Dreams, Dreamers, and Visions: The Early Modern Atlantic World 9780812208047

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Dreams, Dreamers, and Visions

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Dreams, Dreamers, and Visions The Early Modern Atlantic World

Edited by

ANN MARIE PLANE and

LESLIE TUTTLE Foreword by Anthony F. C. Wallace

universit y of pennsylvania press phil adelphia

Copyright 䉷 2013 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dreams, dreamers, and visions : the early modern Atlantic world / edited by Ann Marie Plane and Leslie Tuttle.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8122-4504-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Dreams—North Atlantic Region—History—16th century. 2. Dreams—North Atlantic Region—History—17th century. 3. Dreams—North Atlantic Region—History—18th century. 4. Dream interpretation—North Atlantic Region—History—16th century. 5. Dream interpretation—North Atlantic Region—History—17th century. 6. Dream interpretation—North Atlantic Region—History—18th century. 7. Visions—North Atlantic Region—History—16th century. 8. Visions—North Atlantic Region—History—17th century. 9. Visions—North Atlantic Region—History—18th century. 10. North Atlantic Region—Civilization—History—16th century. 11. North Atlantic Region—Civilization—History—17th century. 12. North Atlantic Region—Civilization—History—18th century. I. Plane, Ann Marie. II. Tuttle, Leslie. BF1078.D737 2013 154.6⬘309—dc23 2012050165

Contents

Foreword. Xanadu: Dreams of the Dark Side of Paradise anthony f. c. wallace Introduction: The Literatures of Dreaming ann marie plane and leslie tuttle

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Part I. European Theories, Politics, and Experiences of Dreaming Chapter 1. The Inner Eye: Early Modern Dreaming and Disembodied Sight mary baine campbell

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Chapter 2. Demons of Desire or Symptoms of Disease? Medical Theories and Popular Experiences of the ‘‘Nightmare’’ in Premodern England janine rivie` re

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Chapter 3. Competition and Confirmation in the Iberian Prophetic Community: The 1589 Invasion of Portugal in the Dreams of Lucrecia de Leo´n marı´a v. jorda´ n

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Chapter 4. The Peasant Who Went to Hell: Dreams and Visions in Early Modern Spain luı´s r. corteguera

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Chapter 5. Dreams and Prophecies: The Fifth Empire of Father Antonio Vieira and Messianic Visions of the Braganc¸a Dynasty in Seventeenth-Century Portugal and Brazil luı´s filipe silve´ rio lima (translated by anna luisa geselbracht)

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Contents

Part II. Intercultural Encounter Chapter 6. Flying Like an Eagle: Franciscan and Caddo Dreams and Visions carla gerona

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Chapter 7. Dream-Visions and Divine Truth in Early Modern Hispanic America andrew redden

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Chapter 8. French Jesuits and Indian Dreams in Seventeenth-Century New France leslie tuttle

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Chapter 9. ‘‘My Spirit Found a Unity with This Holy Man’’: A Nun’s Visions and the Negotiation of Pain and Power in Seventeenth-Century New France emma anderson

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Part III. The Eighteenth Century: Prophecy and Revival Chapter 10. The Unbounded Self: Dreaming and Identity in the British Enlightenment phyllis mack

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Chapter 11. Visions of Handsome Lake: Seneca Dreams, Prophecy, and the Second Great Awakening matthew dennis

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Notes

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Selected Bibliography

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List of Contributors

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Index

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Acknowledgments

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Foreword

Xanadu: Dreams of the Dark Side of Paradise anthony f. c. wallace

Some years ago, when I was a freshman at Lebanon Valley College, I took the required introductory course in English literature. The professor, who happened to be my father, required the class to memorize what he called ‘‘neck verses,’’ brief passages from important writers, that hopefully would help us to remember some of the common literary heritage, and also would serve as badges of identity, rather like military dog tags, identifying us as members of the educated (i.e., English-educated) community. Some lines from S. T. Coleridge’s ‘‘Kubla Khan’’ have stayed with me: In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. . . . . . . . . A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Inspired by her ‘‘symphony and song,’’ he would build that pleasure dome, but would terrify those who saw him, a demon with

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. . . flashing eyes, [and] floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise. ‘‘Kubla Khan,’’ one of the gems of English literature, belongs in a volume exploring the importance of dreaming in the early modern Atlantic world. The verses were composed in a dream. According to his own account, after taking an ‘‘anodyne’’ (he was addicted to laudanum), Coleridge awoke remembering a poem he had composed in his sleep. He began to write it down but was interrupted by a visitor, and by the time he returned to his desk, he had forgotten the rest of the two hundred or so remaining lines. The classic study of the sources of the language and images in Coleridge’s poem is The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination, by John Livingston Lowes, a collation of the writings, mostly travel literature, from memories of which Coleridge had selected the elements of composition. Lowes’s 650-page mountain of literary criticism itself has been repeatedly reprinted, as recently as 2008. As Lowes properly points out, the ‘‘magical synthesis’’ was ‘‘joiner’s work.’’ Coleridge’s dream was evidently the product of work, the putting together of items from a jumble of disparate elements into a construction that satisfied him as a writer. Anecdotal accounts of intellectual and scientific discoveries made in dreams also point to the dream as real mental work trying to solve a problem preoccupying the dreamer. And the essays in this anthology reveal dreamwork as the source of religious and social innovation. I would speculate generally that the dream is mental work in which the brain sifts through mountains of mnemonic debris, searching for the solution to a pressing personal or professional problem that has proved to be insoluble by conscious effort. Some dreams remain garbage, but a few constructions have promise, and if they deal meaningfully with issues important to the dreamer and to a larger community, they are taken seriously (whether or not they are acceptable). Seen in this perspective, the dream is a random search for an alternative survival strategy when standard plans have failed and thus can be seen as an adaptive evolutionary device, biologically wired into the brain, like the capacity for mutation in the genome. But Lowes avoids giving psychoanalytic or other interpretations

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of the meaning and function of the dreams that he examines. We shall approach those issues later when we return to Coleridge and his world. To give a personal example of a dream as an effort to solve real problems, I will cite the dream told me by a friend, an American Indian herbalist (‘‘medicine man’’), who was widely respected by both White and Indian clients. In his youth he had a dream in which a woman dressed in white stood before him, holding a basket, covered with a white cloth. She said the basket contained a plant that would provide a sure cure for tuberculosis. But she only showed him the roots; the leaves remained concealed. When he and I were out driving he would now and then say ‘‘stop!’’ and jump out of the car, to run into a field to uproot a plant. But it never was the right one. The chapters in this volume reveal in fine historical detail the importance of dreams on both sides of the Atlantic, among both Europeans and Native Americans, and also explore the ways in which local culture and social and cultural differences affected the response to these dreams. It is a large task, made difficult by the scholar having to plunge into a turbulent semantic ocean. The word ‘‘dream’’ is difficult to confine to the nighttime sleeping experience; our writers include waking visionary states and religious experiences; and it is impossible to exclude daydreams and even literary fantasies whose content resembles, and overlaps with, dreams in sleep. And the word has come into secular usage to refer to conscious plans, ambitions, hopes, and utopian political principles, as in the phrase ‘‘The American Dream’’ (of material success), or in Martin Luther King’s iconic words, ‘‘I have a dream . . .’’ In most of the indigenous Native American societies considered here, as several of the authors emphasize, the traditional theory of the source of dreams is spiritual communication. The dreamer lives in a world that includes all the elements of Creation in a great Cycle of Being. Consciousness, memory, emotion, and spiritual power are not confined to humans but are shared by other animate and inanimate entities. These beings are not divinities but fellow creatures who can communicate with humans in various ways including dreams that foretell the future, diagnose and lend power to treat disease, locate lost objects, give advice on human relations and behavior, and establish ties between spiritual entities who may serve as guardian spirits, or medicines, or, if properly treated, as food; even the human soul itself can express its unconscious wishes in dreams. Some persons—and species—have a special gift for sending and receiving these spiritual communications.

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In the European, Christian societies who made contact with the New World, dreaming was less a conversation between humans and a surrounding universe of sentient companions than the intrusion of information, guidance, and prophecy from a pantheon of supernatural beings. Only humans had souls. God and his saints and angels, on the one side, and the devil and his legions of demons on the other, sought to save these souls for heaven, or seduce them toward hell. Different nations and denominations saw each other as human agents of these two spiritual armies. Christianity sought to impose the immutable rule of God’s law; Lucifer demanded allegiance to his own hellish order. Dreams were weapons on this cosmic battlefield. The unpredictable, novel solutions to human problems provided by dreams on both sides of the Atlantic were, as our authors have painstakingly revealed, subject to different sorts of regulation. Perhaps regulation is too strong a word for the Native American approach. On some occasions dreams were ritualized, the dreamer given a program, as it were, of what to expect, as in the guardian spirit quest where the youthful aspirant fasted, in isolation, in uncomfortable places, in anticipation that his spiritual guide would recognize the sincerity of the youth and reveal himself. Among the Iroquois, obscure dream wishes were most spectacularly revealed in the Feast of Fools in the annual Midwinter Ceremony, to be diagnosed and satisfied. Medicine societies were founded by dreamers who were told the way to cure disease. And the authority of the dreams of prophets like Handsome Lake was widely recognized. In Europe, on the other hand, dreams—especially prophetic dreams— were subject to the scrutiny of authorities both lay and ecclesiastical. The Inquisition subjected dreamers to interrogation and sometimes torture in order to ascertain the orthodoxy of the message and its source in heaven or hell. The records of the Inquisition provide valuable information on the commerce in hallucinogens, particularly the black market in ointments containing atropine, whose consumers were preprogrammed to experience aerial transport to ceremonies at witches’ covens. Possession by evil spirits was (and still is) countered by the ritual of exorcism (unlike the acceptance of ritual possession in indigenous African religions). The induction of visions by the use of psychotropic drugs in our own day has given rise to—or rather, continued—the business in drugs of all kinds, from the amanita mushrooms of northern Eurasia, the hashish (cannabis) or marijuana of the Near East, the drinking of ether in English slums, on to derivatives

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of the coca leaf and poppy. It might be worth noting that Sigmund Freud began his exploration of the psychodynamics of dreaming while he was investigating the properties of cocaine. Alcohol might as well be included here; one recalls William Hogarth’s ‘‘Gin Lane.’’ It has been suggested that the original addiction of Native Americans to European whiskeys was prompted by alcohol’s supposed potential for inducing dreamlike states of dissociation. Seizure of the New World may have been significantly aided by the sale of commercially produced alcoholic products to Native Americans who paid for these products by the sale of land and choosing sides in European wars. A similar charge has been laid against British imperial interest in opening the Chinese market to opium from India and forcing land and political concessions in the process. The other tradition that our authors rightly emphasize, however, is the gradual development of schools of thought that recognized dreams not as communications or intrusions by outside spiritual entities but as products from within. Freud, who has inspired a vast—but diminishing—scholarly and popular following, falls outside the time period of this volume. But as the authors point out, recognition of dreams as voices from within was not uncommon before Freud. One of Coleridge’s associates, Joseph Priestley, in 1802 published an article in an American medical journal arguing that dreams were indeed the residue of memories unconscious in the waking state, physically recorded in the brain, which he suggested forgot nothing. And the similar Iroquois concept of dreams as the wishes of the soul of the dreamer himself, anticipating the psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams, does belong to the Atlantic world, and descriptions were of course transmitted to Jesuit and other Catholic seminaries in Europe. The recognition of the process of self-revelation in drug-induced dreams—‘‘in vino veritas’’—is an old forerunner of the experimentation with the use of LSD and other now-proscribed drugs as a means of opening the gates to the inner world. When medical experimentation with such drugs was still legal in the 1950s, when I was employed as an anthropologist in the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, LSD, mescaline, and atropine were being rather casually administered as research aids in the production of temporary model psychoses. A complementary anthology on the business of making and selling oneiric drugs might properly follow this excellent collection of essays on the social and cultural context of dreaming. But let me return to Coleridge and ‘‘Kubla Khan.’’ Coleridge and his friends provide a fascinating case study of the theme of this anthology, the

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role of dreams in the formation of the new Atlantic world. Coleridge belonged to a community of romantic poets in early nineteenth-century England who looked forward to an egalitarian and peaceful world guided by reason, science, and personal spiritual conscience, rather than by old establishments of political and religious orthodoxy. Their names are familiar: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, John Keats, William Blake. Shelley’s wife Mary Shelley, famous for her novel Frankenstein, was the daughter of the radical social reformers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and after Shelley’s death a friend of utopian socialist Robert Owen. But the intellectual leader whom they all seem to have admired was Joseph Priestley, the celebrated dissenting clergyman and a founder of the Unitarian Church, an experimental chemist who discovered oxygen and other gaseous components of air. Priestley was a supporter of the American and French Revolutions. His admirers in America included Franklin’s American Philosophical Society and members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), whose founder, George Fox, one may recall, had been inspired by a vision of blood running in the streets of ‘‘bloody Litchfield.’’ Among Priestley’s chemical discoveries was nitrous oxide (N2O), ‘‘laughing gas,’’ which before being widely adopted as a dental anesthetic was used by many, including Coleridge and Southey, as a hallucinogen. Priestley’s own comments on laughing gas and dreams were published in the first American medical journal, the New York Medical Repository. The power of nitrous oxide in inducing spiritual enlightenment was later celebrated by the American psychologist William James in fulsome language: ‘‘With me, as with every other person of whom I have heard, the keynote of the experience is the tremendously exciting sense of an intense metaphysical illumination.’’ But on a larger stage, the pantisocratic movement was enduring the failure of European society to live up to romantic expectations. In Xanadu, Coleridge heard ‘‘ancestral voices prophesying war.’’ Dreams of a new heaven on earth, inspired by the progress of science, the philosophies of the Enlightenment, and the democratic revolutions in America and France, were followed by the Terror in France. Xanadu had been a dream of progress dying on the dark side of paradise. In 1791, Priestley’s sympathy for the revolution in France led to the burning of his house and laboratory in Birmingham and his flight to the United States, where his sons had already bought three hundred thousand acres of land in northern Pennsylvania. Rather than remain in Philadelphia,

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the political and intellectual center of the new nation, Priestley chose instead to move to a frontier settlement, Northumberland, on the north branch of the Susquehanna River, directly above the forks and across from the site of the former Indian town of Shamokin, which had been the gateway for the Tuscaroras and other Indian refugees fleeing north from southern wars to shelter in Iroquois territory. After the Indian wars began, from 1763 through the American Revolution, Shamokin had been the site of Fort Augusta, a massive fortification whose walls and towers were perhaps a quarter of a mile square. There, across from Shamokin, Priestley built what has been called a ‘‘stately mansion’’ (still standing) that on its completion would be the nucleus of a utopian socialist community. Coleridge and Southey planned to follow Priestley with ten other couples to found a ‘‘pantisocratic’’ colony, but their plan fell apart, a victim of financial insufficiency and disagreements between Coleridge and Southey on philosophical and family tensions (they had married two sisters). Whether or not a description of the plans for Priestley’s mansion had reached Coleridge by 1794, when construction began, or later, the poem ‘‘Kubla Khan,’’ written in 1797, would seem on its surface to be a dreamwork seeking to resolve issues relating to the pilgrimage to America to join Priestley. The imagery has an uncanny resemblance to Priestley’s actual estate. The great Kubla Khan is of course the great Priestley, the sacred river Alph is the Susquehanna, the ‘‘pleasure dome’’ (‘‘dome’’ in the archaic usage) is the mansion, the ‘‘walls and towers’’ suggest Fort Augusta, and the ‘‘twice five miles of fertile ground’’ is just about enough to suit a commune of pantisocrats. With respect to the river that plunges into ‘‘caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea,’’ it is perhaps too much of a stretch of divination to point out that a few years later (well, actually as I recall in the 1950s) the north branch of the Susquehanna River broke through the river bed into the hundreds of miles of subterranean gangways, hundreds of feet deep, in the anthracite coal region west of Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. But on another level, the imagery of an ejaculating river and its waters descending through a dark romantic chasm would seem to be sexual and personal to Coleridge, and the fearsome drug fiend relates to Coleridge’s use of opium. The structure of the poem displays together a scene of peaceful heaven followed by the dark side of war (Coleridge had fought briefly in the war against France in 1793), and he was haunted by a depressive conviction (perhaps exacerbated by a veteran’s post-traumatic stress disorder) of humanity’s incorrigible original sin. Amid the tumult of

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the sacred river’s fall into the lifeless ocean, Kubla heard ‘‘ancestral voices prophesying war.’’ But there is another dream story that may provide a more nitty-gritty illustration of the mutual, but ambivalent, accommodation of transatlantic Indian and English dreamers. In the colonial era, an Iroquois ‘‘vice–roy’’ was deputized by the Grand Council of the Confederacy to supervise Indian refugees seeking to settle along the north branch of the Susquehanna. He was an Oneida named Shikellamy. His white counterpart was the Pennsylvania ‘‘interpreter’’ Conrad Weiser. They became friends and a frontier legend links them in a story about their dreams. Its meaningfulness at the time, apocryphal or not, is attested by the fact that the same story links other notable pairs, including the Crown’s Indian agent, Sir William Johnson. In any case, it was native etiquette not to ask a friend directly for a gift, but the wish could be expressed in a dream. ‘‘Conrad,’’ said Shikellamy, ‘‘I dreamed that you gave me a new rifle.’’ So the rifle was forthcoming. Later Weiser said, ‘‘Friend Shikellamy, I dreamed that you gave me an island in the Susquehanna River.’’ (Possibly the large island between Priestley’s future mansion and Shamokin.) And so Weiser acquired some Indian land. Then Shikellamy said, ‘‘Brother Conrad, let us never dream together again.’’ A few years ago, the same story was told to me, adjusted to twentyfirst-century circumstances, but with the same punch line. Years later, one of Shikellamy’s sons from Shamokin, Logan, launched a bitter frontier war in Ohio (Lord Dunmore’s War), in which he sought to avenge his kin murdered by the infamous Paxton Boys and White thugs. Later he became famous as the author of ‘‘Logan’s Lament,’’ celebrated by another of Priestley’s friends, Thomas Jefferson, as an example of Indian eloquence. He refused to sign the peace with the whites, but added sadly, ‘‘I had even thought [dreamed?] to have lived with you.’’ Today there is a bronze statue of Shikellamy standing on the land of Weiser’s homestead in Berks County, a historic site maintained by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Shikellamy is carrying a peace pipe, not a gun. And there are no Indian reservations in Pennsylvania. But there is a little park at Shamokin, dedicated to the memory of Shikellamy, and across the river stands Priestley’s mansion. A part of Xanadu remains.

