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The Humorous Devil Sorcery, Occult Virtues and the Evil Eye in 18Th-Century Portuguese Medicine

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The Humorous Devil Sorcery, Occult Virtues and the Evil Eye in 18Th-Century Portuguese Medicine The Humorous Devil Sorcery, Occult Virtues and the Evil Eye in 18th-Century Portuguese Medicine José Carlos Vieira Leitão Stud.no. 10879064 Religious Studies and Theology Thesis (MRes) Supervisor: Prof. Peter Forshaw Second Reader: Prof. Marco Pasi University of Amsterdam August 2016 Index: 1. Introduction 1 2. Portuguese Academic Learning and Religious Institutionalism 4 3. Studied Authors 7 3.1. João Curvo Semedo (1635 – 1719) 8 3.2. Francisco da Fonseca Henriques (1665 – 1731) 15 3.3. Bernardo Pereira (1681 – after 1759) 20 4. Occult Virtues, Evil Eye and Sorcery in 18th-Century Portuguese Medicine 25 4.1. Determining the Field of Study 25 4.2. Amulets and Occult Virtues 29 4.3. Divine and Heavenly Healing 36 4.4. Natural Evil Eye 42 4.5. Diabolical Evil Eye and Sorcery 51 5. Conclusions 62 6. Bibliography 67 1. Introduction While for long periods in its history Iberia had been considered one of the centers of European medical learning, by the 18th century its particular history had left it lagging behind the rest of Enlightenment Europe. With its shining examples of Hispano-Arabic pharmacology 1 and the 10th-century medical translations and commentaries to Dioscorides, 2 Petrus Hispanus’ Thesaurus Pauperum or the later Lusitani Jewish physicians,3 while keeping on par with most of the continent up until the end of the 16th century, a sequence of historical events made the main institutions of Iberian medical learning grow increasingly more traditionalistic and entrenched in their support of strict Galenism.4 Before this period, taking Portugal as an example, innovative anti-Galenic physicians can be seen to have frequently published and promoted non-classicist medical ideas, such as Garcia Lopes (1520-1572)5 or the much more relevant Garcia da Orta (1501- 1568). But these ideas seem to become increasingly more restricted with the establishment of the Portuguese Inquisition in 1536 and the reforms implemented at the University of Coimbra in 1537 and 1538 by John III, which effectively bridged the gap between the Coimbra faculty of medicine and its course of strict Aristotelian philosophy. With the subsequent integration of the Coimbra Jesuit College into the university structure, this further guaranteed that all students pursuing a higher education in Coimbra could only do so by going through a fixed Jesuit educational program6 extremely adverse to change or innovation. Shortly after, with the loss of Portuguese independence to the Castilian crown due to the disappearance of King Sebastian (1554-1578), and the resulting cultural and political proximity of both Iberian nations, the number of medical students and practitioners able to leave the peninsula in order to study abroad, as well as the 1 Burke, The Royal College of San Carlos, 19. 2 Gomes, História da Filosofia Portuguesa: A Filosofia Arábico-Portuguesa, 170. 3 Maclean, ‘Lusitani Periti,’ 392. 4 Maclean, ‘Lusitani Periti,’ 387. 5 Ornellas e Castro, ‘Prática Médica e Alimentação nos Textos Portugueses Seiscentistas,’ 83. 6 Sander, ‘Medical Topics in De anima Commentary of Coimbra (1598) and the Jesuits’ Attitude Towards Medicine in Education and Natural Philosophy,’ 93-94. 1 number of foreign masters hired to teach in Portugal, drastically dropped. 7 Consequently, this resulted in a homogenization in Iberian medicine during this unification period, with medical masters of a strong Galenic background mostly exchanging positions between Alcalá, Coimbra or any of the other Iberian universities managed by the Company of Jesus.8 While Portuguese and Spanish innovative anti- Galenic physicians could still be found throughout Europe in several positions of prestige, these would typically be Jewish exiles banished by the Iberian policies of ‘blood purity’, which also aided in the support of classical Galenism as a ‘pure’ (non- Jewish) form of medicine in Iberia. Emerging from the unification period in 1640, the implementation of a strong and influential Inquisition in Portugal meant that a strict and efficient control of ideas hailing from Northern Protestant Europe had been established.9 One of the ways in which this translated itself was in an active repression of medical literature which was too contradictory towards the established Catholic conception of the body and the universe,10 especially as transmitted by the Coimbra medical faculty, which, according to Timothy Walker, by the end of the 17th century had complex ties with the Inquisition.11 As also pointed out by Walker, analyzing medical literature as we move into the 17th century reveals that most medical concepts and preoccupations were still largely framed by ‘ancient’ or classical concepts of humor balance/imbalance. Furthermore, given this intellectual blockade of literature and ideas, Iberian intellectual development had entered a self-referential loop, with several instances of folk healing/magic practices seeping into and being divulged by university trained physicians as legitimate options for the acquisition of health12 (often times rationalized 7 Amorim da Costa, ‘Da Farmácia Galénica à Farmácia Química no Portugal Setecentista,’ 23. 