy, raptures, visions, etc. From a sociocultural point of view, it was a conflictive universe that prepared the way to an intimate religious experience that threatened the leading role of the Church based on the control of divine knowledge. This situation created a threat to the cultural bases on which the Ancien Régime was built as well as the Catholic Monarchy. This situation explains the tension between the principle of private revelation and the dogmatism of the ecclesial institution, which reached its highest levels during the three modern centuries. In fact, it was the cause of many discussions in order to define the boundaries between orthodoxy and heterodoxy in Catholicism. However, this problem is inherent to Christianity, and not only to Baroque. In short, we have the aim of deepening into the historical explanations of these problems through the vague borders of the visionary world and in the analysis of the will of social discipline of the Tridentine Church. In consequence, we are convinced about the necessity of approaching the historical research to the problems and manifestations that happened in the dynamic that we explained before. In this way, we intend to demonstrate the diversity of men, women and realities that are hidden in the visionary and prophetic world which coexisted with the real life of the modern Spain. In addition, we want to offer a general perspective which presents the particular evolution of the universe that we study during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. In order to achieve our purposes, we present a double approach. In the first part of our thesis, “Discourses and discussions in visionary treatises”, we studied the religious discourses and the attempts of cultural control and social discipline that the hispanic ecclesiastical authorities developed during the Modern Age. Then, we add a complementary vision in the second part: “Visionaries facing the Holy Office”. With this point we aspire to overcome the dependence of printed culture to study the protagonists and their individual experiences in all their diversity. In conclusion, with this double approach we have the intention of exposing a global perspective of the visionary world in modern Spain so as to present the historical interest that it can provide to historians. And we do it through the manifestations and problems that we find in the border settings of the visionary world, where we can find more than Theology, hallucinations and eccentric people, because its dynamics can offer us another perspective to understand the society and culture of modern Spain.