Introduction The Literatures of Dreaming ann marie plane and leslie tuttle

Could it be that the rationalism of Western modernity was inspired by a dream? In 1619, a twenty-three-year-old soldier named Rene´ Descartes separated himself from society to undertake a kind of personal philosophical retreat. More than fifteen years would pass before Descartes published the Discourse on Method, a seminal work of modern philosophy proposing that truth can only be attained through the disciplined application of doubt and human reason.1 On one memorable November night during his retreat, however, the young man experienced three vivid dreams in rapid succession. The first two dreams featured frightful forces of nature such as buffeting winds that blew him sideways and sparks of fire. They also incorporated baffling elements, like a stranger who offered him an exotic melon from a faraway land. In the third dream, Descartes was presented with a succession of Latin books and poems and invited to ponder his life’s calling. This last dream culminated in a striking realization that the treasury of wisdom left by the ancients (represented by the Latin books) was contradictory and incomplete. Writing about these dream experiences later in a personal notebook, Descartes concluded that dream images so distinct, memorable, and persuasive were surely messages sent ‘‘from above.’’2 The irony of all this, of course, is that when Descartes reflected on his dreams, seeking meaning and guidance for his life, he was engaging in precisely the kind of ancient interpretive practice that his work as a philosopher would ultimately call into question. Descartes, often credited as the founder of rationalist philosophy, seems an unlikely disciple of dreams. Yet in seeking meaning in dreams, he was far from unusual. In the early seventeenth century, many elite, well-educated Europeans like Descartes understood dreams as means through which an individual soul might be touched

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by supernatural forces. Like people in most of the world’s cultures throughout human history, early modern European men and women believed that dreams could be messages from God, the machinations of demons, a visit from the dead, or a vision of the future. Interpreting their dreams in much the same ways as their ancient and medieval forebears had done—indeed, often using the dream guides these forebears had written—they sought to decipher their nighttime visions, rejoicing in the ones heralding good fortune and consulting physicians, clerics, or magical practitioners when their dreams seemed ominous.3 This volume suggests that people of the early modern era—a period that stretches roughly from 1450 to 1800—had a special interest in the meaning of dreams. Attention to early modern discourses about dreams provides a unique opportunity to better understand a critical era of cultural transition. Historically, many cultures treat dreams as valuable sources of knowledge not available by other means. In some cases, the dream is believed to offer connection to the divine; in others, it has been seen as a pathway to obscure inner resources of the unconscious mind. Yet even when dreams are accorded authority as a source of knowledge, they are also sometimes scorned and marginalized, treated as unreliable, difficult to decipher, even deceptive. Those who interpret them have been dismissed as charlatans, whether they were the dream readers at work in the agoras of ancient Greece, medieval visionaries, Native American shamans treating a suffering patient, or medical men sitting behind a psychoanalytic couch. Given this dual quality, dreams and the struggle to explain them offer a unique vantage point from which to examine the social construction of truth and meaning in a historical period often considered the crucible of the modern world. Although dreaming is of course a universal phenomenon, the essays that follow focus on the role of night dreams and waking visions in the unique constellation of cultures that coalesced around the Atlantic basin during the early modern era. The period witnessed a wave of European colonial expansion into Asia, Africa, and, most extensively, the Americas that launched vast movements of goods and people, instigated conflict, fostered trade, and engendered a new intensity of encounters between cultures that in previous centuries had known little or nothing of one another. Historians use the term ‘‘Atlantic World,’’ as a shorthand to refer to the Atlantic side of these global interconnections from the sixteenth century through the eighteenth century. In the Atlantic world, people were drawn into new,

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often devastatingly exploitative forms of economic exchange and social relations. Simultaneously, European colonial expansion undergirded the construction of modern nation-states and overseas empires.4 Perhaps most important here, the colonial encounter shook the foundations of traditional knowledge about the world, human beings, and the divine for both Europeans and the indigenous peoples they met and sought to dominate. Combined with Reformation contests over religious authority, questions about truth and knowledge became particularly urgent. Even as debates over the meaning and reliability of dreams and visions grew in prominence, scrutiny of reported dreams and visions remained a crucial means of interpreting the meanings of these new encounters. The essays that follow demonstrate that individuals met the world-altering changes of this era by deploying established forms of dream interpretation—forms that they endowed with a new significance. Thus, the early modern world left a mark both on dreams themselves and on efforts to understand them. The essays that follow propose that dreams—as lived, reported, and interpreted—played a significant role in structuring historic change. When men and women experienced dreams, recounted these experiences, settled on meanings, and acted (or not) in response to their nighttime visions, they reimagined the boundaries of their world and negotiated individual and communal responses to changing historical circumstances. These processes go on continually throughout human societies, but they were particularly important in colonial contexts, where European imperialism forced societies with distinct cultures into intimate and uneasy contact with one another; as it did so, indigenous and European ways of reacting to dream phenomena were put to the test in understanding, incorporating, and guiding individuals and communities through the difficult terrain of radical change. Reported dreams and visions, in this sense, played a role in shaping what the early modern Atlantic world would become. The scholars who have contributed their work to this volume approach dreaming in a variety of ways. Dreams constitute evidence of deeply significant personal experiences, to be sure; yet they are also phenomena that mediate between people or between different registers of social life, and they may serve to shape and authorize collective action. Methodologically, what unites the essays gathered here is that all of the volume’s authors see dream experience as fundamentally social and deeply rooted in the particular contexts of early modern societies. Each of the essays locates reported

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dreams and visions within their specific historical world, and all of our authors assume that experiences of dreaming and visioning were not merely epiphenomenal reflections of ‘‘real’’ events, but had the potential to alter the histories of the societies concerned. We have included essays that represent the scope and variety of current scholarship on dreams and related phenomena in this period, but the reader should not think this volume comprehensive. Some areas are well represented, while many topics of great importance are missing from its pages altogether. The varied and powerful traditions of Central and West African peoples, whether in Africa itself or in New World communities created by men and women forcibly transported to the American continents, are wholly absent. Nor is there as much representation of Native American visionary traditions, including historical shamanic practice, as we had initially sought. These gaps and omissions reflect the vagaries of the response to our initial call for contributions, but they also reflect the shape of current scholarship of dreaming. All too often, the study of dreams, rather than being a tool for understanding the transformation of the Atlantic world, has instead remained a sidelight or a footnote to the more concrete concerns of economic, political, and social exchange. But a study of early modern cosmologies, both European and indigenous, proves that dreams, visions, and other related experiences continued to hold a significant—sometimes quite a central—place in these societies’ efforts to make sense of the epochal changes in their world. To the extent that the gaps in this collection make clear the missing pieces in scholarship at this time, it could be, we hope, a spur to further study and to the collective endeavor of understanding this crucial period in its own terms. This introductory essay is intended to provide readers with a review of the historical backgrounds and interpretive approaches from which this volume’s authors draw. It begins with a discussion of the methodological challenges that attend any discussion of dreams. We next summarize the dream beliefs that would have been familiar to early modern Europeans, as well as the different approaches found in Native American societies, identifying major influences and trends in premodern understandings of dreams. Then we explore the ways in which modern scholars have thought about the dreams and visions of the early modern period, creating a historiographical review of the literature on dreams and visions. Throughout, we

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argue that the events of the early modern era—in particular religious tensions of the Reformation era and colonial encounters—left a remarkably enduring stamp on both premodern and modern understandings of the dream. Taken as a group, the essays gathered here suggest we must nuance the conventional narrative some historians have offered about an orderly progression over time from an external, essentially undifferentiated self to the elaborately interiorized, autonomous, and self-directed individual of modernity. In fact, we contend, the questions we will see raised by early modern people—what weight to give to a dream? Is the knowledge found in dreams true or false? Under what conditions should I listen to my dreams or should they be ignored?—suggest that dreamers have always struggled with the interplay between that which might be thought of as individual experience and that which could be coded as social. Societies never take a single approach to dreams; instead, reported dreams and visions become the occasion for critique, contestation, and controversy among agents—even in our own modern or postmodern world. As puzzling, sometimes obscure texts, reported dreams and visions offer an opportunity to historians who wish to listen in on those contests and critiques.

What Is a Dream? Between the Self and the Social The dream poses unique challenges for scholars. While modern researchers have argued that the mental act of dreaming is universal across cultures, significant differences inflect the ways dreams are understood, experienced, and used as cultural materials. Consider terminology: in mainstream modern American culture, ‘‘dreams’’ are familiar events that happen while an individual is sleeping, while ‘‘visions’’ (presumably experienced during wakefulness) are considered unusual and provoke a more complicated response. Indeed, such visions often are taken as prima facie evidence of psychosis. In the past, a less rigid distinction between waking and sleeping visionary experiences existed; in fact, early modern documents often leave us in some doubt about whether an experience happened when someone was awake or asleep (in our modern terms). People of all cultural backgrounds in the Atlantic world instead focused closely on the identity of the seer and the content of the vision in evaluating its value. This single example reminds us that the phenomenon of dreaming is simultaneously an individual, embodied experience and the product of culture.

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Even today, there is no consensus among scientists about the reason why humans (and some animals) dream. In the view of some modern dream researchers, dreams constitute an important way in which the mind integrates and incorporates new developmental challenges.5 In this frame the dream is perceived as an actual experience for the dreamer, one that helps the dreamer in processing or in coming to know things that cannot be said or known any other way. As longtime dream researcher Ernest Hartmann recently summarized, dreaming is one form of mental functioning on a continuum ‘‘running from focused waking thought at one end, through fantasy, daydreaming and reverie, to dreaming at the other end.’’6 Given split and fragmented domains of self-experience, including both conscious and unconscious parts, dreams help to build bridges and promote connection. Perhaps the two ideas most characteristic of modern views are the notions that dreams and visions emerge from ‘‘inside’’ the self rather than being ‘‘an alien intrusion’’ and that these phenomena are ‘‘not separable from our other mental functioning’’—in other words, that dreams relate specifically and uniquely to the mental life of an individual. Researchers also tend to speak of dreams as ‘‘hyper-connective’’ because within them ‘‘connections [among seemingly disparate ideas, phenomena, words, or images] are made more easily than in waking, and connections are made more broadly and loosely.’’7 They note also that dreams and visions both rely on a pictorial or metaphorical language, and their content is guided ‘‘by the emotions of the dreamer.’’8 These modern insights about dreams, which take them seriously as developmental experiences for the dreamer, might be fruitful for historians. They suggest important ways that reported nighttime dreams or waking visions might be linked to moments of rupture in the sense of self, such as those that occur in religious conversion or under extremes of cultural conflict and contrast, such as in colonial settings. Although dreams are, by their nature, individual experiences, dream reporting is a social act. As dream researchers remind us, we never have access to the dream as directly experienced. Only a dreamer knows what the dream looked and felt like, and even his or her experience fades, changes, and alters over time. Instead, we have only a dream as reported—a story told to someone, at a particular time, and for particular purposes. All sorts of questions and evaluations flow from this realization: why is the dream being reported? What is the dreamer’s particular point of view? What kind of credit will the reported dream receive? What patterns of narration or social conventions allow for the dream to seem ‘‘true’’?

Introduction

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The scholars in this volume all presume that dreams are born into specific social and cultural contexts that shape both their content and the ways they are reported; thus, even though experienced by a specific person, a dream is simultaneously individual and cultural. As anthropologist Barbara Tedlock has argued, practices of dream interpretation engage dreamers in a ‘‘social performance’’ of narrating their dreams, in which their interactions with listeners become ‘‘complex psychodynamic communicative events.’’9 Indeed, much of the methodological challenge of working with dream reports lies in the imperative to ‘‘consider dream accounts as historical documents whilst pondering the enormous challenge that this form of material poses to historical understanding.’’10 Historians have sought methods that would allow them to decipher the complex blends of individual and social factors at play. The noted modern scholar of medieval Europe, Jacques Le Goff, focused on dreams as a fertile category through which to grasp the culture’s fascination with wonders of all sorts. This fascination, he realized, literally shaped what medieval Europeans experienced while sleeping. In that sense, he remarked, ‘‘dreaming is a collective phenomenon (which is of course why historians should be interested in dreams).’’11 Study of dream reports thus can offer a privileged glimpse into particular realms of social and cultural experience, illuminating what peoples of the past have found frightening, interesting, or amusing. The images reported by dreamers give us a kind of insight into the past that is rarely available from more conventional historical sources. Yet, as Le Goff also noted, ‘‘even though dreams are shaped by social and cultural forces, they are also an important means of individual selfassertion.’’12 Dreaming entails self-assertion in numerous ways. While cultures have their own dream etiquettes—etiquettes that shape common understandings about the appropriate contexts in which to discuss dreams—a dreamer chooses her or his moment and means to narrate a vision experience.13 In doing so, the dreamer is constructing a persona and building specific forms of connection with others.14 Historians of dreams must therefore attend to the circumstances that led many dreams to be dismissed, others to be shared orally, and some tiny portion to be written down so that we may know about them. Perhaps the most historically significant opportunity for self-assertion through dreams lies in the choice to reveal a dream to others. For particularly in cultures that attached transcendent significance to dreams, telling a dream was akin to an assertion of visionary or prophetic authority, a type of power sanctioned by a necessarily individual experience. Finally, a

8

Introduction

further avenue for self-assertion also presented itself: if a dream was credited as a message from beyond, it might challenge the social order, or authorize rebellious notions and actions (see Jorda´n, Corteguera, Lima, Gerona, and Dennis in this volume). In all these ways, individual dreamers exercised agency in the ways they reacted to their own dreams. Thus, that which modern conceptions have assumed to be a profound and universal experience of the self has served also as a means through which to assert oneself in the social world. In a variety of ways, dreams are, in fact, always socially constructed, both in terms of their imagery and as the basis for historically specific forms of social exchange. In the past, dreams were a complex and potentially power-laden form of communication—and, arguably, they are now as well.15 The very complexity of individual and social factors at play in dreaming helps explain why historical dream studies have long wrestled with a teleological narrative. This narrative—which is also remarkable for its Eurocentrism—asserts that dreams in the premodern past were conceived as external things sent to the dreamer which, after the Enlightenment, came to be understood as emerging from wholly internal sources.16 The early modern period marks a critical moment of transition in this narrative, when the idea that dreams came from ‘‘outside’’ the self was supposedly being replaced by the assumption that undergirds modern dream research: that all dreams are generated within the self. As elegantly summarized by Phyllis Mack (this volume): ‘‘Scholars of the history of dream interpretation mark a shift from the belief that dreams emanate from outside the self to the belief that they emanate from within, as the result of either physiological changes or the activity of the subconscious. Dream interpretation thus became modern when it became characterized by the preeminence of the subject [i. e., the individual dreamer] rather than that of the spirit world.’’ Nevertheless, Mack criticizes rigid notions that premodern men and women did not recognize dreams as products of inner experience, or that moderns ceased to seek transcendent meaning in their nighttime visions. In other words, premodern dreamers may have understood their dreams to be their own inner experiences even when they also understood them to refer to a transcendent or absolute truth.17 Looking toward the modern end of the narrative, Mack notes that while dreams may have been apprehended more and more as experiences that referred specifically to an individual’s inner life, they simultaneously began to suggest the depth and tensions that beset each individual. This presaged the notion of the divided self, a

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conception of a universal human condition posited by many modern theorists. It is perhaps ironic that the ‘‘truth’’ of each individual, as revealed in their dreams, soon proved to be as difficult to grasp as had been the transcendent truths sought by dreamers in earlier times. In sum, then, the narrative of progressive interiorization requires modification. In the premodern period, many dreams were dismissed as solely ‘‘individual’’ in origin: the products of an individual’s daytime preoccupations or physiology; meanwhile, a simple Internet search proves that many people across the world still regard and share their dreams as messages from beyond. The study of dreams requires we pay heed to the complex interaction between individual character and social factors—‘‘inner’’ and ‘‘external’’—that have shaped the content of dreams and their reception throughout history.

Dream Theories in the Early Modern Atlantic Context The early modern Atlantic featured a rich array of dream traditions that circulated along with peoples, cultures, and their traditional sources of knowledge. Early modern Christians in Europe had good reasons to pay heed to dreams. Indeed, to deny that dreams might be bearers of divine messages would have struck most of them as a heretical claim. The Bible, after all, featured multiple stories in which dreams are vehicles of divine prophecy. In Genesis, both the patriarchs Jacob and Joseph receive dreamvisions that attest to their special favor in the eyes of God (Gen. 28 and 37). The Joseph story hinted that having divine dreams was dangerous: telling his prophetic dreams arouses the anger of Joseph’s brothers, who sell Joseph into slavery to get rid of his troubling insight. But Joseph is later vindicated by his ability to interpret Pharoah’s dream (Gen. 40). The narrative model established by the Genesis story of Joseph—an Israelite in exile uniquely capable of elucidating royal dreams—was repeated in the book of Daniel, composed around 150 b.c.e. Here, Daniel is divinely guided to the interpretation of King Nebuchadnezzar’s troubling dream of a colossal statue (see Lima, this collection). And though dreams are less frequent in the New Testament, its authors also drew on previous examples: the opening chapters of the Gospel of Matthew contain no fewer than four dreams in which God informs another Joseph that Mary will give birth to the Messiah, and helps to protect the Christ child from Herod.18

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Introduction

On the whole, however, the biblical corpus was deeply ambivalent about dreams. Despite repeated examples of God delivering truthful visions to his chosen people as they slept, scripture cautioned in many passages that dreams were by nature ambiguous, and that so-called visionaries were often deceivers. The books of Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah pulse with anxiety about false prophets who pass off the follies of their own imagination as dreams sent by God.19 The texts suggested that interpreting dreams correctly was exceedingly difficult. Even in biblical stories that highlight divine dreams, the skill to interpret them accurately belongs to a select few chosen by God. The true and false dreamers of the Bible were in good company: the importance accorded to dreams in biblical narrative mirrored the broad credit accorded to dreams in the cultures of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean, of which the Bible’s diverse texts are products. So, too, concerns voiced in the Bible about the difficulty of dream interpretation, and the likelihood of error or fraud, echoed throughout the ancient world. In a quest to bring more rigor to the practices of dream interpretation, or at least to differentiate their own science from the practices of unscrupulous market soothsayers, several ancient authors wrote books outlining practices for sound dream interpretation. These texts offered methods for classifying dreams in order to separate those that merited attention from those that reflected nothing but insignificant waking preoccupations. They then set out guidance for deciphering the symbolic language through which the most significant nighttime visions spoke. Perhaps the most influential of these ancient authors was Artemidorus of Daldis, who penned his Oneirocritica during the second century c.e.20 In it, he advised a would-be dream diviner to pay careful attention to the status, health, age, and habits of the dreamer, for this would allow him to identify enhypnia, dreams that merely referred to daily experience. Important dreams—those that predicted the future—were different; they either came true soon and obviously (the dreamer dreams he comes into a fortune, and the next morning does), or they had hidden symbolic meanings that tested the interpreter’s knowledge and skills. Artemidorus’s Greek text was just one of a number of dream interpretation guides circulating in manuscript throughout the Middle Ages. Also important were Macrobius’s fifth-century c.e. Latin text, which drew from Platonic philosophy. For centuries, these texts helped to shape practices of dream

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interpretation at royal courts and Christian monasteries, where they rubbed shoulders with the popular dream practices of northwestern Europe’s indigenous Germanic and Nordic cultures.21 We know that early modern readers continued to value classical dream guides because these works were frequently printed and translated in the early modern period. The first printed copy of Artemidorus, eight volumes in its original Greek, rolled off the Venetian press of the famous Aldus in 1518; the text was translated into Latin by the mid-sixteenth century, and very soon after into western European vernacular languages.22 These texts or guides drawn from them remained popular into the seventeenth, eighteenth, and even nineteenth centuries. Modern scholars note Artemidorus’s influence in the dream interpretation practices of early modern figures like the astrologer and mathematician Girolamo Cardano (1501–76) and Macrobian tendencies in those of Rene´ Descartes.23 By the mid-eighteenth century, peddlers hawked cheap, bastardized editions of classical dream guides deep in the French countryside to an audience of newly literate peasants.24 The persistent popularity of guides to dream interpretation does not mean such practices were universally accepted. The quest to find meaning in dreams was matched by official inquietude about the challenge that dreams might pose to stable religious and political authority, as well as to humans’ ability to distinguish truth and reality from falsehood and imagination. At one level, this discomfort represented the persistence of an entirely traditional mistrust of dreams, the same one voiced in the Bible. Dreamers were often warned that dreams were obscure and unreliable. The late sixteenth-century skeptical philosopher and essayist Michel de Montaigne, for example, scoffed at his compatriots who looked to dreams to guide their waking actions, writing that his dreams were so full of ‘‘grotesque things and chimeras’’ and so ‘‘laughable’’ that ‘‘I would rather order my affairs by casting dice.’’25 Yet alongside skepticism that dreams could generate useful knowledge, the period examined in this volume witnessed a significant intensification in religious and political authorities’ anxiety about dream sharing and interpretation, and a corresponding intensification of efforts to control such practices. One locus of this anxiety was the Renaissance science of demonology. By the late fifteenth century, scientists and clerics were broadly convinced that Satan, his demons, and their human collaborators known as witches were busy trying to subvert divine order throughout the world. Many

12

Introduction

argued that only a concerted judicial effort to root out the demonic conspiracy could protect humankind, fueling a wave of prosecutions of suspected witches, particularly between 1550 and 1650. Demonologists catalogued the many ways that demons could intervene in human affairs, and some of their attention fell on dreams and dream interpretation. As they understood it, the sleeping human soul lacked its full capacity to exercise reason, making it particularly vulnerable to demonic assault and seduction. The dream state—strange and perhaps frightening experiences that were invisible to others and often deceptive—found explanation in the contemporary notion that demonic forces easily deceived a soul deprived of the sense information it received while awake. With experts convinced that Satan recruited and communicated with witches through dreams, to seek meaning in one’s dreams was, arguably, to court evil. Until the fears of demonic conspiracy eased in the later seventeenth century, dreamers were often warned that dream interpretation and sharing practices were perilous for their souls.26 The turbulence of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations further complicated the fortunes of dreamers and would-be dream interpreters. In an era when the legitimacy of every form of religious authority was subject to question and challenge, attention to dreams opened the possibility that God might disclose new revelations at any time, to anyone—ignoring religious hierarchy and biblical tradition in the process. The very idea highlighted the fragility and instability of religious and social order. No wonder, then, that claims that dreams were meaningful, and spoke truth, often brought down scrutiny and punishment. Nevertheless, widespread belief that dreams might be divine messages, and public claims that God was indeed communicating his will through dreams, marked this period of religious upheaval and public fervor. Among Protestants, practices of dream sharing and interpretation were nurtured among ‘‘radicals’’ or Anabaptists, groups that, in contrast to Lutherans and Calvinists, did not develop a strong centralized authority or clergy. Consider the case of the sect known as the Dreamers, composed largely of illiterate men and women from the region near Erlangen in Germany. Basing their ideas of holy living on illuminations or a ‘‘voice’’ that came to them while sleeping, the Dreamers aroused particular ire when they abandoned their spouses to enter marriages with new partners they believed God had chosen. In the 1530s, Lutheran authorities interrogated,