8 Maclean, ‘Lusitani Periti,’ 386. 9 Bethencourt, ‘Portugal: A Scrupulous Inquisition,’ 408. 10 Costa, ‘Os Livros e a Ordem do Saber Médico,’ 25-26. 11 Walker, ‘Physicians and Surgeons in the Service of the Inquisition,’ 31. 12 Walker, Doctors, Folk Medicine and the Inquisition, 76. 2 by the academic label of ‘occult virtues’), as has been indicated, too, by Isabel Drumond Braga.13 However, one should be careful in proposing a simple one-sided approach by academically trained physicians towards magical or folk medical practices. Concepts arising from learned Galenic medicine (or more particularly Arabic Galenism) can also be observed to, with equal ease, seep into folk medical practices; a process which is likely to have had its beginning many centuries before. As pointed out by Michael Solomon for the Spanish case in the early modern period, the rise in popularity of vernacular medical books (such as the ones discussed in the current thesis) also brought with it the mechanisms for a rapid appropriation of academic medical knowledge by non-academically trained healers. 14 This suggests a double-sided approach which resulted in a gradual proximity in concepts and overall language between physicians and folk healers. Focusing now on the scenario of medical knowledge production in 18th-century Portugal, we finally come to a situation where the long established canons of medicine (static in the University of Coimbra since 1597)15 begin to be questioned by a new emergent medical class increasingly aware of European Enlightenment paradigms. Through the very networks of the Inquisition, these same physicians would finally gain access to new non-Iberian medical and scientific texts and begin to revise their long- standing Galenic concepts. This, coupled with the increasing pressure of medical knowledge coming from America and Asia, results in what might be called a period of Transitional Medicine 16 ; a moment when individual physicians, begin to reconceptualize and rethink their own position and opinion concerning the ‘ancients’ and the ‘moderns’. These, establishing informal academies and extensive 13 Drumond Braga, ‘Medicina Popular versus Medicina Universitaria en el Portugal de Juan V (1705-1750),’ 2210-211. 14 Solomon, Fictions of Well-Being, 10. 15 Drumond Braga, ‘Medicina Popular versus Medicina Universitaria en el Portugal de Juan V (1705-1750),’ 211. 16 This same period is sometimes referred to in Portuguese scientific history as the ‘Medical Baroque’ (see Pita, História da Farmácia, 155). I personally disagree with this definition since this period doesn’t seem to have any inherent stability that would allow it to be considered as a concretely defined moment in Portuguese medical history. Rather, it seems much more similar to a process of progressive change from one medical paradigm into another. 3 correspondence networks in and outside of Iberia, begin an active production of literature meant to aid in the reformation and modernization of Portuguese medical knowledge, offering at times very personal and culturally located reading of the functioning of the body and the universe. This results in the creation of fascinating examples of medical practice not only organized along (Catholic) confessional lines (an occurrence which is perhaps better observed in 17th-century England)17 but also aiming at representing a certain aspect of proud national identity and uniqueness (along the tradition of the 17th-century Lusitani Periti).18 The current thesis focuses on three such physicians: João Curvo Semedo (1635 – 1719), Francisco da Fonseca Henriques (1665 – 1731) and Bernardo Pereira (1681 – after 1759), each occupying their own position along the spectrum of tradition versus innovation. In particular, this thesis seeks to explore how these figures, in this transitional period, conceptualize the overlap of medical knowledge and religion on such topics as sorcery, occult virtues and the evil eye. 2. Portuguese Academic Learning and Religious Institutionalism It is important to emphasize that this thesis is not interested in exploring the backwardness of 18th-century Portuguese medical theory and practice; it is rather concerned with the complicated articulations Portuguese rational medical discourse had to go through when confronted with the opposing realities of Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe and its own academic isolation. It is about the construction of medical and
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