God, the devil, and the nun. Visions as mystical experiences among religious women in contemplative conventual orders in Spain and the Spanish Netherlands (1660-1700)

In the decades after 1560, female conventuals in Catholic Europe experienced a sharp increase in the number of visions with a divine or diabolic content. The increase was partly due to renewed attention to medieval mysticism and to new contemplative methods. In the eyes of many theologians, visions soon became an exclusive and dangerous feature of female spirituality. Some of them led to exorcism or even accusations of witchcraft. However, most have escaped the attention of historians because they did not result in prosecution. This project studies the religious visions of Discalced Carmelite nuns in the order’s convents in Spain and the Spanish Netherlands between 1560 and 1700. It will analyze and classify the content of the visions, relate them to the circumstances in which they manifested themselves, and trace models in contemporary written and iconographic sources. It will further historicize by studying the visions’ roles in the lives of these women, particularly the gendered role in the confrontation between the nuns and their male superiors, as religious authorities increasingly sought to control their spirituality by imposing on the seers the official, male-authored discourse of the Church. This project uses a bottom-up approach that puts the nuns and their writings at the center of the research and examines how they described and experienced their visions, giving meaning to their experiences before their male superiors did so in their role as church officials.