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tortured, and eventually executed some of the sect’s leaders.27 Dreams nevertheless continued to serve as a treasured source of divine guidance among certain Anabaptist groups and other dissenting groups, most notably the Quakers.28 The belief that God might use dreams for illumination persisted among Catholics as well. Catholic Reformation theology, with its reaffirmation of the cult of saints (a significant number of whom were visionaries and divine dreamers), implied continuing revelation and held open the possibility that God would continue to speak to the faithful in their dreams. But Catholic authorities proved nearly as anxious as their Protestant rivals about the dangerous influence of so-called false visionaries. In the 1580s, a Spanish teenager named Lucrecia de Leo´n experienced a series of dreams that criticized King Philip II and prophesied Spain’s decline as a world power, earning the young woman something of a following in court circles. Lucrecia’s dream life echoed biblical precedents and the example of medieval visionaries, many of whom were female. But the orthodoxy of those examples did not protect her from scrutiny and prosecution; we know about her dreams because she was investigated by the inquisition (her case is examined by both Jorda´n and Gerona, this volume).29 European colonizers brought the religious tensions summarized above across the ocean, where they had wide-ranging impact on practices of dream sharing and interpretation, as they did throughout the Atlantic world. Meanwhile, the indigenous people they encountered there had developed their own procedures for sorting meaningful from meaningless dreams, although the paucity of written sources addressing the precontact era leaves modern scholars at a disadvantage in trying to understand the historical evolution of these ideas. We do know, however, that dreams and visions had a large place in indigenous American experience. European colonizers and, especially, missionaries remarked frequently on the importance of dream traditions in indigenous cultures, an aspect of the story of dreaming in the Atlantic world that several contributors to this volume address (see Campbell, Gerona, Redden, Tuttle, and Dennis). Native American dream traditions, of course, varied widely across the vast expanse of North and South America and among members of distinct societies with separate languages, political and social organizations, and distinct histories. Still, scholars have long recognized that the vision quest— undertaken at puberty or, in some societies, at any significant life stage—

14

Introduction

was a broadly distributed dream practice in the Americas.30 They have described how many Native American societies believed in a ‘‘dual’’ or ‘‘dream’’ soul, one that might travel beyond the sleeping body and have real encounters with other dream souls in a world apart from the normal waking world. Much North American shamanic practice, including ‘‘dueling’’ between shamans, curing rituals, and various forms of divination, was based around accessing these worlds—perhaps via a dream—and enlisting the assistance of various supernatural beings that dwelt there. Shamans used prescribed ritual, such as drumming, intoxicants, sleep deprivation, invocation, and other means, to gain access to these sources of spiritual power.31 Much as was the case among Europeans, dreams were sometimes credited with the power to foretell the future; the first encounters of American natives with Europeans were sometimes recalled, generations later, as having been foretold in dreams.32 Even among groups with extensive contact with Europeans, dreams continued to be important sources of guidance and affirmation.33 At times, too, they were fodder for debate about the meanings of colonial experience. In seventeenth-century Massachusetts, English missionaries were challenged by a Wampanoag man who insisted that he had already seen a figure like an English minister in his dream, even before the English had arrived in the region. Through his confrontational manner as he reported this dream and his refusal to stay and hear the missionaries out, this man asserted a mastery over the disruptive events of colonization and rejected the power of the Christian religion.34 Traditional religious beliefs could survive in the tremendous value placed on dreams even many years after European contact. Another example was the unusual power that deathbed vision experience continued to have among people of Native (or African) descent in mature colonial societies.35 Dreaming and visioning continued to be a resource for early modern men and women as they struggled to make sense of the upheavals that marked the Atlantic world. Indeed, the essays gathered here suggest that it is a serious oversimplification to accept the conventional narrative that asserts that dreaming became ‘‘interiorized’’ and thus lost the capacity to speak to communal needs. Rather than such teleological progressions, the essays in this volume show how dreams and dream reporting could continue to play important roles on both sides of the ocean and on all sides of cultural divides, even amid the rise of rationalism and Enlightenment discourses (see especially Campbell, Mack, and Dennis, this volume).

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Even rationalists who utterly rejected dreams as a source of authoritative knowledge often put dreaming at the center of their efforts to make sense of the world. In devoting attention to dreams in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, for example, John Locke defined the Enlightenment concern with ‘‘the orderly operations of reason’’ by posing as its polar opposite ‘‘the ‘irrational’ and ‘frivolous’ domain of dreams’’; dreams became a space in which we see ‘‘the negation of everything rational.’’36 Less convinced than Locke, in the 1740s the Methodist evangelist John Wesley sought to steer a course between the twin evils of enthusiasm and formalism in religious expression. He emphasized that experiences such as dreams, visions, or ‘‘fits’’ could only ‘‘be judged by their fruits’’—fruits that would be ‘‘evidenced in practice, specifically through a transformation that encompassed the whole tenor of a person’s life.’’37 Both Locke and Wesley struggled to define how dreams—familiar if often troubling experiences— could be accommodated within a system emphasizing the innate rationality and resulting moral accountability of human beings. As contributor Mary Campbell describes it, one way that European thinkers resolved the tensions of this transition was by making ‘‘belief’’ in the testimony of dreams the province of an ‘‘other.’’ By locating dream practices as the province of Native Americans (or vulgar peasants, or evangelical crackpots), elite European thinkers redefined the criteria for authoritative knowledge and asserted their superiority in ways that, also, legitimized their power in the waking world of matter.

Historiography of Dreaming Nearly two millennia after the time of Artemidorus of Daldis, another great dream interpreter, Sigmund Freud, blithely argued that the art of the ancient dream interpreter had been relatively easy. For Freud, Artemidorus and those like him were practitioners of an ‘‘ingenious mythology’’ that had been thoroughly discredited by the Enlightenment. A forward-thinking man of fin de sie`cle Vienna, Freud considered Artemidorus’s method for making sense of dreams quaintly antique; in his modern, postEnlightenment age, dreams were ripe for a new, more ‘‘scientific,’’ and more rigorous explanation.38 Freud stood ready to create just such a framework, and on the foundation walls of this explanation of dreams he built his so-called topographical theory of mind—a mind in which the dream

16

Introduction

traversed the distance between its unconscious, preconscious, and conscious parts. In Freud’s view, dreams drew back the curtain on the unconscious part of mental processes, and dreams were the place to which a civilized mind exiled its urgent, unacceptable wishes. In both his Interpretation of Dreams (published in 1899 but bearing the imprint of 1900) and the shorter, more accessible version, On Dreams, that he published a year later, Freud led the reader along step-by-step as he unfolded ‘‘the secret of dreams’’ along with his basic method for interpreting them: first, the collection of thoughts (‘‘associations’’) linked with each segment or image in the dream; then the unpacking of various processes—condensation, displacement, symbolization, and secondary revision—via which the hidden (latent) dream thoughts might be uncovered from the costuming of the manifest dream.39 And thus Freud arrived at his famous dictum: that dreams are the ‘‘disguised fulfillments of repressed wishes.’’40 Some of the first modern interpretations of historical dream theory and dream experience arose from the interest sparked by the development of psychoanalysis. Ernest Jones, one of Freud’s earliest and most important students, ventured into the field with an analysis of historical nightmare beliefs in 1910, in which he offered an orthodox Freudian account. For Jones, nightmares resulted from intense psychological conflict regarding repressed sexual wishes, often incestuous in nature.41 Ge´za Ro´heim and George Devereux were also early Freudians who turned to ethnography and dream study. Anthropologists had worked on dreams before Freud, but despite the potential damper of Jones’s rather rigid interpretations, Freudian ideas soon dominated anthropological dream studies. According to Jeannette Marie Mageo, these early twentieth-century studies ‘‘were influenced by two psychoanalytic tenets’’: the idea of symbols that had universal, often sexual, meanings; and the division of dreams between manifest (culturally variant) and latent (universal, often repressed erotic) content.42 In 1935, one of the non-Freudian studies, that of J. S. Lincoln, argued for a ‘‘distinction between ‘individual,’ . . . [i.e., unimportant] and ‘culture pattern dreams,’ which were significant for the group and actively pursued.’’43 But his insights were soon eclipsed by the careful content analysis and comparisons of researchers in the culture and personality school of North American anthropology, whose work is represented in the scholarship of Ruth Benedict, Dorothy Eggan, and, in a different vein, A. Irving Hallowell and Anthony F. C. Wallace.44 In a series of three concisely written and carefully argued articles, Eggan charted a new course for the anthropologist

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interested in dreams, arguing for the importance of dream study to the ethnographer, for the critical cultural information to be gleaned from analysis of manifest content, and for the need for more ‘‘systematically collected and annotated dream materials.’’45 While Freud’s theory of dreams (as wish fulfillments) is now largely discredited as a means of working with dream material either crossculturally or clinically, it provided a powerful model for anthropologists well into the twentieth century. One such work, Anthony F. C. Wallace’s essay on dreams as wish fulfillments in seventeenth-century Iroquois culture, offers a clever twist on the more orthodox Freudian readings. In this seminal piece (cited by numerous authors in this volume), Wallace argues that a form of dream theory closely resembling Freudian theory is visible in Iroquoian practices of dream telling, reported in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuit records. Using just a few documentary descriptions, Wallace limns out a sophisticated argument in which he asserts that Iroquois society managed potentially disruptive emotions by the judicious fulfillment of socially unacceptable wishes in particular, ritually defined space. Iroquois dream theory held that dreams communicated the ‘‘wishes of the soul’’ and that ignoring them threatened the dreamer with misfortune, illness, or even death. During the Ononharoia, or ‘‘Feast of Fools,’’ Iroquois communities would experience acting out, as individuals traveled from house to house, pantomiming their dreams and refusing to leave until the hearers fulfilled the wishes contained within them. Sometimes possessions would be given away in order to enact the riddle of the dream, but in other cases dreamers might enact behavior—even sexual behavior—not possible under normal circumstances. In other words, this ritual traded in the satisfaction of wishes, as expressed in dreams, that otherwise would have been impossible or undesirable to fulfill.46 Wallace argues that this ritual that seemed to challenge fundamental social order and boundaries of permissible action functioned, paradoxically, to maintain and mark that order. In this way, Wallace’s explanation of Ononharoia might be compared to rituals of reversal common in early modern European society, like traditions of carnival that provided a release for social tensions that otherwise might have proved disruptive to social harmony.47 The Freudian interest in the irrational underpinnings of human society found an expression in one other landmark, in a work by E. R. Dodds, which set out to answer the question of whether ‘‘the Greeks in fact [were] quite so blind to the importance of nonrational factors in man’s experience

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Introduction

and behaviour as is commonly assumed?’’48 Dodds made a stirring case that ‘‘our chance of understanding the historical process’’ depended on removing ‘‘arbitrary’’ restrictions on study of, in the words of historian R. G. Collingwood, ‘‘irrational elements . . . the blind forces and activities in us, which are part of human life.’’49 Dodds laid out a dominant frame for most later historical study of dream experience when he settled instead on reconstructing ‘‘as far as may be what [recorded dream experience] meant’’ to ‘‘the dreamers themselves,’’ and entertaining the possibility, drawn from anthropological literature, that the nature of the dream itself might ‘‘conform to a rigid traditional pattern,’’ thus constituting a variation ‘‘in the character’’ (and hence, the universality) ‘‘of the [dream] experience itself.’’50 Perhaps because of the intellectual shock waves launched by the Freudian revolution—or, perhaps, simply because of the tricky and puzzling nature of most reported dreams—historical investigation of dreams long remained somewhat underdeveloped. For the historian, dreams—though clearly real events—proved a methodological challenge. Other than attending to dreams in the context of personal diaries and biographies, how was one to make sense of this type of source?51 Merle Curti, a student of American Intellectual history, found one fruitful strand in tracing the intellectual understandings of dreams throughout American life. Curti began in the colonial period, when, he argued, interest was merely personal, confined to the recording of notable dreams in diaries and religious autobiographies. But he hit pay dirt in his discussion of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century natural philosophy and psychology, providing a useful review of the early origins of experimental dream research. Indeed, part of Curti’s charge was to trace the many revisions made by American thinkers and medical men to Freudian theory, even as he was really asking whether dreams and American writings about dreams would reveal any specific ideas about uniquely ‘‘American conceptions of human nature.’’52 Curti did include a review of the treatment of Native American dreams and dream practices at the hands of early ethnographers, citing here not only American writers such as Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Lewis Henry Morgan, and Daniel Brinton but also the early British anthropologists Sir James Frazer, W. H. R. Rivers, and J. S. Lincoln as well.53 As a history of early scholarly thought about dreaming, Curti’s article remains quite informative.

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Perhaps the most important approach for present-day historians, and one whose influence is visible in the methodologies of many of the essays in this volume, is that of the Annales school. This interdisciplinary historiographical approach was pioneered by twentieth-century French scholars. Borrowing methods from then-emergent social sciences like economics, geography, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, Annales-formed scholars sought to recover aspects of past human experience that remained unexplored by conventional political, diplomatic, or intellectual history. One set of approaches crystallized into what Annalistes called ‘‘the history of mentalite´s.’’ The term mentalite´ (an English translation never caught on) referred to the total of any culture’s accepted patterns of thought, a set of concepts shared by kings and peasants, but outside any individual’s conscious awareness or control. Historians of mentalite´ argued that this common set of ideas ‘‘quotidian and automatic’’ served to structure recurrent patterns of social and cultural life over vast stretches of time.54 Needless to say, mentalite´ also revealed itself, in fact powerfully so, through dreams. We have already mentioned the contributions of a key figure from this school, Jacques Le Goff, whose influential essays from the early 1970s recuperated the dream as a critical site of historical investigation, one that offered privileged access to the most characteristic patterns of thought of medieval Europeans.55 Le Goff’s work led the way in developing methodologies for investigating dream belief and practice by relocating such phenomena in a full cultural framework.56 The role of dreams in medieval Europeans’ ideas about the self and truth has also been the focus of important work by one of Le Goff’s students, the medievalist Jean-Claude Schmitt.57 Anthropology once again proved a fertile ground for this sort of cultural history. By the 1960s and 1970s, historians examined the methods that ethnographers had developed to study and describe the logic of so-called primitive peoples, and transferred them to the denizens of premodern Europe, in particular to the uneducated and illiterate majority. Pathbreaking works by Carlo Ginzburg and Keith Thomas, for example, contextualized early modern dream theories within a magical worldview that linked religious, social, agricultural, and medical knowledge.58 Ginzburg found traces of an ancient fertility cult in Friulian Inquisition records. Its members, peasants, revealed to baffled inquisitors that during specific annual religious festivals, they traveled in their dreams to do battle with evil spirits in order to protect

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Introduction

the harvest. Ginzburg theorized that this practice had survived since preChristian days. The association of early modern dream beliefs with a still ‘‘enchanted’’ world, one populated by witches, demons, wandering spirits, and both malevolent and positive magical forces, has been a recurrent theme in the recent historiography of dreams. But scholars were not content to investigate dream and vision only as manifestations of ‘‘pagan’’ or unorthodox religious practices, the frame in which they appeared via witchcraft trials or Inquisition records. Historians also pointed out the many ways that dreams and related visionary experiences might reveal the everyday spiritual practices of faithful, orthodox Christian men and women, both Catholics and Protestants.59 Using a wide variety of sources, scholars of ‘‘popular religion’’ unearthed a world where, for example, the seventeenth-century Protestant clergyman Ralph Josselin pondered the significance of his dreams, and sometimes those of his wife, in his journal, or Catholic villagers described at length their personal visions of saints or the Virgin Mary, as a notary took down their accounts.60 In an influential work on the American context, David D. Hall located dreams, visions, and other portents firmly within a framework of popular providentialism—a framework that he argues was, in fact, widely shared among clergy and laity alike in seventeenth-century New England, as well as by most in Europe, Catholic and Protestant. Hall emphasizes the critical role of print culture in distributing and recirculating this providential culture of ‘‘wonders,’’ including dream reports. Throughout, Hall links a context once hailed (as by Merle Curti) as an exemplar of American exceptionalism to transatlantic intellectual and religious cultures, firmly rooting his nonconformist English colonial subjects in broadly European ‘‘Worlds of Wonder.’’61 More recent scholarship has critiqued the implicit cultural unities comprised in the study of mentalite´, incorporating a growing concern for agency, individuality, and cultural contestation in its approach to dreams as cultural artifacts. Studies of religious enthusiasts, like those documented by Phyllis Mack, Carla Gerona, or Mechal Sobel, could hardly proceed without examining the ways in which reports of dreams and visions were used to advance marginal or even unpopular ideas.62 But as Gerona shows, as Quakerism moved from the seventeenth-century radical fringe to an accepted confession of the eighteenth century, emphasis on the prophetic power of dreams became a less public endeavor, and dream reporting became somewhat more standardized.63 As the work by Mechal Sobel, as

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well as by Ann Taves, Susan Juster, and Phyllis Mack suggests, the evangelical movements of the late eighteenth century gave a new life and renewed controversy to the experiences of dreaming and visioning, not only implicating dream reports in moments of religious conversion but also rooting them in the greatest and most charged religious, political, and social debates of their times.64 In this context then, historians of the early modern period have rethought all sorts of teleological frameworks, abandoning splits between the ‘‘civilized’’ and ‘‘primitive,’’ the Western and the non-Western, interior and exterior, and other narratives of progressive rationalization that the modern West has told about itself since the Enlightenment, and that were reinforced by Freud. Historians of the period have overturned theses about a ‘‘disenchantment’’ of the Western world that supposedly occurred around the time of the Enlightenment, instead identifying and exploring the enduring fascination of magic, the supernatural, and dreams to peoples in all periods and places through oscillating ‘‘cycles’’ of interest in and acceptance of these phenomena.65 With this crucial modification, scholars find the freedom to explore alternative, not lesser, models of reality and of the self, which coexisted alongside official or elite discourses. Modern cultural history has followed up on those leads, participating in a drive to create a more global history, and to undermine narratives—many of which have their roots in the cultural hierarchies of nineteenth-century racial thought—that would create essential divides between peoples along the spurious lines of ‘‘rational’’ or ‘‘irrational’’ belief and behavior. In the end, then, the Freudian moment offered a powerful challenge to modern historians and anthropologists to treat dreaming and visioning with care. Although this approach had an unfortunate tendency to look for universalizing interpretations that might exist apart from culture, the generations of scholarship in the century since Freud have helped scholars to resituate dreams and dreaming into rich, culturally specific contexts, and to create diverse and various explanations and interpretations of dreaming and its uses. And more recent psychoanalytic approaches similarly argue for a careful consideration of individual contexts in the analysis of dreams.66 As the essays that follow will show, dreams never merely reflect cultures, cultural patterns, or mentalite´s. Instead, dreams and visions—and, most critically, the ways in which they are used and reported—help to create, extend, and integrate social change, both inside European societies and within new and expansive colonial contexts. There is much to be gained from the creation

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of a more coherent and sustained literature on the experience of dreaming and visioning in historical context, and this volume is intended to fill some of that gap.

Old Worlds/New Worlds Our eleven contributions are arranged in three parts designed to carry the reader through time and space, from a starting point in Europe to the encounter with the Americas, and back again to comparative questions centering on the role of dreaming within evangelical movements, both in European and Native American contexts. In our first part, five chapters explore the paradigmatic ways that dreams were understood and used in various European contexts. In her contribution to this volume, ‘‘The Inner Eye: Early Modern Dreaming and Disembodied Sight,’’ Mary Baine Campbell argues that European conceptions of the dream were undergoing considerable transformation in the early modern period. Dreams that had once been thought of as visual events to be ‘‘seen’’ were now construed as events within the faculties of ‘‘memory and imagination,’’ in short, as an aspect of ‘‘thinking’’ rather than ‘‘seeing.’’ New, more mechanical understandings of sight would come to dominate Western medicine, eliding and eliminating the older meanings of ‘‘vision,’’ a transformation that is visible in its completed forms in the work of all modern dream interpreters, who think of these phenomena as matters of thought rather than sight. At the very same moment, and, for Campbell, not accidentally, just as the interest in dreams ‘‘disappeared from the philosophical horizon of Europe,’’ early modern thinkers ‘‘found a new object outside the realm of the fully ‘human’ . . . in the cultures of the New World.’’ Interest in and attention to dream and vision now became located in the rising science of ethnography, while experiences of dream and vision became increasingly located in nonelite or non-Western cultures. Her analysis of language, exploration of Enlightenment revision, and exploration of the birth of ethnographic investigation (albeit a partial, partisan exploration of the other) offer the perfect framework within which to pursue the particulars that follow. Janine Rivie`re’s selection continues the exploration of a growing interplay between ‘‘popular’’ and ‘‘medical’’ theories of dream, this time focused

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on a particular sort of dream experience, the nightmare. In her chapter, ‘‘Demons of Desire or Symptoms of Disease? Medical Theories and Popular Experiences of the ‘Nightmare’ in Premodern England,’’ Rivie`re argues that between the beginning of the seventeenth century and the middle of the eighteenth, ‘‘supernatural causes of the ‘nightmare’ [were] subtly undermined by psychological and physiological explanations in medical discourse,’’ indicating ‘‘the growing popularity of new models of the body and mind due to the rise of materialist and empirical thought.’’ Yet within an impressive discussion of a wide variety of texts, including witchcraft cases, medical reports, and prescriptive literature, Rivie`re is able to demonstrate ‘‘a coexisting and continuing belief’’ among a wider population in the nightmare as the result of ‘‘an assault by demonic spirits.’’ Thus, Rivie`re concludes, ‘‘belief in the supernatural did not wane in this period,’’ but rather lived on in counterpoint with a more dominant and learned discourse about the ‘‘natural’’ or humoral origins of nightmare phenomena, in a complex coexistence similar to that described by scholars Alex Owen or Alexandra Walsham for related phenomena of the occult or the providential. The next three essays—encompassing the political visions of Lucrecia de Leo´n, analyzed by Marı´a Jorda´n; the journey to hell taken by a Spanish peasant, described in Luı´s R. Corteguera’s essay; and the ‘‘Fifth Empire’’ movement of the seventeenth-century Portuguese Jesuit activist Antonio Vieira, discussed by Luı´s Silve´rio Lima—reveal the ways that reported supernatural experience could provide a thinly veiled but powerful sociopolitical critique. Dreams in this view become a medium for ‘‘saying’’ things, things too transgressive to be asserted more directly. Reported dreams or visions become crucial texts through which to organize and authorize social action. Thus, in the 1580s, a young woman named Lucrecia de Leo´n transfixed the people of Madrid with her prophetic visions of English attacks on Spain. Her visions, which as Jorda´n notes attracted the concern of the Inquisition, critiqued the leadership of the Crown (Philip II) and served as ‘‘particularly effective vehicles to . . . place [political information] in a tangible narrative form accessible to an audience across a broad social spectrum.’’ This careful study of Lucrecia de Leo´n revises earlier work on this controversy, suggesting how ‘‘greatly esteemed’’ such prophetic visions were ‘‘in the political culture of the sixteenth century.’’ Jorda´n explores the evocative imagery of the dream narratives and deftly situates their content

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about English invasion in both the internal dynastic crises and foreign relations debacles of the period, showing the power of dream reports to help historians gain access to popular political consciousness. In ‘‘The Peasant Who Went to Hell: Dreams and Visions in Early Modern Spain,’’ Luı´s Corteguera explores the seventeenth-century story of Pere Porter, a peasant who claimed to have traveled to hell, ‘‘where he found formerly powerful men, both lay and religious,’’ and was eventually able, through the knowledge gained on this special journey, to right a wrong done him by one of these men. Porter was tried by the Inquisition, but found innocent, and the relation of this story, though its veracity is hard to ascertain, reveals the power of what Corteguera terms ‘‘the oneiric’’ (i.e., things pertaining to dreams and their interpretation) to cloak social critique in the authority of the ‘‘prodigious’’ (the wondrous). The last essay in this part broadens our view beyond Europe to include the role of the Americas in European culture and imagination. Luı´s Filipe Silve´rio Lima explores the mobilization of dreams and prophecy, demonstrating the powerful role of biblical stories (in this case in particular, the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar, detailed in the book of Daniel) as a medium to comment on contemporary political ambitions. Vieira, a Jesuit who had been a central part of the Brazilian missionary efforts, ran afoul of the Spanish Inquisition for his forceful advocacy of the Portuguese monarchy as ‘‘executors of a divine plan for . . . human history.’’ During his lifetime, Vieira (‘‘an incisive and ingenious interpreter of dreams and visions’’) authored sermons and tracts that ‘‘sought to interpret the dream prophecies written about the future of Portugal in the same way that the biblical figures Daniel and Joseph had deciphered the dreams of kings and pharaohs.’’ Using both biblical stories and a sixteenth-century report of three dreams by the cobbler of Trancoso Gonc¸alo Anes Bandarra, Vieira reinterpreted these stories to aim for ‘‘the construction of [Portugal as] an ultimate and universal imperium over the . . . globe.’’ Vieira asserted that ‘‘the idea of Portgual (and, more specifically, of the Portuguese Empire) had been revealed in dreams,’’ and thus, ‘‘prophetic narratives based on dreams underscored an idea of Lusitanian monarchy that was intimately linked to the New World conquests.’’ Vieira’s story is particularly intriguing, as his own writings reinterpreted earlier writings about dreams that themselves reinterpreted the Bible. If that were not complex enough, after his death, Vieira appeared in the dreams of other Jesuits and sympathizers, and these appearances lent this campaign

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a further aura of divine approval. In these interlocking and mutually referencing layers of dreams and visions, we see the powerful status of the dream report in early modern Europe to speak the otherwise unspeakable, and to search out signs of divine favor that might further authorize one’s cause. Thus, in all three of these essays, we see the ways in which dreams and dream reports could be mobilized by the faithful—not in a manipulative way, but in a way that reveals the profound interpenetrations between quotidian and extraordinary realms of the early modern world. Just as Vieira’s apparition might penetrate the mind of his associates well after his death, so too do the experiences of Lucrecia, Pere Porter, and Father Vieira suggest that modern distinctions between the world of dreams and the world of politics would have made no sense at all to inhabitants of the early modern world.67 These five selections thus call our attention to the broad compass of the ‘‘oneiric’’ in the early modern Atlantic world. As Corteguera describes it, ‘‘readers expected numerous extraordinary events, like dreams, to confound the senses and challenge the seemingly clear division between fantasy and the real.’’ These essays show the various ways in which early modern Europeans thought about and used dreams and dream reports. Whether Catholic or Protestant, the reported dream provided a model through which to understand and convey experience and for that experience to exercise authority. European thinkers of the period were eager to understand and explore the value and reliability of dream experience for discerning both individual and societal destinies. The second part of this volume explores the meeting of European dream belief and practice with indigenous American ways of understanding and using dream experience. The four essays in this part (by Gerona, Redden, Tuttle, and Anderson) all concern themselves with various European encounters with and appropriations of native dream cultures. Here, the historical record—itself the result of colonial power inequities—exerts a pull on the data, making it much easier to see the ways in which Europeans crafted and shaped narratives of indigenous dreams, rather than seeing the multilayered ways that indigenous peoples themselves used their own practices of dream reporting and visioning to address the stresses of colonial encounter. Still, taken together, these essays show that dream and vision —so central in both European and Amerindian traditions—were therefore, not surprisingly, central aspects of colonial encounters in North America.

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These authors also reveal for us the ways that New World visions might play a variety of roles in Old World controversies and conflicts. Carla Gerona uses a wide comparative lens to understand reports of dreams and visions made by Franciscan missionaries in the Texas borderlands. Gerona’s frame of reference is the scholarly concept of the borderland, an area of cultural convergence, creolization (mixture), and conflict. As Franciscans struggled to understand North American natives and as Caddo, Jumano, and other American peoples struggled to communicate with Spanish newcomers, reported dreams and visions often played a critical role in struggles for power and influence. Dreams and visions also offered crucial bridges between divergent groups. When a Spanish nun and visionary, Sor Marı´a de A´greda, was mysteriously seen in New Mexico, ‘‘the Jumano and Franciscans could agree on the vision because both wanted to expand their ties to each other.’’ When Sor Marı´a herself attested to her ‘‘bilocation’’ in the New World despite her residence in Spain, both the miraculous nature of her mysterious visits and the divine message regarding the need for more New World missionaries was amplified. Never mind that these stories of a woman in blue overlapped with Caddoan origin stories about a woman creator. Far from challenging Spanish expectations, Caddoan reports of ‘‘a very beautiful woman who wore blue’’ only confirmed Franciscan belief in the substantive nature of Sor Marı´a’s transatlantic travels. Andrew Redden’s ‘‘Dream-Visions and Divine Truth in Early Modern Hispanic America’’ shifts our focus to a different missionary endeavor, using Jesuit records to analyze the uses of dream reports in efforts to convert the indigenous people of colonial Peru and Mexico. Despite the many prohibitions against dream interpretation in European culture, Redden finds that dream reports were intentionally circulated in Hispanic America when they seemed to support the progress of Christian conversion. Such narratives were especially treasured if they provided ‘‘evidence of divine providence moving within indigenous worlds and bringing the work of missionaries such as the Jesuits to fruition.’’ It was justifiable to discuss dreams when they ‘‘affirmed the ‘universal truth,’ ’’ in other words, when they supported the ‘‘Hispanic Catholic’’ worldview. Through a series of close readings of dream texts, Redden is able to show a subtle merging of indigenous imagery and narrative with Christian—and specifically Jesuit— symbols and preoccupations. Dream reports, thus, became important currency in the struggle to convert natives to Christianity. In turn, Redden

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argues that such dream reports show not only post hoc revisions by Jesuit authors but ‘‘a tremendous Jesuit influence on [indigenous] imagination.’’ Leslie Tuttle’s essay, ‘‘French Jesuits and Indian Dreams in SeventeenthCentury New France,’’ broadens the discussion still further, conveying the importance of reading New World sources with a careful understanding of the Eurocentric preoccupations of their authors. Her discussion of Jesuit dream beliefs, like that of Redden, affirms the controversial status of dreams in Europe at this period. But she offers several important suggestions about why dream reporting forms such a prominent part of the Canadian portion of the annual record called the Jesuit Relations. One powerful motive lay in showing that converts turned away from dreams and, hence, away from the superstition and ‘‘error’’ of their preconversion beliefs. She also notes the critical presence of a European audience in shaping these accounts: it was, ‘‘in part at least, to convince . . . European souls to turn away from such dangerous practices [as dream divination] that Jesuit missionaries wrote so extensively about dreams in New France.’’ Tuttle’s essay ends with a caution that agrees with the findings of Mary Baine Campbell, earlier in the volume, that Jesuit reporting of indigenous dreams had the effect of reinforcing ‘‘associations between belief in dreams on the one hand and ignorance and savagery on the other. . . . [associations that] powerfully shaped modern Western attitudes to dreaming.’’ Emma Anderson further extends the Jesuit story begun by Redden and Tuttle (and, as well, by Lima in the previous part). She recounts a story of how martyrdom—an experience so central to the lives of male missionaries in seventeenth-century Canada—might be appropriated to advance women’s institutional and spiritual authority in the North American context. In her essay Anderson shows the very real connections between the visionary experience and the quotidian stresses of life in this uncertain colonial context. Less focused on the experiences or practices of Canada’s indigenous peoples, Anderson’s exploration reveals the way that Canada—and its indigenous peoples—came to function in the minds of the European missionaries who sought to ‘‘save’’ them. Catherine de Saint-Augustin believed that she ‘‘shared a mission of voluntary suffering with her deceased Jesuit mentor [Jean de Bre´beuf] on behalf of what was both a geographical and an imaginative entity—Canada.’’ As with other seers, who obtained authority through their powerful visions, Catherine’s experiences enabled her to circumvent normal institutional hierarchies where control lay with men, and, instead, to ‘‘present herself as his [Bre´beuf’s] spiritual heir, . . . [recasting]

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in feminized terms what had been, in this colonial context, the masculine path of martyrdom.’’ The story of Catherine’s encounters with martyrs and demons helps modern readers get a taste for the ways in which visions in the early modern period crossed the boundaries between visible and invisible realms, opening doors for us to a fuller understanding of the spiritual contexts that motivated missionaries in their colonizing program. Indeed, Catherine’s experiences, described by Anderson, reveal a tremendous ‘‘fluidity of identity’’—what she experienced as a merging, a mutuality—that offers a particularly rich description of ‘‘selfhood’’ in the early modern world. By relating the sufferings of Christ first to those of the martyred Bre´beuf and then to the demonic torments under which she herself labored, Catherine through her experiences ‘‘helped to make Canada, by virtue of its very geographic marginality, spiritually central to the seventeenth-century Atlantic world.’’ Anderson’s deft exploration of Catherine de Saint-Augustin’s somewhat tortured experience of self—a self in profound dialogue with, even invaded by, apparitions and visitations—reminds us of the particular instability of selfhood in the early modern period. Hence, it leads us to the final part of this volume, which is devoted to the role of vision in later eighteenthcentury evangelism and revivalism. Dreams played a particularly constitutive role in these radical religious movements, which swept through both sides of the Atlantic. In these movements, dreams and dream reporting frequently provided a powerful vehicle for the expression of a ruptured and reintegrated experience of self. But these eighteenth-century dreamers— sitting on the cusp of the modern world—had different preoccupations from those who had come before. As Phyllis Mack argues in her chapter, ‘‘The Unbounded Self: Dreaming and Identity in the British Enlightenment,’’ historians have developed a rather teleological narrative of the porous early modern self becoming, by the eighteenth century, a bounded and fully interiorized self. Mack suggests that this view must be tempered by an appreciation for how these interior regions became, so to speak, somewhat boundless depths—to be explored, but never fully known. As she writes, ‘‘The outer boundaries of the self may have become more clearly demarcated and less subject to external influences (both human and divine), but the unconscious self in the depths of the individual’s psyche had become an even more unfathomable mystery.’’ In her review of the meaning of dreams for English Calvinist, Quaker, and

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Methodist converts, Mack suggests that two elements ‘‘characterize many texts of the period: a vagueness about the nature and origin of dreams or visions and a focus on the emotions generated by the dream rather than the dream’s specific message.’’ While there are subtly different implications for members of each confession in regard to this new interest in emotional complexity, the overarching pattern among the groups Mack studies is markedly similar: ‘‘Eighteenth-century dream theory and interpretation thus promoted not just new knowledge about the self but new levels of mystery and anxiety.’’ In a final chapter, Matthew Dennis offers an essay that places the revitalizing visionary movement of the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake within a larger context of early nineteenth-century religious ‘‘awakenings’’ among Amerindians and Euro-Americans alike. ‘‘Handsome Lake’s visions were simultaneously innovative and ‘traditional,’ ’’ writes Dennis. ‘‘Through his dreams the prophet translated relative powerlessness into new strength and revitalization, offering his people (like the citizens of the new republic generally) a means to deal with their postcolonial predicament.’’ Dennis’s positioning of Handsome Lake’s ‘‘new way’’ locates it both within the deep wellsprings of Seneca culture and within a larger context of ‘‘American revivalism.’’ As Anthony Wallace pointed out years ago, this was, in Dennis’s words, ‘‘a creative adaptation to changed circumstances.’’68 But what makes Dennis’s work new is his interest in adding the Seneca story to the historiography of the Second Great Awakening, thus crumbling the old colonial boundaries—built up by Jesuits, ethnographers, and others— between the credulous and the rational, the ‘‘savage’’ and the ‘‘civilized.’’ As Dennis notes in his conclusion, ‘‘If nineteenth-century Americans saw essential difference between Indians and whites, in retrospect we can see shared problems and similarities in their responses, sometimes in the form of prophetic visions, revitalizing evangelical movements, and the construction of new religions.’’ This collection aims to recontextualize the study of dreaming and visioning so as to undo some of the needless barriers and boundaries that obscure their meaning in the early modern Atlantic world. Our intention has been to bring some coherence to the study of dreams in the early modern Atlantic world. The parts into which these chapters are divided reflect, we hope, the varied and creative processes of dreams and dream reporting, phenomena that were central to dynamic processes of social, political, and

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religious transformation in the period. Dreams and dream reporting enabled and authorized dreamers and listeners to create change in their dynamic worlds. But most important, we hope that these collected essays offer some fresh avenues of understanding into the events and experiences that shaped early modern Atlantic societies. Both in content and method, dreams offer new sources with which historians can explore the shape of early modern encounters among peoples, polities, and cultures. While a powerful narrative emerged from Enlightenment rationalism that argues for the progressive interiorization of dreams, in fact, in all cultures, various meanings attach to dreams and dream reporting, and the early modern period had, if anything, a greater diversity of beliefs and practices than any other time. Our evidence from the period 1450–1800 shows little sign of a development toward greater and greater ‘‘interiorization’’ of dreams. Instead, much evidence suggests that dreams remained potential sources of knowledge—‘‘of credit and regard.’’ When one recognizes that diversity and variety, one can understand, at last, the ways in which the father of the Cartesian individual could have embraced his dream experience as a means of communication with and from supernatural forces.

PART I European Theories, Politics, and Experiences of Dreaming

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Chapter 1

The Inner Eye Early Modern Dreaming and Disembodied Sight mary baine campbell

I think that in general it is a good thing occasionally to bear in mind that people were in the habit of dreaming before there was such a thing as psychoanalysis. —Sigmund Freud, ‘‘Remarks on the Theory and Practice of Dream Interpretation’’ Which dreamed it? —Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

The eye was not always a camera, its powers not always nor merely mechanical. But during the period in which it first came to be understood as such, that model sustained a partially articulated move in elite circles toward a sense of vision as located in, and restricted to, the individual conscious body—increasingly a site of subjective experience rather than a source of vital knowledge. The philosophers Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) and George Berkeley (1685–1753) understood visual perception as a kind of language: a set of learned skills and paradigms for apprehending the visual stimuli experienced on what we now think of as the nerve-rich screen of the retina.1 Vision was not a matter of objective impressions passively imprinted by external stimuli (as in the mimetic theory of Johannes Kepler’s influential Astronomiae pars optica [Frankfurt, 1604]). Rather, vision was a set of skills that in the individual mindful brain could undergo

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change, correction, or improvements useful to the social or civic person and ‘‘his’’ community.2 Indeed, few authors today in the humanities or social sciences seem satisfied with the passive mechanical model of geometric vision advanced by Kepler (1571–1630) or Rene´ Descartes (1596–1650) despite the fact that this kind of model is still dominant in medical circles. Even within optics itself some are rediscovering a pre-Keplerian, contextdependent theory of depth and distance perception first and most richly articulated in the eleventh century by the Arab philosopher Al-Hacen. It was Al-Hacen who showed how the eye measures the distance of a mountain across a flat plain, not by means of Kepler’s straight lines of light, as we might think, but by following a route from one intermediate object of known size to another between the observer and the object.3 All this eye-opening new and rediscovered work, however, has been concentrated on the visual experience of the waking self. One kind of early modern seeing has been all but ignored since Kepler’s emphasis on the mechanical, mimetic vision of the waking eye. And that kind, the topic of this chapter, is seeing in our sleep. In many societies, sleeping vision was a kind of seeing considered far deeper and ‘‘truer’’ than the kind of sight the eighteenth-century poet William Blake would call, sneering at empirical science, ‘‘the Corporeal eye.’’ But sleeping vision had, undeniably, a bodily basis, and in the development of the ‘‘New Science,’’ material questions came gradually to overwhelm the interest of epistemological ones, and the ambivalent status of the dream was reduced, for educated western Europeans, to that of individual physiological delusion rising from digestive vapors. This is not to say that the problem of the sleeping consciousness did not interest such early Enlightenment natural philosophers as Descartes, John Locke (1632–1704), or especially Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716). But the dream itself, that cognitive experience so long dominated by the visual, dropped out of sight toward the end of an era of widespread skepticism.4 All of educated Europe, including the Jesuits and even the Vatican, wished earnestly to awaken from the evacuated illusions of its former knowledge, to ‘‘see’’ again, or for the first time. The culmination of the efforts of its natural and moral philosophy came to be known in every country as a blast of light.5 Enlightenment, Lumie`res, Illuminismo, Aufkla¨rung: who could sleep through that? The point is made starkly by a comparison of the definitions of ‘‘vision’’ that bookend the seventeenth century in the important French dictionaries

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of, respectively, Jean Nicot’s Thresor de la langue francoyse and the dictionary of the Acade´mie Franc¸aise. In 1606, Nicot defines the French word by the Latin and Greek visio, visum, and Phantasia, and offers three senses: 1) ‘‘une vision du ciel . . . c’est comme quand les anges . . . s’apparoissent . . . 2) Vision qu’on voit en dormant’’ [and] 3) ‘‘Faulse vision et semblance’’ (vision of heaven . . . as when the angels appear . . . , Vision that one sees while sleeping, False vision and apparition). Eighty-eight years later, in 1694, the Dictionnaire de l’acade´mie franc¸aise gives as its first definition what was wholly missing in Nicot: ‘‘Action de la faculte´ de voir’’ (The action of the faculty of sight); only the second and third definitions refer to the spiritual sight that was so central before: ‘‘Les choses que Dieu . . . fait voir en esprit, ou par les yeux de corps’’ and ‘‘Une imagination fausse’’ (The things that God . . . makes us see in the mind, or by the eyes of the body), (A false image [hallucination]). Even in these latter, the eyes of the body make an appearance and a distinction is drawn between l’esprit/l’imagination and le corps, the mind or the imagination and the body.6 Nicot’s visio and visum are two categories in the hierarchical system of analyzing dream experience that was outlined in the fourth century by the Greek writer Macrobius, in his encyclopedic and authoritative Commentary on the Dream of Scipio. Visio appears high on the list as the appearance to the dreamer of a god or ancestor, with the usually aural dimension of advice or prophecy, and visum at the bottom, to designate the meaningless experience of random and chaotic images. Both categories belonged to sleep; the latter persists as a common ‘‘scientific’’ concept of all dream experience.7 The new skepticism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in tandem with new technologies of improved vision such as the telescope and the microscope, unsettled confidence in both sleeping and waking vision. For Descartes, writing within the arc of Joachim du Bellay’s Songe (1558), Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595), and Pedro Caldero´n’s La vida es suen˜o (1635), the dream is a limit case of sensory experience and a synonym for ‘‘faulse vision et semblance.’’8 But Descartes was not without precedents in the sixteenth century: the German magus Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa had called dreams a ‘‘vain froth’’ and in England, Thomas Nashe’s protobaroque ‘‘Terrors of the Night’’ criticized (ambivalently) superstitious faith in the signifying power of dreams.9 The use of dreams in poetry and drama is fundamentally an ironic or defensive one, inviting the reader to reconsider an assumed certainty about the verisimilitude of waking perception and the conscious reason rooted in it.10 And those very prosthetic

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devices, the telescope and microscope, that brought so much attention to the expanding realm of the visible and the mechanical operations of the lens dealt a blow to the simple verity even of ‘‘natural’’ sight. If the moons of Jupiter or the mountains on our own moon were real (not everyone believed, of course), then what was so verisimilar about natural sight? Could one truly rely on it?11 Medieval consideration of perception had also been polyphonic: some natural philosophers understood bodily vision as the consequence of rays projected outward from the eye, others as that of rays received by the eye from objects in the visual field, ‘‘extromission’’ and ‘‘intromission.’’ Various theories wandered back and forth in a madrigal of theological implications and pastoral disciplines. The sight of God that was the ultimate goal of Catholic spirituality required theories of vision that could in some way accommodate it as real experience. On the other hand, those who claimed to have had it, or something like it, were highly suspect to a church that sought to bring all human experience of the divine under its own mediation. As Nancy Caciola has brilliantly presented it in her recent Discerning Spirits, the special porosity to spiritual experience so often attributed to women, particularly in the premodern cultures of Europe, was a feature of their supposed (and disapproved) moist-cold complexion.12 Women might be more prone to ‘‘vision’’ in its purely spiritual sense, but they were also far more prone to demonic possession—and intellectually, women were thought too weak to ‘‘discern’’ the difference. The subjectivity of internal and asensual experience was established for the Church as suspect well before Descartes (with his education at the Jesuit college of La Fle`che) published his influential doubts.13 Products of the consciousness in sleep or trance had, however, a long history of popular veneration—though much of it lay beneath the scribal and Latinate horizon of traditional intellectual history. Some of its materials reached the page, and even print in the early modern era, and thus is potentially visible to modern historians. Froth as Agrippa and Nashe might over the ‘‘froth’’ and ‘‘spume’’ of dream experience, many of the newly literate were clearly excited by the sights available to the sleeping mind—whether in or out of their not-yet-inviolable bodies. And despite the growing indifference of natural philosophy, jurists, both ecclesiastical and civic, were often murderous in their protracted belief in demonic possession as late as the end of the seventeenth century: vide the witchcraft trials of Salem, in 1692, during which nineteen witches and ‘‘wizards’’ were hanged (and one

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more was pressed to death). Continental ecclesiastical consensus laid the experience of witches to the account of vivid (but harmless and impotent) dreaming, but popular belief in the external supernatural dangers and powers channeled or suffered by sleeping bodies remained at least as strong in this later period. This strong belief supported a fair amount of publication and republication. The most important of the popular dream manuals had been translated from Greek and Arabic originals into Latin, and by now often into vernaculars from the Latin, in particular the Oneirocritica of the secondcentury dream reader Artemidorus of Ephesus (in modern Turkey) and to a lesser extent the Oneirocriticon of the tenth-century Byzantine Christian ‘‘Achmet,’’ who may have written in Asia Minor as well.14 These manuals, like many since them, gave a series of meanings for largely but not exclusively visual and only minimally narrative dream images (‘‘someone dreams that his guts came out through his anus,’’ Achmet, 116). In Artemidorus’s case these were accompanied by an introduction that directs the student to pay particular attention to context—to the sex, occupation, and social status of the individual dreamer, while Achmet includes some of this data in interpretations of individual dream images: this protosociological theory denied that ordinary people might experience the grander ‘‘public’’ and cosmological dreams. Dream knowledge is understood to seek its own level: knowledge in general has no objective existence, disentangled from the social realities that constitute a ‘‘person’’: ‘‘It is impossible for an unimportant man to receive a vision of great affairs beyond his capacity. For it is contrary to reason unless, indeed, the dreamer is a king, a magistrate, or one of the nobility’’ (Artemidorus, 1:17).15 Although Aristotle’s mostly physiological thinking on dreams and sleeping sight was of course known to both the dream readers of Asia Minor, neither text concerns itself with the mechanics of apprehending visual images during sleep, nor does either problematize its subjectively limited visibility.16 Dreams were interesting to Artemidorus and Achmet (as they would be later to Freud) as legibilia, not as visibilia, as meaningful or readable rather than as ‘‘seen,’’ and above all as useful for the mundane commercial and erotic pursuits of ordinary life: ‘‘New clothes, even if a man dreams of them in winter, are inauspicious only for those who are involved in lawsuits and for slaves longing for freedom, since they are worn out with great difficulty and last a long time. . . . Seeing and eating spring apples that are sweet and well-ripened is a sign of good luck. For it indicates the

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pleasures of love, especially to men who are concerned about a wife or mistress’’ (Artemidorus, 2.3, 84; 1.73, 54). The visible explananda—the unsummoned images, motions, and events—of dreams were, however, noted and accounted for in early modern culture, in more general elite treatments of the faculties of memory and imagination. For Locke, for instance (who often uses the words ‘‘perception’’ and ‘‘thinking’’ interchangeably), perception of ‘‘simple ideas’’ is an entirely waking phenomenon, and his limit cases are hence not the dreaming mind but the madman and the idiot. He considers dreaming very briefly, under the category of ‘‘thinking,’’ as a limit case of that category: ‘‘dreaming itself is the having of ideas (whilst the outward senses are stopped . . . ) in the mind, not suggested by any external objects, or known occasion; nor under any choice or conduct of the understanding at all’’—so much for the mandatory Catholic repentance of wet dreams— ‘‘and whether that which we call ecstasy be not dreaming with the eyes open, I leave to be examined’’ (Human Understanding 2.19. 2).17 His extended digression on ‘‘microscopical eyes’’ abjures the quickening and extension of our ‘‘natural’’ sight for reasons that one might just as well apply to the visions of a sleeping person. One could argue that it was the concept articulated with reference to the microscope in the next sentence that constituted the epistemological downfall of dream and trance over the course of the seventeenth century: ‘‘he would come nearer to the discovery of the texture and motion of the minute parts of corporeal things; and in many of them, probably get ideas of their internal constitutions: but then he would be in a quite different world from other people: nothing would appear the same to him and others’’ (2.23.12, emphasis mine). Indeed, Locke goes on to explain that ‘‘such an acute sight would not serve to conduct [a man] to the market and exchange.’’ Finally, the dependence of the ‘‘thinking’’ soul on its single and autonomous body is summed up in the fact that ‘‘Nobody can imagine that his soul can think or move a body at Oxford, while he is at London’’ (2.23.20).18 Like the microscopical eye, the physiologically understood dreaming brain seemed to seventeenth-century intellectuals to be ‘‘of no advantage’’ in the marketplace, or in other communal and social business that constitutes the ‘‘proper’’ and ‘‘natural’’ habitus of ‘‘men.’’ Its knowledge is too subjective, imagined thus as personal, individual, private, like all the property contemplated by Locke.19 Although dreams in the socie´te´s a` reˆve (Sophie Jama’s ‘‘dream societies’’) of the New World to which we will

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shortly turn were often understood by dreamers and their communities to pertain to communal and social business, Locke here speaks from the emerging culture of ‘‘ocular evidence,’’ in which visibilia had to be multiply witnessed to be credited. It is, after all, in this period (and belonging to its epistemological whirlwind) that the experiments recounted for the Royal Society and the Bureau d’Addresse were constructed, and the canonization process of the Church of Rome itself became more dependent on the corroborated testimony of multiple witnesses in the case of revelations and miracles.20 Those few intellectuals who considered the dream of any advantage to the exercise of reason and understanding were marginal or quickly marginalized: mystics, poets, Dissenters, magi. Cardano was reduced for intellectual history to his mathematical work, and his big book of dreams, the Somnium Synesiorum (1562 and 1585), has never appeared in English; Descartes did not publish his Olympica (1619), a description and interpretation of the three eagerly anticipated dreams that opened his philosophical career.21 The beatific vision itself, which the lexicographer Thomas Corneille still found it necessary to list among the compound phrases at the end of his article on ‘‘vision’’ in the Dictionnaire des arts et sciences (Paris, 1694), was of little or no interest to philosophers on either side of the confessional divide. The works of the seventeenth-century Huguenot divines Moyse Amyraut and Pierre Lavater in France, quickly translated into English, were Protestant efforts to replace Catholic Renaissance dream theory—both the vernacular type and the more grandly neo-Platonist. At the same time, these authors sought to preserve belief, for a post-Reformation readership, in the significance of the dream texts that appear in the Bible. They take account of the medical use of dreams for prognostication, but see postbiblical dreams as the ‘‘vain illusions’’ of, particularly, melancholics and women.22 Neither orthodox Protestants nor Catholic divines approved of the prophetic practices of millenarians. Our dreams, for Amyraut, derive from the excitation of memory traces in the imaginative faculty of the brain provoked by warm vapors rising from the stomach during digestion, and with a variety of imagery stimulated by the various humoural temperaments of dreamers (rather than, as for Artemidorus or Achmet, their social status or function): During sleep the [body’s] heat is augmented in the entrails, that is to say, in the liver, around the heart, in the diaphragm and in all the

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parts that surround the stomach. From there . . . vapors rise to the brain, which on one hand are hot from the heat that excites them and makes them rise, and on the other belong to the humour which generally dominates the body’s temperament [a technical term: sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, or melancholic]. . . . Given that these vapors are hot, they stimulate the ideas which are based in the memory and put them in motion in the imaginative faculty: and insofar as they pertain to this or that humour, they affect the brain, and namely the organ of the fantasy, from the quality of the humour [i.e., blood, choler, phlegm, and black bile] from which they proceed.23 A widely read text on this mechanism was ‘‘Confe´rence Vingt-et-unie`me,’’ published by The´ophraste Renaudot at the Bureau d’Addresse in Paris in January 1634.24 Discussant ‘‘5’’ of the conference on the nature and value of ‘‘songe’’ attempted to harmonize increasingly mutually exclusive accounts of the physiological and prophetic mechanisms of seeing in our sleep, but I have never seen his notion mentioned again: ‘‘il est certain . . . que les Songes ont quelque liaison & conformite´ avec nostre temperament, celuici avec nos moeurs, nos moeurs avec nos actions, & nos actions enfin avec les accidents que nous surviennent: d’ou` ce void que par cette mesme suite les Songes ont un grand rapport avec ces mesmes accidents’’ (It is certain . . . that dreams have connection and conformity with our temperaments, the latter with our habits, our habits with our actions and our actions, finally, with the things that happen to us: whence it follows that dreams have a strong connection to these very eventualities).25 Renaudot published the ‘‘Confe´rence Vingt-et-unie`me’’ in the same year as the Jesuit Paul Le Jeune wrote his first ethnographic missionary relation from the New World. We now turn to Le Jeune for a look at the displacement of significant dreaming onto the ‘‘wild men’’ of the New World. Although the interest in dreams (what we see and perhaps learn in our sleep) disappeared from the philosophical horizon of Europe, it found a new object outside the realm of the fully ‘‘human,’’ or at any rate the ‘‘civilized,’’ in the cultures of the New World. The ethnographic records of the Jesuit mission in New France have been a useful and perhaps literally fascinating source, not only for me now but also in that mission’s own era, for the slowly emergent scientific discipline of ethnology, which has of

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course maintained a lively attention to forms of ‘‘primitive’’ (or as we now put it, ‘‘premodern’’) thinking from that day to this. Characteristically, observers attended to such thinking in those people who were at a significant geographical, cultural, or social distance from themselves and their intended readership.26 The Jesuits in the New World, highly educated intellectuals and professors, faced a number of overwhelming difficulties in the task of converting the seminomadic Iroquois and Algonquian societies they encountered there, but none more daunting than the belief in dreams, and the organized and communal nature of both dream and its interpretation in these societies. As one Jesuit bluntly put it, ‘‘The Dream is their only Divinity.’’27 Not only did the Jesuits regard the task of overcoming this belief as paramount to conversion, but they seem to have regarded it as an important first step in accomplishing that task to influence the content of these dreams, so that the sleeping Montagnais and Huron people they encountered in the earliest years of the mission would limit their nocturnal vision to visions of ‘‘God, Mary and the angels’’—that is, of purely spiritual substances. Images of ancestors and dead relatives would not count among such substances, despite their technical category for the Europeans as ghosts, because of the secular and pagan nature of their presence and their advice. Apparitions of the dead might be taken as real, if entirely subjective, in Europe, but here the practical concerns of Christian pedagogy ruled them out: it was necessary to start from the ground up to construct a Christian culture in the pagan ‘‘wilderness.’’28 One detects a rare note of ambiguity in one of the few passages fully to describe a Huron vision among the Jesuit Relations. The unusually sympathetic Paul Ragueneau records an apparently collective dream vision of a local god with bad news and good advice for the community: [There has] come, it is said, certain news that there has appeared in the woods a phantom of prodigious size, who bears in one hand ears of Indian corn, and, in the other, a great abundance of fish, who says that it is he alone who has created men, who has taught them to till the earth, and who has stocked all the lakes and seas with fish . . . and that . . . upon rendering him the honors which he deserves, he would increase both his love and his cares for them. . . . He also said that to believe that any one of them was destined to a place of torments and to the fires [etc.] . . . were false notions,

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with which, nevertheless, we [Jesuits] treacherously strive to terrify them.29 Ragueneau offers no commentary, so we are left to speculate on what kind of relation the sight of this ‘‘prodigious phantom’’ may have had to ‘‘reality,’’ as the Catholic recorder understood it. Catholic theological suspicion of visions and dreams would surely have termed it a demonic delusion, but this missionary is silent—as his contemporary Paul Le Jeune never was. Le Jeune will be my example for several reasons. A professor of rhetoric at Dieppe and Rennes, this missionary is famous as the founder and first director of the Jesuit mission and as founding author of the series of Relations sent home for publication over a period of almost half a century. He chiefly worked among the Montagnais (Innu) and Huron of eastern Canada, and encountered them in their strongest and most resistant state of intercultural ‘‘virginity.’’ He was an intellectual by training and practice— educated at the same college of La Fle`che that produced his older contemporary, Descartes. After the serial publication of his letters began in 1632 he produced, in 1634, an ethnologically organized book-length account of the culture he first encountered. His was the task of developing a pedagogy with which to confront the ‘‘pagan’’ society he discovered in Que´bec, and although unappealing to a modern reader, his interested text is nonetheless an attempt to understand and communicate what he wished to change. Above all, for my purposes here, he paid attention to the nomadic spirits of the seminomadic people he tried to comprehend.30 That is, he interested himself in the Montagnais belief that the soul or spirit is not in fact bound to the body in this life. Instead—as medieval theologians and pastors had proclaimed, particularly of women, and as many peasants and jurists still believed—the Montagnais saw the body as porous, vulnerable to invasion and possession by other spirits than its own, even as the body of the New World was, we might say, porous to the demonic but literal possession of European colonial settlement. In the belief system of the Montagnais, as described by Le Jeune, the issue of the derivation of dream images cannot be resolved by a Lockean—or even a Renaissance Neoplatonic— explanation of the imagination’s manipulation of stored sense impressions. What the Montagnais saw in their dreams was for the most part seen when out of the body entirely, or when the body was entered by an external spirit. The simplest generalization of Le Jeune’s account of his confrontations with the Montagnais—the chief subjects of his 1635 Relation—would be to

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say that he scoffed at them. Irony and sarcasm are his primary rhetorical attitudes, and his sense of rivalry with one particular ‘‘sorcier,’’ as he described this shaman, was bitter. However, there was a great deal at stake for the intrepid scoffer. As he points out, the stakes included his very life. Since the dream or vision had the function of guiding both personal and communal life, and since the belief that ‘‘dreams deferred’’ would sicken and kill a heedless or negligent dreamer,31 it was a fact very present to Le Jeune that ‘‘if a Savage dream that he will die if he does not kill me, he will put me to death at our first encounter alone.’’32 For it was, by many accounts, the duty of a community to see that a dream wish was in fact fulfilled. This was not a fundamentalist attitude; in the case of cannibal dreams, for instance, the community could stave off disaster by placating the dreamer with an apparent compliance that became, at the last minute, a ritual or symbolic fulfillment, like the Eucharistic meal.33 For cannibal dreams were interpreted as potentially apocalyptic ‘‘public dreams’’ that required communal, though (crucially) not literal, satisfaction. We are a long way here from the epistemological problem of the European dream’s sole witness. Professor Le Jeune’s first recourse in combating Montagnais belief was logical demonstration. The nomadism of the spirit after death was at least a belief held commonly by Christians and Montagnais. But not so the belief that animals and even important objects had immortal souls, and the physical nature of the afterlife did not impress the Christian thinker, no matter how many urban images of the ‘‘celestial Jerusalem’’ his own religion indulged. In a conversation about the soul’s life after death, he asks: ‘‘ ‘What are those poor souls [the dead] hunting during the night?’ ‘They hunt for the souls of Beavers, Porcupines, Moose, and other animals,’ ’’ comes the answer. He goes on: ‘‘when they have killed the soul of the Beaver, . . . does that soul die entirely, or has it another soul, which goes to some other village? . . . My sorcerer was nonplussed by this question . . . for if he had answered . . . that this soul had a soul which went away into another village, I would have shown him that every animal would have, according to his doctrine, more than twenty, indeed more than a hundred souls, and that the world would have to be full of these villages to which they withdrew, and yet no one had ever seen one of them’’ (JR 6:179–81). Le Jeune tries to meet his interlocutor halfway by pointing to the problem of number in material terms. This image of the spirit’s afterlife must be impossible because of the material limitations of space. Characteristically,

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when confronted with this kind of hairsplitting, the Montagnais scoff back in their oft-repeated taunt, as Le Jeune renders it: ‘‘tu n’as point d’esprit!’’ (you have no mind!). They seem, understandably, to see him as a ‘‘literalist of the imagination.’’34 His technique does not work, because it so greatly underestimates the sophistication of the Montagnais belief system. One would dearly love to know what indigenous word or phrase is being translated here by the word ‘‘esprit.’’ The two epistemologies of dream, and probably of ‘‘soul,’’ are not commensurate. A more extended confrontation takes place during a season spent in a Montagnais winter hunting ground. Here in their freezing leisure from the farming activities of the warmer seasons, Le Jeune and his detested ‘‘Sorcier’’ engage in a competition for spiritual influence. Le Jeune observes and carefully describes a case of publicly witnessed shamanic trance, stagemanaged as he believes by the Sorcier, which he puts down to mere theatrics: The jongleur [shaman, conjurer] having entered [the tabernacle] . . . shook the tent at first without violence; then becoming animated little by little, he commenced to whistle in a hollow tone, and as if it came from afar; then to talk as if in a bottle; to cry like the owls of these countries . . . then to howl and sing . . . counterfeiting the voice so that it seemed to me I heard those marionettes which certain acrobats exhibit in France. . . . Some of the Barbarians imagined that the jongleur was not inside [the tabernacle] at all, that he had been transported without knowing where or how. Others said that his body was at rest on the earth while his soul was above the tabernacle where it spoke in the beginning, calling the spirits and sometimes throwing out some sparks of fire. . . . Then addressing themselves to him they cried pouachi, tepouachi, call, call . . . [and] the jongleur above, making like some spirits, changing his tone and voice, called them. Meanwhile our Sorcerer, who was present, took his tambourine and sang with the jongleur . . . inside the tabernacle; the others responded. (JR 6:165)35 Le Jeune had promised his hosts he would keep silent, but he frequently interrupts with debunking remarks. It is clear to him that this trance is something like, say, the Wizard of Oz’s performance in his Great Hall for

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Dorothy et al., exposed at the last minute by Toto, who knocks over the screen concealing the machinations by which the demagogue ‘‘sorcier’’ has deluded the simple folk of Oz. In other words, the display does not even merit the status of demonic possession. It is all smoke and mirrors. The priest’s focus here on his ‘‘jongleur’’ and ‘‘sorcier’’ was clearly based on his strongly expressed sense of priestly rivalry. The Iroquois and Algonquian people did not leave significant dreaming or trance to their shamans, or prepare for it with elaborate ritual. Everybody dreamed, and their dreams were ‘‘their only Divinity.’’ Of course Le Jeune knew perfectly well that this latter was not true, and elsewhere he describes their spiritual overlord the Manitou (and his malevolent wife) in some detail. He must be using the word metonymically to mean their sole experience of the divine— bereft as they were in his eyes of the sacramental mediations of the church. Perhaps, too, his view of the night wandering of sleeping souls was influenced by Johan Weyer’s Praestigiis daemonorum (Basel, 1563), with its dismissal of such wanderings among the deluded and mostly female ‘‘witches’’ and ‘‘sorcie`res’’ of Europe.36 He does not mention it, however, nor in his analogies with European folk customs does he refer to European witches— only to ‘‘jongleurs,’’ tricksters in the marketplace of popular wonders. Already we see the use of dreams and wanderings of the spirit geographically shifting, in elite discourse, to the ‘‘primitive’’ societies of the New World. The very slight but noticeable signs of hesitation in such early missionaries as Ragueneau and Le Jeune are, however, suggestive. If dream images of God and the angels are better but not best, what are they? If Iroquois shamans cannot be compared to French witches, why not? Might we detect in these evasions an ambivalence in the missionaries themselves, a skepticism rather than a certain rejection? At any rate, the combat between the ethnographer-missionaries and their usually resistant ‘‘sauvages’’ went on for decades, and its records constitute one of the most fertile sources I have discovered for tracking an interest in dreams among early modern European intellectuals.37 Admittedly, neither the Catholic Le Jeune nor the Huguenot Amyraut can be said to have neglected dreams, but they denied their significance to contemporary European people. Dream as a kind of vision belonged to the past, or to saints and barbarians—to the realms, ever receding, of the holy, excluded from those of the civilized, the proper, even the Christian. In the

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later eighteenth century the polemically secular Encyclope´die would dismiss the ‘‘Republic of Dreams’’ as an unpoliced ‘‘anarchy.’’ Indeed, Freud’s late nineteenth-century attention to them would be based on just this view.38 Why is it, then, that forms of nonretinal seeing, insufficiently explained as signs of indigestion, dysmenorrhea, or pathological ‘‘exstasies,’’ continued to be of interest to European artists and writers as well as in the folk cultures that more easily managed contradictions of belief? Artists and writers have not always been as antiauthoritarian or heterodox as those of postEnlightenment cultures. Yet even the ‘‘anamorphic’’ paintings of the baroque suggest a reluctance to turn away from the possibility of variant forms of visual perception: the message of an anamorphic painting is always that if you look ‘‘differently’’ there will really be something there to see.39 The famous skull, invisible to natural sight in the foreground of Hans Holbein’s double portrait The Ambassadors (1533), suggests that it may be something you have reason to avoid. As this kind of painting flourished in the century that institutionalized Reason’s dismissal of Dream (it often involved the use of optical instruments), the next question must be: avoid what? It is not my purpose here to answer that question in full. But the protracted war against native American ‘‘socie´te´s a` reˆve’’ is suggestive: the place of what Florence Dumora calls ‘‘nocturnal work’’ in these communities, and among the only partially Christianized rural villages of Europe, was a significantly public place. It led to or influenced communal action. It was in that way a fundamentally democratic form of counsel, and an assertion of ‘‘home rule’’ at the micropolitical level of the local community, at a time when many Europeans were unlikely ever to get more than seven or eight miles from the house they were born in.40 The anthropologist Michael Brown suggests that in ‘‘small scale societies,’’ which would include remote, especially mountainous parts of seventeenth-century Europe as well as the Amazonian bands and villages he writes about, power is scarce and ‘‘allocated’’ by all to one or a few. ‘‘In these circumstances of power scarcity, the acquisition, interpretation or control of dreams may be an important means of demonstrating’’ unusual levels of competence, where accumulating wealth or complex exchange relations is not possible. ‘‘In stratified societies,’’ on the other hand, ‘‘dreams become a subversive force associated with social protest and messianic movements. In such societies, dreams empower the weak, not the strong.’’41

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Individualist physiology, medicine, ethics, and economics—as they emerged in the mercantile and early capitalist contexts of the seventeenth century—dictated a sense of the dream as a product of the individual body, and of the mind as firmly located in the individual brain. Such a location, and such a body-centered and isolated sense of subjectivity, would necessitate a medicalized interpretation of the dream as internally vagrant but physiologically individual and contained. It was not a huge leap from there to Dr. Freud. Nor, on the other hand, is there a sharp discontinuity of worldview between the rejected medieval, folk, and Iroquois understandings of dream and its use in Martin Luther King’s ‘‘I have a Dream’’ speech. The popular politics of resistance has maintained a pre-Keplerian, preCartesian sense of the link between dream and ‘‘the vision thing,’’ maintained as well in the semantic histories of the words ‘‘reˆve,’’ ‘‘songe,’’ and ‘‘dream.’’42 It is a history that recalls their origins in communal usefulness, and also in the vagrancy of a spirit not contained by that individual body and its relation to Locke’s ‘‘market and exchange.’’ In the period of the attempted settlement or immobilization of nomadic peoples in colonized New France, it is well to remember that the new word ‘‘reˆve’’ (increasingly replacing ‘‘songe’’ and perhaps first used in print in Le Jeune’s Relations) arises clearly from verbs whose cognates in English are ‘‘roving’’ and ‘‘raving.’’ In this essay, we have seen how the ‘‘mechanical philosophy’’ and early stirrings of Enlightenment thought—in optics, political economy, and epistemology, and in concert with the joint globalization of commerce and Christianity—transferred European attention to dreams from within Europe’s own villages and palaces to the seminomadic communities of the eastern woodlands of North America. The sights to which we are all at least occasionally subject in our sleep came during this time to seem more locally embodied and limited in significance, the more the dream life brought back by missionaries from New France seemed disembodied, or transbodied. While European dreams rose from digestive fumes to the brains of isolated individuals, losing their meaning, especially their capacity to mean collectively, the Jesuits reported from America on socie´te´s a` reˆve, and jongleurs who spoke in trance with the voices of demons, gods, and ancestors. Though the church monitored both the private and communal dream experience of folk witches, sorcerers, and would-be saints at home in Europe, dreams were unlikely, as the seventeenth century came to a close, to play much part in royal or aristocratic politics, or to be authorized as

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credible visions and ‘‘revelations’’ by the church. The story of the advance of rationalization, bureaucratization, self-regulation, and predictability in European states and societies is well known. I have aimed here to pull out one strand of that story, one particularly important to me as a literary scholar, and to those who study with me the production and reception of meaning.

Chapter 2

Demons of Desire or Symptoms of Disease? Medical Theories and Popular Experiences of the ‘‘Nightmare’’ in Premodern England janine rivie` re

Terrifying dreams frequently wakened early modern English men and women from their sleep. On July 16, 1658, Thomas Vaughan, a Welsh alchemist and cleric residing at Oxford, had the following nightmare: ‘‘I was pursued by a stone horse . . . and I was griviously troubled all night with a suffocation att the Heart, which continued all next day most violently, and still it remaines, but with some little remission.’’1 Vaughan is describing a kind of dream experience that premodern English people knew as the ‘‘nightmare,’’ ‘‘mare’’ or ‘‘incubus’’—a particular kind of experience in popular belief associated with assaults of witches and demonic beings, or, in medical circles, diseases of the body. Today this form of the nightmare is understood as a type of sleep disorder that modern scientists define as ‘‘sleep paralysis.’’ This is an experience that typically occurs in hypnagogic (sleep onset) or hypnopompic (sleep offset) states that results in feelings of intense terror, physical paralysis, and the sense of being suffocated.2 As historians Owen Davies and Willem de Ble´court have suggested, premodern accounts of the nightmare, often associated with witchcraft, can be attributed to incidents of sleep paralysis. Throughout this essay I will use the terms ‘‘nightmare,’’ ‘‘mare,’’ or ‘‘incubus’’ to refer specifically to a premodern form of the experience that is entirely different from modern notions of nightmares that refer to terrible dreams in general. One of the nightmare’s most horrifying aspects was the victim’s encounter with a strange malevolent presence, or being, that attacked while

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he or she lay in a paralytic state and lay on the chest preventing the victim from moving or breathing. While medical authors and adherents of natural dreams saw this as a terrifying dream instigated by disorders in the body’s natural physiology, this encounter led many victims to conclude that they had been subject to the real assaults of demons, witches or spirits. Victims commonly described themselves as being ‘‘hag-ridden,’’ or ‘‘witch-ridden.’’ Consequently, there are two schools of thought concerning the nightmare in early modern England. First, those who believed the nightmare was a disease or disorder of the body manifesting in terrible dreams and a deception of the senses into believing what was dreamed was in fact real. Second, those who conversely saw it as the real assaults of witches, demons, or spirits, which I will define as the ‘‘hag-riding’’ tradition. Thus, at the heart of debates about the nightmare experience was the problem of discerning between dreams and reality, as well as doubts concerning the reliability of the senses. This essay will explore and compare medical and popular understandings of the nightmare from the mid-sixteenth century to the mid-eighteenth century in order to show the complexity, continuity, and tensions in contemporary attitudes, particularly in medical circles, to the nightmare as associated with terrifying dreams or visions. A survey of medical ideas about the causes and cures of the nightmare over the period 1550 to 1760 shows how slowly these notions evolved and indicates that most writers drew their conclusions from longstanding classical medical theories. The majority of medical texts, including popular handbooks of health and learned medical treatises, argued that the nightmare, or incubus, was caused by indigestion, the supine position of the body in sleep, or humoral imbalances. Similarly, cures for the nightmare/incubus also changed little from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, with physicians and medical writers continuing to counsel a strict regimen composed of moderate diet, bloodletting and purging, and avoidance of the supine position in sleep. However, this is not to suggest there were no changes in medical theories about the nightmare. Eighteenth-century writers, such as the physician John Bond (fl. 1750s), who authored An essay on the incubus or night-mare, which was published in 1753, sought to establish more empirical models for the nightmare by appropriating William Harvey’s theories about the circulation of the blood. Similarly, other eighteenth-century medical writers also posited that this disease was a symptom of the nervous condition of the ‘‘Spleen,’’ or ‘‘Hypochondria’’ and ‘‘Hysteria.’’3 As the emphasis on the

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incubus shifted from the humours to the circulatory and nervous systems in the eighteenth century, the primary site for the mare’s origin also shifted from the stomach to the brain. Nevertheless, not all medical writers accepted the new theories; several eighteenth-century authors reiterated the older concepts of the nightmare as a product of indigestion or humoral imbalances. Although both lay health manuals and learned medical treatises described the incubus as a natural disease of the body, there is evidence that the supernatural theory of the nightmare persisted among the broader populace well into the nineteenth century. Seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury medical writers frequently complained about their patients’ belief of the nightmare as a supernatural assault by spirits. Moreover, incidents of being ‘‘hagged,’’ ‘‘hag-ridden,’’ and ‘‘witch-ridden’’continued in English records of witchcraft. Owen Davies has found evidence of men and women accusing persons of ‘‘hag-riding’’ or sending the mare to them in the areas of Somerset and Dorset as late as 1875.4 Therefore, the development of premodern ideas about the nightmare in England reveals a degree of complexity and continuity in dream theories of that period. Throughout the period, early modern English people tried to understand the cause and meaning of the nightmare. Was the nightmare the result of natural imbalances in the body? Or was it indeed the terrifying assaults or visions of real malevolent beings? Discernment was a problematic and ambiguous issue for victims of the nightmare as a manifestation of the demonic in daily life. Thus, at the heart of debates about the nightmare experience was the problem of discerning between dreams and reality, natural and supernatural causes. Was the nightmare a real experience, proof of the demonic, the supernatural? Or was it merely a projected fantasy of the sleeper, manifesting in terrifying dreams? As a result of the multiplicity of coexisting theories of the nightmare experience, the nightmare is representative of a larger corpus of contested dream experiences in the early modern period. As this essay seeks to show, accounts and theories of the nightmare can also reveal important insight into premodern men’s and women’s fantasies about sex and sexuality. Since the nightmare was often associated with the assaults of ‘‘lewd’’ demons (incubi or succubi, in demonology and medical writings), the erotic feature of the nightmare as a sexual or physical assault helps to shed light on premodern sexual fantasies. Additionally, the sexualized aspect of the nightmare is also illustrated by the fact that medical

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writers sometimes prescribed moderation of the individual sexual appetites as a cure for the disorder. Finally, in the history of dreams, the nightmare can be understood as the dark ‘‘other’’ of the dream, offering us glimpses into the terrifying fears and anxieties of past people.

Terror and Fantasy: ‘‘Hag-Riding’’ and Experiences of the Nightmare The majority of accounts of the nightmare come from witchcraft trials and are part of the ‘‘hag-riding’’ tradition. In these records, witches and their demonic familiars were believed to assault their victims supernaturally while they slept by creeping onto their paralyzed bodies to suffocate and ‘‘ride’’ them. As Owen Davies and Willem de Ble´court have shown, records of the nightmare appear in witchcraft trial records both in England and Europe.5 This form of maleficia was known colloquially in England as being ‘‘hagged,’’ ‘‘hag-ridden,’’ or ‘‘witch-ridden.’’ Victims of these nocturnal assaults also often recounted how witches sent the mare. In an English witchcraft trial at York in 1595, Dorothy Jackson accused her neighbor of witchcraft, claiming that she was ‘‘ridden with a witch three times of one night, being thereby greatly astonished and upon her astonishment awakened her husband.’’ In a Northumberland trial, Nicolas Raynes accused Elizabeth Fenwick of ‘‘hag-riding’’ his wife, who ‘‘after being threatened, has been continually tormented by Elizabeth, a reputed witch, who rides on her, and attempts to pull her on to the floor.’’6 Similarly, in March 1650 the child of Sara Rodes of Bolling, Yorkshire, suffered from a serious nocturnal assault, which she believed was made by a witch. Sleeping in the same bed, Rodes woke up one evening to find her child trembling and terrified, saying ‘‘Mother, Sikes wife came in att a hole att the bedd feete, and upon the bedd, and tooke me by the throate, and wold have put her fingers in my mowth, and wold needs choake me.’’7 In 1660 Elisabeth Simpson was accused of ‘‘hag-riding’’ Frances Mason, who complained that while in bed at night, ‘‘she lay miserably tormented, crying out that the said Elisabeth did pinch her heart and pull her in pieces.’’ Similarly, using almost identical descriptors, Jane Milburne testified in 1663 that Dorothy Stranger bewitched her ‘‘soe intollerably that she could not rest all the night and was like to teare her very heart in peeces and this morning left her.’’8 Indicative of the persistent belief that witches

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sent the nightmare into the eighteenth century, a letter to the Spectator discussing the existence of witches in 1711 gave the account of old Moll White, a reputed witch, whose crimes included ‘‘giving Maids the NightMare.’’9 Owen Davies studied the trial records of Somerset and Dorset in the late nineteenth century and found six court cases between 1852 and 1875 which involved witches being accused of ‘‘hag-riding.’’10 Premodern experiences of the nightmare could also incorporate tales of being assaulted by demonic animals. In the account of witchcraft written by Edward Fairfax concerning the bewitchment of his daughter, Helen Fairfax, is an incident in which she was ‘‘laid’’ upon by a demonic cat on November 3, 1621. Subject to numerous nocturnal assaults by demonic beings, Helen complained to her parents, sleeping beside her, that ‘‘a white catt hath laid longe upon mee, and drawne my breath and hath left in my mouth and Throate so filthy a smell that it doth poyson mee.’’11 Similarly, in the trial records of the possession of Richard Dugdale, a Lancashire gardener who became bewitched in July 1695, one of the witnesses testifying to his possession, John Fletcher, a husbandman of Harwood, reported to the jury how he was one night ‘‘in bed with the said Dugdale, and I felt something come up towards my knee; then I felt it creep up till it came towards my heart, and it was about the bigness of a little dog or cat.’’12 The descriptions of being laid upon by demonic beings, which ‘‘creep’’ and steal the breath of their victims suggests symptoms distinctly associated with the nightmare experience. In addition to records of witchcraft trials, early modern English accounts of the nightmare can also be found in the medical notes of physicians such as the astrological physician Richard Napier (1559–1634). While only a few explicit narratives of the nightmare are present in Napier’s notebooks, they do show that men, women, and children of all ages and from all kinds of backgrounds consistently complained of ‘‘fearfull dreams’’ and of being afraid at night in the dark, lest some ‘‘divel’’ should attack them. Napier’s notebooks include one incident where a woman suffered from the nightmare proper. Elizabeth Banebery of Fenny, Stratford, aged twenty-two, saw Napier in 1618 about several symptoms following a difficult pregnancy. Napier concluded that Banebery’s symptoms pointed to a mental disorder, noting she was ‘‘mightily afflicted in mind, not sick in Body.’’13 She complained to Napier of dreams that made her ‘‘mopish’’ and added that she was suffering from violent mood swings. On one occasion, she was ‘‘tempted to kill herself and had a knife in her hand.’’ On March 13, Banebery confided in Napier: ‘‘After her child birth

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[she] fell with a dream and was frighted as if something lay upon her and since has been troubled with worldly matters.’’14 While a modern doctor might diagnose her with postnatal depression, this was in seventeenth-century terms a serious bout of the nightmare or incubus. Additional evidence for the persistence of supernatural etiologies of the mare can be found in a range of printed works outside of witchcraft records. Authors of medical works and dream treatises repeatedly complained that the ‘‘vulgar’’ masses still believed that the nightmare was in fact a supernatural phenomenon. Edmund Gardiner, a seventeenth-century medical writer, wrote in his tract Phisicall and approved medicines (1611), ‘‘this dreadfull griefe which some being much deceived, thinking that it must onely proceede of witchcraft.’’15 Thomas Willis (1621–1675), a wellrespected English physician who was the Sedleian professor of natural philosophy at Oxford, wrote in his chapter on the nightmare in his work De anima brutorum (1672): ‘‘The common people superstitiously believe, that this passion is indeed caused by the Devil, and that the evil spirits lying on them, procures that weight and oppression upon their heart. Though indeed we do grant, such a thing may be, but we suppose that this symptom proceeds oftenest from mere natural causes.’’16 Similarly, Thomas Tryon declared in his A treatise of dreams and visions (1689): ‘‘And tho the Vulgar, when they are thus affected, conceit it some external thing comes and lies upon them, which they fancy to be some Ghost, or Hob-Goblin, yet the truth is, it proceeds from inward causes.’’17 These comments indicate persistence in the belief that the nightmare was a supernatural physical or psychic assault, as well as revealing the experience as a nexus for cultural tensions surrounding ideas of natural and supernatural forces which converged on the body and mind. In the nightmare experience, the lines between reality and dreams were also fundamentally blurred.

Demons of Desire: Succubi and Incubi While the English witchcraft records saw the nightmare as the assault of witches, learned demonology had long held the same experience as the attacks of demonic beings, specifically incubi as the male species and succubi as female nocturnal demons. In continental demonological works, these nocturnal demons were understood to attack men and women in sleep, sexually, physically, and spiritually, seeking to both corrupt the

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bodies and souls of their willing or unwilling victims as well as to propagate unholy offspring. English demonologies are generally skeptical of the existence of incubi/succubi, and most, such as Reginald Scot’s, view the experiences as symptoms of a natural disorder of the body or a febrile imagination. Showing the discrepancies between learned demonology and witchcraft belief, actual accounts of the nightmare in English witchcraft trials saw them as assaults not by incubi/succubi, but rather of witches and their demonic familiars. Yet, while physicians continued to subscribe to a medical theory of the nightmare, other writers such as Thomas Heywood (1573–1641), the English playwright and poet, used stories of incubi or succubi to support belief in the world of spirits against the perceived threat of atheism.18 Heywood defended the belief in the reality of incubi, succubi, witches, and angels in his work The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells, published in 1635. According to Heywood, ‘‘that there are such Spirits as we call Incubi and Succuba, there are histories both many and miraculous.’’19 Heywood compiled his accounts of incubi from the Malleus Maleficarum, the lives of the Church Fathers, Boethius, and contemporary accounts. He drew from key demonological works to prove that men and women were actually visited by male and female night demons. For example, Heywood offers us an account of ‘‘a Maid of a noble family’’ in Scotland who was ‘‘found with child’’ and after confessed to have been visited nightly by a ‘‘beautiful young man’’ who turned out to be a nefarious incubus.20 Heywood’s support for belief in incubi and succubi indicates that some educated writers also subscribed to belief in the reality of night demons. Women were not the only ones to become the sexual prey of ‘‘lewd demons.’’ Heywood also includes the tale of a French nobleman ‘‘given over to voluptuousnesse’’ who encountered a succubus one evening on a walk in Paris whom he took home and had sex with. On waking the man found that his new lover was in fact dead. The woman he had slept with turned out to be the corpse of a recently executed witch.21 These tales of the nightmare illustrate traditional beliefs about the reality of incubi and succubi and their common links to sex and witchcraft. It is also notable that popular accounts of the nightmare and early definitions include the sexualized descriptions of hag riding, ‘‘venery,’’ and ‘‘seminal emissions.’’ One way of understanding the nightmare experience is to apply psychological interpretations that were not unknown to early modern people, that is, by considering the experience of the nightmare as reflections of early

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modern men’s and women’s sexual fantasies and anxieties. Early modern writers show a clear awareness of the erotic features of the incubus experience. Writers like Thomas Heywood and the authors of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum, Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer, referred to the numerous histories where entire convents of nuns were plagued by the sexual assaults of incubi. Heywood also includes several accounts of men being sexually assaulted or consenting to carnal relations with succubi, most usually priests or gentlemen.22 Additionally, the older English definitions of the mare also include references to hag-riding and being witchridden, which do little to hide the sexual components of this encounter. For these authors, the nightmare was a real experience rather than an imagined one, in which victims were viciously assaulted by ‘‘lewd’’ and malevolent night demons. The erotic nature of the traditional beliefs in the nightmare are also evident in contemporary discussions about male nocturnal emissions that were the result of sexual dreams frequently ascribed to the visitations of succubi. Thomas Walkington referred explicitly to the erotic facets of the nightmare, advising that abstinence from excessive seminal emissions was the best cure for the nightmare: ‘‘There is an other diet for Venus: we must not spend our selves upon common curtizans: wee must not be like Sparrowes, which . . . goe to it eight times in an hower, nor like Pigeons, which twain are fained of the Poets to draw the chariot of Cytheraea.’’23 Moreover, as James Ferrand commented in his Epotomania; or, A Treatise Discoursing of the Essence, Causes, Symptomes, Prognosticks, and Cure of Love or Erotique Melancholy (1640): ‘‘This Disease takes them commonly in their first sleepe, when as the thick grosse vapors which are carried up to the Braine, stop the Nerves that serve for speech and Respiration: by which meanes the parties thus troubled, think they have a heavy burthen lying upon them, or else some Divell, or Witch, that would attempt a breach upon their Chastity.’’24 The erotic nature of the nightmare for most people was self-evident and perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the experience. In his Daemonologie, King James I wrote at length of incubi and succubi as ‘‘spirits’’ that ‘‘[haunt] most of the Northerne and barbarous parts of the world.’’ Redolent of the tendency of early modern people to externalize the darker aspects of sexuality in supernatural ‘‘others’’ such as the witch, the devil, and demons, James drew from the Malleus Malificarum to present incubi and succubi as ‘‘lewd’’ demons who stole the semen of men in order to procreate with witches in sadistic sexual encounters that are such a classic

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facet of early modern demonology.25 According to James, in some instances the devil steals the ‘‘sperme’’ from dead or living men and uses it to impregnate women. However, reflecting the demonic inversion of normal procreation, sex with the devil was frequently ‘‘intollerably colde’’ and lacking the passionate warmth of human copulation.26 Thus, sex with demons for women as well as men was often described as terrifying, cold, inhuman, and most often infertile. Should a woman become pregnant with the child of an incubus, the baby was often born a monster. The involvement of fantasy and the ‘‘imagination’’ in the production of the nightmare was a theory that early modern physicians and other writers also supported. This was linked to the natural theory of dreams. According to Robert Burton, who advocated the predominant view, ‘‘This we see verified in sleepers, which by reason of abundance of humors and concurse of vapours troubling the Phantasie, imagine many times absurd and prodigious things, and in such are troubled with Incubus, or witch-ridden, as we call it, if they lie on their backs, they suppose an old woman rides them, and sits so hard upon them, that they are almost stifled for want of breath; when there is nothing but a concourse of bad humours which trouble the Phantasie.’’27 The faculty of ‘‘phantasie’’ as a subordinate facet of the imagination was one that other writers also believed produced visual hallucinations like the nightmare. Richard Bernard noted that ‘‘a strong imagination’’ led the fearful to dream of the suspected witch because of ‘‘the fantasie being oppressed.’’ On the subject of the mare he also supported the increasingly popular view that this too was the result of the imagination and faculty of ‘‘Phancy.’’28 Hallucinations produced by the overactive imagination or ‘‘fantasie’’ were also believed to lie behind common encounters with ghosts, witches, spirits, and apparitions. As a popular 1605 English translation of Pierre le Loyer’s De Spectris put it: ‘‘It resteth now that we speake of the Fantasie, which is no other thing, but an Imagination or impression of the Soule, of such formes and shapes as are knowne: or of such shall be imagined, without any sight had of them.’’29 According to le Loyer, the nightmare was a hallucination caused by the combined forces of indigestion and a ‘‘corrupted’’ imagination or ‘‘fantasie’’ in which the persons afflicted imagined ‘‘that they are enticed and solicited by them [incubi or succubi] to actes of venery.’’30 Read in this context, the idea that experiences of the nightmare reflected male or female fantasies about sexual desire is neither anachronistic nor untenable.

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Medical Theories of the Nightmare: Physic and Medicine In early modern England, medical theories of the nightmare coexisted with supernatural ones, both drawing from ideas that went as far back as antiquity. Galenic lore suggested that humoral imbalances were the root cause of the disease. Most writers of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English medical books asserted that the incubus was caused by an excess of melancholy, phlegm, or ‘‘vital spirits’’ which arose as a result of indigestion or eating ‘‘hard meats’’ and drinking liquors. Thus, it was believed that the body’s excess humours caused ‘‘vapors’’ to ascend to the brain, triggering the imagination to produce horrible visions in the mind. Richard Haydock (1569/70–1642), an English physician infamous for his fraudulent claims to preaching while asleep, explained the process in detail in his manuscript on dreams, the Oneirologia (1604/5): In ye incubus, or night mare, ye spirituall & Animall spirits, are so oppressed wth a multitude of grosse vapors; yt men thinke ymselves overlaine wth some hagge, or oppressed wth some ponderous burdon. By wch examples it is evident yt ye actions of ye mind close pesoned in ye Bodye, in ye time of sleepe (it self oversleepinge) are distorted & missed by ye similitude of ye cheife swayinge humors now become exorbitant by ye inequality of temperature where a carefull differene is to be putt betweenne ye ffirst naturall kinde of dreames & ye 2d Insomuch as these vapors styrre ye Phantasye to make & forme images answerable to their owne nature wthout ye helpe of inherent formes & ideas of ye matters last thought of, or earnestly intreated of; ye senses now beinge kindley bound by a temperate, & mild ascending vapor, & yt is ye cause why yey are formall rationall & choherent; when these are onelye materiallye significatine from ye elementary part of man beinge a forerunner of a subsequent disease, as smoake is of fire.31 According to Haydock, the humours oppressed the animal or vital spirits, so that the imagination produced natural dreams of being ‘‘oppressed’’ by ‘‘some hagge’’ or ‘‘some ponderous burdon.’’ The mind was therefore misled by the senses into believing what was dreamt was in fact real. Thus the difficulty here was discerning between reality and fantasy, dreaming and waking states. Similarly, the anonymous author of the seventeenth-century

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medical tract, ‘‘On the Nightmare’’ explained that it was ‘‘chiefly’’ made ‘‘by a gross vapour comming from thence to the brain.’’ These ‘‘grose vapours’’ obstructed the ‘‘passages of the brayne’’ so that the ‘‘nerves’’ were affected as well as the ‘‘phancy.’’ The result was a difficulty breathing and ‘‘bad dreames’’ of ‘‘horrible’’ objects.32 The growing market for medical manuals in England led to the translation and publication of several continental medical texts and works of natural philosophy in English in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These works also supported the idea that the primary cause of the incubus was humoral imbalance. Wilhelm Scribonius’ treatise, Natural Philosophy: or, A Description of the World (1631), explained that the nightmare happened ‘‘when the vitall spirits in the braine’’ were ‘‘darkened’’ by melancholic and phlegmatic vapours, ascending from the stomach.33 Similarly, Walter Bruele wrote in his Praxis Medicine, or, The Physicians Practice (1632): ‘‘It is caused by a grosse and cold Phlegme, as also from grosse and melancholy bloud settled about the heart and veines of the brest, from whence grosse vapors are belched out, wherewith, as often as raw vapors caused by gluttony are mingled.’’34 For both English and continental medical writers, the nightmare experience was entirely natural in origin, and was therefore significant only as a disorder of body. Above all, ‘‘Melancholy’’ was considered the mother of all terrible dreams including those associated with the nightmare. A Cambridgetrained physician resident at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, Timothie Bright (1551–1615), in his A Treatise of Melancholy (1586) saw ‘‘fearful dreams’’ and the nightmare as a symptom of melancholy and indigestion.35 Bright argued that humoral excess affected the mind so that experiences such as the incubus were ‘‘Whelpes of that Melancholicke litter, and are bred of the corrupted state of the bodie altered in Spirit in Bloud, in substance and complexion, by the abundance of this setling of the Bloud we call Melancholy, This increaseth the terrour of the afflicted minde, doubling the feare and discouragement.’’36 Therefore, for Bright, fearful dreams like the nightmare were merely the result of corrupted faculties of the mind and imbalances in the body. Black thoughts, sadness, madness, and terrible visions of the devil, demons, and witches were common symptoms of the melancholic person who was under siege by an ‘‘abundance’’ of this black humor. According to Bright, the mind labored in the prison of the body, while the senses were deceived:

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This meanes, (I mean the outward meanes of consolation and cure) must needs passe by our senses to enter the minde, whose instrument being altered with by the humour, and their sincerity stained with the obscure and darke spots of Melancholy, receive not indifferently the medicine of consolation. So it both mistaketh that which it apprehendeth, and delivereth it imperfectly to the mindes consideration. As their Braines are thus evill disposed, so their hearts in no better case, and acquainted with terrour, and overthrowne with that fearful passion, hardly set free the cheerful Spirits, feebled with the corporeal prison on the bodie, and hardly yeelde to perswasion of comfort, whatsoever it bringeth of assurance.37 The terror that the melancholic person felt in dreams was the complex result of the body’s effects on the mind. A false perception of reality was the result of the body’s noxious fluids rising from the stomach to suffuse the brain with deceptive images. Robert Burton further developed Bright’s theories in his authoritative work, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). According to Burton in his discussion of the imagination, ‘‘in Melancholy men this faculty is most powerfull and strong, and often hurt, producing many monstrous and prodigious things, especially if it be stirred up by some terrible object.’’38 Burton also argued that indigestion also caused fearful dreams and bouts of the incubus: ‘‘Hare, a black meat, melancholy & hard digestion, it breeds Incubus often eaten & causeth feafull Dreames, & so doth all Venison, & is condemned by a Jury of Physicians.’’39 Other foods believed to cause terrible dreams included beans, peas, and fruits since ‘‘they fill the braine, . . . with gross fumes, breed black thick blood, and cause troublesome dreames.’’40 In line with the natural theory of dreams, which held that many dreams were merely the by-products of indigestion, Burton advised sufferers of melancholy to avoid sleeping too much on a full stomach: ‘‘if it be used in the day time, or upon a full stomacke, the body ill composed to rest, or after hard meates, it increaseth fearfull dreames, Incubus, night walking, crying out, and much unquietness.’’41 Medical theories based on Galenic medicine that privileged the humors as the site of all health and disease argued that the nightmare was merely the result of vapors rising from the stomach to the brain, heart, and lungs. The nightmare understood in this way was ultimately a disease rather than a supernatural assault. According to Edmund Gardiner in his work Phisicall

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and Approved Medicines (1611), ‘‘this disease of the night-Mare . . . it commeth by meanes of certaine grosse and thicke vapours, which doe partly intercept, and hinder the free passage of the spirits animall.’’42 Thomas Walkington also subscribed to the theory of humoral imbalances, asserting that the nightmare ‘‘is nothing else but a disease proceeding of grosse phleume in the orifice of the stomach, by long surfet, which sends up could vapors to hinder the passage of the spirits decending.’’43 Thomas Willis was another renowned physician whose learned works were simplified, translated into English, and sold as handy medical reference books to the public.44 In the eighteenth century, John Bond had read Willis carefully in order to more fully understand his own affliction.45 According to Willis’s Practice of Physick (1684), the nightmare was in fact a ‘‘distemper’’ of the brain: ‘‘In truth, the Symptoms which are wont to be raised up in the distemper called the Incubus or Night-mare, viz. loss of speech, and a mighty weight or load that seems to lye upon the breast, proceed altogether from the morbisick matter fixed in the confines of the Cerebel, and obstructing the passages of the Spirits destinated for the Pracordia.’’46 Physicians offer variations on these themes, some according more influence to the brain, others the stomach. Jeremy Collier wrote in his Miscellanies upon Moral Subjects (1695) that ‘‘the fumes of Indigestion, insensible Abatements of Health, sudden Changes of Weather, affect the Brain, though they make no sensible Impression elsewhere.’’47 Not all medical works in this period were written by ‘‘eminent phisitians.’’ For the less educated, popular works such as The Problems of Aristotle offered readers useful medical knowledge. This work ascribed to Aristotle was first published in 1595 and went through no less than eleven editions by 1684.48 Indicative of the way that early modern writers split the body into parts, in the section ‘‘Of Backs’’ is a discussion of the incubus.49 The author of this work explained that it was the result of humoral imbalances of the body and the corruption of ‘‘the fantasie’’ or imagination. The format of the book is the dialectical model. Q. Why hath man that lyeth on his back horrible Visions? A. Because the passage or sign of the fantasie is open, which is in the fore-part of the brain, and so the fantasie is destroyed, and then those Visions follow. Another reason is, because when a man lieth on his back, the humors are disturb’d and mov’d upward where the Fantasie is, which by that means is disturb’d.

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Q. Why is it naught to lye on the back? A. Because, as the Physicians say, it disposes a man to Leprosie, Madness, and to an Incubus where you may note, that Mania, or madness, is the hurt or disturbance of the fore-part of the brain, with taking away, or deprivation of the Imagination: but Incubus, that is, the Nightmare, is a passion of the heart, when a man thinks himself to be strangled in his sleep, and somewhat lies heavy on his stomach which he would put off.50 Thus, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century medical writers argued that the nightmare was a disease caused by imbalances in the body’s natural processes and their dangerous effects on the imaginative faculty and the production of mental images. The terrifying dreams associated with the nightmare were therefore understood as disturbed mental images, linked with madness, that arose as a deception of the senses and were products of a disordered imaginative faculty. Early eighteenth-century medical works typically recycled the same notions of causes and remedies for the nightmare as expounded by their seventeenth-century predecessors. In his work, Medicus Novissimus; or, the Modern Physician (1722), Philip Woodman explained: ‘‘The cause is from an Obstruction, of the Animal Spirits, entering the Nerves, which carry Motion to the Muscles . . . the Obstruction of the Animall Spirits, is caused by an incongruous inbred Acid, which is promoted by Errors committed in Diet; that is, eating late at Night, such things breed gross viscid Humours, which are all such as are Salt, Acid, and Smoak-dryed Meats, and such as are of a hard Digestion.’’51 Theories and notions about the influence of the humours were slow to disappear from early modern medical lore. A popular book of knowledge, titled The British Apollo (1726), advised its readers that the incubus was caused by either a ‘‘thick, melancholick blood,’’ or ‘‘malignant vapours ascending to the brain’’ during sleep.52 Similarly, the medical tract, A Treatise of Diseases of the Head, Brain & Nerves (1714), published four times in the early eighteenth century, also ascribed the primary cause of the nightmare to, ‘‘vapours, which chiefly obstruct the hinder part of the brain, by which the Flux of Animal Spirits being stop’d, Breathing is hinder’d.’’53 However, during the mid-eighteenth century physicians began to shift away from humoral theories. Instead, they began to assert that the nightmare was instigated by disorders of the circulatory and nervous systems;

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this indicated a move away from Galenic medicine. Furthermore, the primary site of the incubus moved from the stomach to the brain. New ideas about the circulatory system, brain and nerves were incorporated into explanations of the nightmare. John Radcliffe wrote in his Pharmacopoeia Radcliffeanna (1718): ‘‘In an Incubus, the plentiful Repast at Bed-time distends the Bowels, and the supine Posture in Sleep, causes the Victuals to press upon the descending Artery, so that nothing can circulate freely to the lower Extremities: and the whole Blood oppresses the Brain.’’ This obstruction of the arteries caused the ‘‘nerves’’ to be compressed ‘‘so that we find a Sense of some Weight upon us’’ during attacks of the incubus.54 In The Physical Dictionary (1702), Steven Blankaart stated: ‘‘This proceeds from a compression of the Cerebellam, when the Ventricles are too full of moisture: Or of those who are thus affected lye upon their Backs, then the whole bulk of the Brain lies upon the Cerebellum.’’ The ‘‘weight’’ of the brain on the nerves prevented the ‘‘spirits’’ from circulating and thus, the lungs became ‘‘oppressed,’’ resulting in the sensation of suffocation, a key symptom of the incubus.55 Innovations in understanding the nervous system also led to new ideas being circulated about older nervous diseases, such as ‘‘Hypochondria,’’ ‘‘Hysteria,’’ and the ‘‘Spleen.’’ ‘‘Hysteria’’ was conceptualized as a female illness and it was believed that women’s delicate nervous system led to a number of peculiar ailments which fundamentally affected the natural functions of the female body. While Hysteria was primarily associated with the uterus before the seventeenth century, Thomas Sydenham’s Schedula Monitoria (1688) explained it was rather a nervous disorder associated with the brain and the nervous system.56 Yet not all medical writers saw only women as susceptible to the nightmare and nervous disorders. Sir Richard Blackmore (1654–1729), the physician-in-ordinary to William III, viewed the incubus as a symptom of ‘‘Spleen,’’ a disease associated with ‘‘hypochondria,’’ considered a specifically male nervous disorder. According to Blackmore, this illness was ‘‘interwoven with the first Principles of Life, where they lie quiet and unconcealed, till the active Ferments of Puberty or adult Age unfold them.’’ During adolescence, ‘‘the Hypocondriacal Seeds disentangled and let loose, begin to shoot and come forward’’ so that the spleen itself ‘‘becomes now dark and livid.’’57 In brief, the nightmare was merely one of many symptoms of the ‘‘Spleen;’’ others included ‘‘cold clammy sweats’’ and ‘‘short and interrupted’’ respiration.58

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Robert Whytt (1714–1766), the Royal Physician and President of the Royal College of Physicians, also viewed the incubus as a symptom of ‘‘hypochondria’’ and the ‘‘disordered state of the stomach,’’ which resulted from food not settling comfortably in the stomach due to the supine position.59 Whytt further explained: We are only affected with the nightmare in time of sleep, because the strange ideas excited in the mind, in consequence of the disordered state of the stomach, are not then corrected by the external senses, as when we are awake; nor do we, by an increased respiration, or other motions of the body, endeavour to shake off any beginning uneasy sensation about the stomach or breast. The Incubus generally seizes one in his first sleep, but seldom towards the morning, because at this time the stomach is much less loaded with food, than in the beginning of the night.60 By emphasising the importance of the stomach and indigestion as the root cause of the incubus, Whytt rejected newer models of the nightmare in favour of older ideas, reaching back to antiquity. Above all, according to Whytt, the dreams associated with the nightmare, were ‘‘strange ideas’’ stimulated in the mind by the disordered body, the senses ultimately deceived into believing what was dreamt was in fact real. By conceptualizing dreams as ‘‘ideas,’’ Whytt drew from John Locke’s notion of dreams as merely ‘‘the having of ideas, whilst the outward sense are stopped.’’ These ‘‘ideas’’ were presented to the mind, often ‘‘oddly put together’’ yet consisting of a conglomerate of ‘‘the waking man’s ideas.’’61 In this philosophical view, dreams were deemed meaningless random thoughts in motion. In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century medical texts, the natural theory of dreams going back to Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates continued to influence ideas of natural dreams and the terrible dreams associated with the nightmare. However, this does not necessarily mean that these medical models were embraced by all. Andrew Baxter (1686/7–1750), a significant eighteenth-century philosopher, argued that a natural theory of the nightmare which ascribed it as a ‘‘distemper of the brain,’’ was nothing less than ‘‘absurd.’’ In his important work, An Enquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul (1733), he posited that the true cause of this phenomenon could be explained as a form of demonic possession.62 In sleep, according to Baxter, the body and mind were vulnerable to the assaults of intelligent ‘‘beings’’

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who ‘‘wait for, and catch the opportunity of the indisposition of the body, to represent at the same time something terrifying also to the mind.’’ In Baxter’s view it was an absurdity to conceive that the rational soul would torment itself with terrifying dreams and instil such disorder into the mind. He argued that the disorder of the body associated with the nightmare and ‘‘the disagreeable vision made to accompany it, are two different things.’’63 In his view, dreams were products not of the individual sleeper’s body or mind, but rather of supernatural beings who ‘‘represent’’ or inject dreams into the mind in what was essentially a form of possession in sleep. In this way, as historian Lucia Dacome explained in her article on dreams in the eighteenth century, Baxter sought to solve the problem of the ‘‘doubling of consciousness’’ evident in dreams by ascribing the involuntary thoughts and actions in dreaming to an outside supernatural agent.64 Although Baxter’s ideas were critiqued, particularly by Thomas Branch in his work, Thoughts on dreaming (1738), the fact that he was able to put forward such theories in the eighteenth century shows that not all intellectuals were exclusively committed to a natural theory of dreams.65 However, in many ways Baxter was unique in asserting a supernatural etiology of dreams and the nightmare. Most medical writers, including John Bond, scoffed at these theories as ‘‘wild opinions’’ smacking of superstition and an ignorance of natural causes.66 In the eighteenth century, John Bond’s important medical tract On the Incubus, or Night-mare (1753) reflects the continuing medical notion that the nightmare was the result of complex imbalances of the body, a disease that resulted in temporary paralysis, and intense feelings of dread. Little is known about John Bond, other than that he was a physician who submitted a Latin version of his work on the incubus for his doctorate at the University of Edinburgh in 1751. Bond was also himself a chronic sufferer of the nightmare. In his preface he confessed the reason for writing his work: ‘‘Being much afflicted with the Night-mare, self-preservation made me particularly inquisitive about it. In consulting the ancient Physicians, I found little information concerning it, except dreadful prognostics; nor could a rational account of it be expected from them, as they were unacquainted with the circulation of the blood.’’67 Bond believed that the paucity of medical knowledge about the nightmare was due to the lack of empirical studies of the disease and also due to the fact that previous authors had not experienced the phenomenon themselves. He used contemporary advances in knowledge about the

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circulation of the blood to suggest, contrary to previous medical theories, that ‘‘the Night-Mare is commonly, and, I believe, justly, attributed to a stagnation of the Blood; but how this stagnation is produc’d has not been explain’d, so far as I know, in a satisfactory manner.’’68 Within his text, Bond included multiple accounts of individuals who suffered the nightmare believing them to be assaults of the devil or night demons. This indicates clear evidence of the continuity of belief in the supernatural cause of the nightmare even until the mid-eighteenth century. Bond included testimonies of the nightmare reported by eighteenthcentury women, presumably his patients or those of his colleagues, which he believed occurred ‘‘before the eruption of the Menses.’’ For instance: A young Lady, of a tender, lax habit, about fifteen, before the Menses appear’d, was seiz’d with a fit of this Disease, and groan’d so miserably that she awoke her Father, who was sleeping in the next room. He arose, ran into her chamber, and found her lying on her Back, and the Blood gushing plentifully out of her Mouth and Nose. When he shook her, she recover’d, and told him she thought some great heavy Man came to her bedside, and, without farther ceremony, stretched himself upon her. She had been heard moaning in sleep several nights before.69 In a novel assertion, Bond believed that this woman suffered the nightmare due to an excess of menses or blood that was subsequently cured when ‘‘she had a copious eruption of the Menses, which, for that time, remov’d all her complaints.’’70 The buildup of blood in the body, according to Bond’s theory, oppressed the brain, resulting in the hallucinations of the nightmare. Once the proper balance of blood in the body was restored, the nightmare ceased. Showing the discrepancies and ideological tensions between the prognosis of the physician and the beliefs of the patient, Bond’s example illustrates the complex range of ideas potentially used to understand experiences of the nightmare in addition to a shift in the mid-eighteenth century toward viewing the nightmare as originating in the circulatory problems of the blood. The Dangers of Excess: Cures and Prophylactics Representative of popular medical views of health and disease, the dangers of excess were also used to explain the moral and physiological causes of

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the nightmare throughout the early modern period. This was a popular theory in seventeenth-century medical and prescriptive works. In 1651 Thomas Hobbes had drily written off belief in the nightmare as a demonic assault as mere superstition. To Hobbes the real cause was that this disease ‘‘springing from Gluttony, it makes men believe they are invaded, opprest, and stifled with a great weight.’’71 The dangers of excess included the sins of excessive drinking, eating, sex, and even sleep. This view reflects the way that diseases in this period were considered part of the moral cosmology and seen as God’s retribution for excess and sin. The body was a moral prison or potential vehicle of punishment for those indulging in excessive appetites. Within this culture, the nightmare was thus viewed as a just retribution for morally and physiologically dangerous excesses. Sexual excess was, according to Thomas Walkington, something to be seriously tempered and abstained from lest the body give rise to nightmares.72 Philip Barrough also urged against the dangers of excess since ‘‘this vice [the nightmare] is caused of excesse of drinking, and continuall rawnes of the stomacke.’’73 Thus, according to Barrough, drunks, fat men, and children were the chief victims of this ‘‘vice.’’ Mention of the perceived contemporary attitudes toward sexual excess in the particular form of masturbation is not remiss here, since the nightmare was long held to be a kind of private sexual fantasy resulting frequently in nocturnal emissions and suggestive of involuntary masturbation. Thomas Laqueur has argued that cultural anxieties about the dangers of sexual excess were prevalent in seventeenth- and particularly eighteenth-century England, resulting in a discreet campaign in print to curb this taboo vice.74 Theories and experiences of the nightmare as the reflection of sexual fantasies and anxieties of premodern people can offer us important insight into seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ideas of the body, mind, and sexuality. Sex as an appetite of the body is inherently linked to the body’s desire for food and drink. John Bond included the following account of an eighteenth-century ‘‘corpulent clergyman’’ who because of his excessive love of drink and food suffered intense bouts of the nightmare: ‘‘A corpulent Clergyman, about fifty years old, who is very fond of strong beer and flesh suppers, but so subject to the Night-mare, that he is obliged to stint himself to a certain quantity every night; whenever he happens to take an over-dose, he groans so loudly that he often wakens all the People in the house. He has assured me, that, in these fits, he imagin’d the Devil came to

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his bedside, seiz’d him by the Throat, and endeavoured to choack him. Next day he observ’d the black impressions of his hard Fingers on his Neck.’’75 Excessive indulgence also led to dangerous overabundances of the body’s natural fluids. Isbrand van Diemerbroeck (1609–1674), a Dutch physician whose case histories were translated into English by William Salmon in 1694, argued that the nightmare caused ‘‘an over-redundancy of Blood in the whole Body.’’76 Thomas Tryon also noted that the incubus caused an abundance of ‘‘Phlegm’’ in the body in addition to ‘‘a surcharge of Humors’’ that impeded the animal spirits, resulting in a temporary paralysis of the body’s natural workings.77 The physician Helkiah Crooke also believed that the nightmare was caused by ‘‘a great quantity and notable thickness’’ of humors that ‘‘strangled’’ the ‘‘animal spirits’’ residing in the ‘‘ventricles’’ of the brain.78 The dangers of excess therefore led to the deadly commingling of humoral fluids in the stomach that rose to the brain, causing the hallucination of the nightmare and the sense of physical oppression and temporary paralysis in sleep. Moderation was seen to be the key to good health in premodern English physic. When all else failed, moderating the body’s excessive appetites was viewed as essential for the well-being of the overall person. Robert Bayfield, an English physician, suggested that the best prophylactic was ‘‘a slender diet’’ in addition to avoiding the supine position.79 The Problems of Aristotle also advised ‘‘the best Physick is, to use temperance in eating and drinking.’’80 In the republished and enlarged edition of Thomas Tryon’s A Treatise on Dreams and Visions (1689) retitled Nocturnal Revels (1706) it was advised: ‘‘The cure is to be effected by a Regular Diet, and such as may generate good Spirits; and prevent the Encrease of Melancholy and Phlegm; avoid full suppers, and Excess in Liquors, which oft occasion this disease: Use convenient Purging, and sometimes breathing a Vein may be convenient; especially in Women, in certain Obstructions peculiar to that Sex. The Black Seeds of the Male Piony are much commended in this Distemper.’’81 Francis Bacon also recommended a powder of the ‘‘peony’’ seed be used as a cure for the nightmare, as did Nicholas Culpepper in his work The English Physician (1652).82 The general consensus of physicians for a prophylactic against the incubus was therefore to counsel moderation or a ‘‘slender diet,’’ especially for supper. Drinking liquors or excessive alcohol in any form was to be avoided, as was ‘‘gluttony.’’ The dangers of excess were believed to result in

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serious bouts of the nightmare that could become chronic and lead to such more serious illnesses as ‘‘epilepsie,’’ ‘‘palsy,’’ or ‘‘apoplexy.’’ Philip Barrough urged, ‘‘it is good to remedie this evill at the first: for if it continewe, it induceth and sheweth before some grevous disease, as the Apoplexie, the falling sickness, or madnesse.’’83 Authors also advised sleeping on one’s side and to at all costs avoid the ‘‘supine’’ position since this could often lead to the nightmare. Thomas Coohan advised moderation in sleep. A healthy human should sleep no more than ‘‘7, 8, or 9 hours’’ a night, should always sleep at night, and should not indulge in daytime naps. Similarly, the anonymous author of the tract Directions and Observations Relative to Food, Exercise and Sleep (1772) recommended no ‘‘less than six nor more than nine Hours a Day’’ of sleep.84 The popular work of the medical doctor William Buchan, Domestic Medicine (1772), urged moderation in sleep, promoting what historian Lucia Dacome has defined as a form of ‘‘bodily domestication.’’85 Buchan advised his readers, ‘‘sleep, as well as diet, ought to be duly regulated. Too little sleep weakens the nerves, exhausts the spirits, and occasions diseases; and too much renders the mind dull, the body gross, and disposes it to apoplexies, lethargies, and such like.’’86 The custom of some ‘‘indolent and slothful’’ people who indulged in ‘‘lolling a-bed’’ for eight or nine hours was therefore conducive to a weak and disease-prone constitution.87 The ideal sleep, according to eighteenth-century physicians and philosophers like John Locke, was a dreamless one.88 Coohan also advised sufferers of the nightmare or ‘‘terrible dreams’’ to avoid eating leeks, onions, and beans since they raised ‘‘ill dreams.’’89 The dangers of excess could therefore be tempered and the nightmare cured, according to English physicians, by moderation of all the body’s appetites.

Conclusion As I demonstrated in this essay, ideas about the medical causes of the nightmare or incubus evolved slowly. Natural theories circulated from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, with the majority of medical works reiterating ideas of long standing. Medical authors argued that the experience of being assaulted or laid upon by a malevolent being in the nightmare was in fact a terrifying dream that resulted from humoral imbalances, indigestion, the supine position, or a physiological consequence of dangerous

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excess. Several authors also adhered to old notions that the dreams associated with the incubus were a product of the senses deceived by the ‘‘chimeras’’ of the imagination, a symptom of a disordered brain. Rather than a ‘‘pathologization’’ of dreams, the history of the nightmare reveals a continuation of medical theories, with subtle shifts in explanations for the primary causes of the disease. However, this is not to suggest that there were no significant developments in ideas of the nightmare. While older ideas were recycled by the majority of authors, in the eighteenth-century medical writers such as John Bond attempted to present more empirical theories of the nightmare based on new developments in knowledge of the body and disease. They postulated that the incubus was ultimately a symptom of the stagnation of blood, or alternatively of ‘‘Hysteria’’ and ‘‘Hypochondria.’’ However, despite these new models found among both medical professionals and the wider populace, both groups tended to cling to traditional views of the natural and supernatural causes of and cures for the nightmare. Showing how continuity rather than change characterizes the history of dreams, belief that the nightmare was a supernatural assault by demons, witches or spirits persisted among the broader populace, despite the longstanding coexistence of natural theories. While physicians may have thought their patients suffered from the incubus as a natural disease, patients themselves often believed otherwise. This suggests that supernatural and natural theories of the nightmare were neither contradictory nor mutually exclusive in the period, and this helps to complicate historical understanding of the rise of rational thought and the ‘‘disenchantment of the world.’’90 As I have also suggested in this essay, accounts of the nightmare can reveal insight into early modern men’s and women’s sexual fantasies. In works of demonology, medical tracts and witchcraft accounts, the nightmare was often linked with the sexual assaults of nocturnal demons, incubi or succubi. These ‘‘lewd’’ demons assaulted their victims at night seeking to corrupt their bodies and souls and produce demonic offspring. The erotic aspects of the nightmare as a sexualized encounter with nocturnal demons reveals the premodern tendency to project desire onto dark ‘‘others.’’ Moreover, the idea of sexual fantasies or the involvement of the imagination in the production of fantasies was known and supported by early modern medical authors, who saw these encounters as the result of excess humours rising to suffuse the brain. Thus, while victims may have believed

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themselves subject to the sexual/physical assaults of night demons, medical writers argued that these images were products of a distempered or diseased body. Finally, at the heart of debates and discussions of the nightmare was the problem of discerning between dreams and reality, as well as doubts concerning the reliability of the senses.

Chapter 3

Competition and Confirmation in the Iberian Prophetic Community The 1589 Invasion of Portugal in the Dreams of Lucrecia de Leo´n marı´a v. jorda´ n

On May 1, 1589, Lucrecia de Leo´n, a young woman of Madrid whose talent as a prophetess had gained her considerable fame in the streets of the city and even among certain circles of the nobility, dreamed that a man had transported her to the northern Spanish port of La Corun˜a, where she witnessed Sir Francis Drake and his men attacking the city. According to her account, the soldiers entered from the beach and took the defenders by surprise, unleashing a ‘‘butchery’’ of such proportions that the horrible cries of the women and children could be heard.1 In a later dream, evidence of the attack’s destructive effects were still apparent in the ‘‘suffering’’ of the population, the destruction and deaths caused, and even in the gray color of the sea. Francis Drake, the terrible ‘‘El Draque,’’ was among the most feared of Spain’s enemies, and the threat of his presence sent a chill throughout the country.2 As the young woman had announced in her dream, a few days later an English fleet attacked La Corun˜a (May 4, 1589), sacking the town, burning some suburbs, destroying the fishing fleet, and causing great losses of life and property. The atrocities carried out by the invaders on the residents were widely reported. For example, a memorial that detailed the acts of the ‘‘barbarous heretics,’’ as the invaders were called, noted that ‘‘a day before they retired, they ravaged the countryside with six or seven thousand men, sacking every place and home within a

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league and a half radius, seizing property and cattle, setting fire to houses and to the monastery of Our Lady of Cambre, destroying crops, allowing cattle in the vineyards, and carrying off bread, wine, and other things, and practicing cruelties on the women and children encountered.’’3 It is curious to note the similarity between the dream narrative and the events that took place as reported in the historical record. We can speculate that the dream narratives were elaborated on the basis of some early reports that circulated in the court and that the date was manipulated to make the dreams seem to be truly divine announcements, or that the description of the destruction was generic enough to fit the possibilities of any attack on the Galician coast, an area that was no stranger to such assaults.4 In any case, dreams were particularly effective vehicles to convey political information and to place it in a tangible narrative form accessible to an audience across a broad social spectrum. The reluctance of our own era to place much credence in information gained from dreams was not a characteristic of the early modern world, in which many people ascribed to them a prophetic character. Dreams advised, oriented, and modified the political decisions of kingdoms, groups, and individuals. Within the Christian tradition, dreams could communicate divine mysteries, revealing the good and bad aspects of the future, and in this way served as an ideological support for both personal and collective actions. With a license granted by God to make public his secrets, the prophet claimed to be endowed with a special gift that placed him or her at a higher level than other humans. From the time of the Middle Ages, if not before, this religious sentiment of dreams coexisted with other, more profane notions that placed the prophets in a vulnerable position. But prophets continued to attract followers since their words applied directly to the facts of life in the present, and because they embodied feelings of hope that proved so useful in moments of crisis since they served as vehicles of criticism. They often seemed to convey God’s will.5 In this way, predictions, prodigies, and dreams were greatly esteemed in the political culture of the sixteenth century, a reality underlined by the collections of prophecies preserved by Philip II, the quantity and popularity of almanacs published, and remarks like this one by the political thinker Justus Lipsius, cited by Don Bernardino de Mendoza, ambassador to London: ‘‘It seems according to the opinion of some gentiles that one can not ignore the prodigies of heaven and earth, the warnings of lightning or the happy, sad, doubtful, or clear predictions of the future, nor even dreams.’’6

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There was a veritable deluge of street prophets, visionaries, and dreamers in this period in Spain. Certainly one of the most thoroughly studied is Lucrecia de Leo´n, whose 1590 Inquisition trial transcripts preserved over four hundred of her dreams, carefully recorded by her confessors, and then analyzed and commented on by them for their potential revelatory content. Unlike many of the visionaries and mystics of her time, Lucrecia was not a nun, but a young and beautiful woman of middling family, her father a sometime employee at the court in Madrid. She had since her teenage years gained a popular following for the clarity and validity of her dreams, and then began to gain adherents and admirers at court and within learned circles. Her dreams were listened to, written down, and commented on, and even circulated from hand to hand in manuscript form among important members at court such as Lady Jane Dormer, the Duchess of Feria, for whom Lucrecia worked; Juan de Herrera, the royal architect who designed the Escorial; and even the Duke of Medina Sidonia, one of the principal military figures of the period. Particularly important for the circulation of her dreams were the theologians who recorded them, such as Don Alonso de Mendoza, abbot of San Vicente de la Sierra and canon of Toledo, member of one of the principal families of the Castilian nobility, and Fray Lucas de Allende, guardian of the Franciscan convent of Madrid. The question naturally arises if these were actually dreams or were creations reported in the form of dreams. Were they Lucrecia’s creations or were they dream narratives created or suggested by the men who promoted her abilities? Her own testimony before the Inquisition on this issue was contradictory. While some authors, such as Kagan and Bla´zquez Miguel, have suggested that Lucrecia was manipulated or used by a court faction critical of Philip II’s policies, I believe that there is considerable evidence that the attention these clerics devoted to her dreams—as expressed in their extensive marginal notes and the willingness of these clerics to follow the dictates of Lucrecia’s dreams—demonstrates their credulity and their acceptance of the validity of the message contained therein.7 How this young woman of limited education through some combination of dream and elaboration wove together a complex tapestry of biblical figures, political concerns, historical references, visits to faraway kingdoms, visions of war and peace, images, and representations remains a matter of controversy; but her story reveals a vivid imagination and the quick intelligence of a picaresque figure. Her ability to mold political events, people, and concerns of the day into vivid dream images clearly resonated in her world. It was this ability that provoked the concerns

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of authority. Lucrecia de Leo´n and a number of her followers and collaborators were eventually sentenced by the Inquisition of Toledo in 1595, but her punishment was relatively light since the inquisitors remained divided on whether these were seditious and heretical creations or were truly dreams, a phenomenon whose potential for revelation the inquisitors themselves, like many of their contemporaries, did not deny. Her case underlines the power of dreams to move peoples at all levels of society.8 The prophetess-dreamer Lucrecia de Leo´n dreamed, or claimed to have dreamed, many of the historical events that affected the Spanish monarchy during a period that extended from late 1588 to the middle of 1590. Through her imaginary world paraded scenes of the defeat of the Invincible Armada (1588), the conflicts in Navarre, the internal and external threat of the Moriscos and the Turks, and the possible extinction of the Spanish Hapsburg line and the succession of a new monarchy centered in Toledo of a more spiritual and egalitarian type. In addition, in the aftermath of the defeat of the great Armada against England in 1588, she also dreamed of the English retaliatory invasion of Portugal in 1589, whose objective was to restore the Portuguese throne to Dom Antonio, prior of Crato, a claimant who had lost the battle for succession to the vacant throne in 1580 to Philip II of Spain. In a period when Titian had depicted the great triumph of Lepanto as a tribute to the power of the monarchy, Lucrecia’s oneiric images painted scenes of destruction and disaster for the Spanish Crown, even though in reality this English and pro-Antonio invasion ultimately failed. Horrifying visions of a naval attack on La Corun˜a reflected the real fears of Philip II’s Spain that military aggression would be carried out on Spanish soil by her enemies. The nightmare of Drake was no stranger to Spanish thinking since he had preyed constantly on Spanish shipping in the Atlantic, off Galicia, in the Canary Islands, and in the New World.9 Moreover, the English admiral had also carried out the raid on Ca´diz in 1587 that had destroyed ships, provisions, and supplies for the Armada being prepared against England.10 The vulnerability of the Galician coast was well known since corsair raiding had intensified there in the sixteenth century. Recent studies have underlined the intense debate carried out in Spain during this period about whether to create regional fleets to defend the frontier outposts and coasts of the Spanish monarchy.11 That question became even more pressing after the defeat of the great Armada in 1588 as fears mounted that English retaliation would be directed against Spain itself. In fact, from the beginning of

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1589 rumors of an English response and warnings of its preparation from Spanish diplomatic agents in various European courts circulated widely. The Spanish ambassador in London, Bernardino de Mendoza, wrote various letters to his sovereign detailing the military preparations in England, but also noting the collaboration of the Dutch, Portuguese, and Turks.12 An English fleet sailed from Plymouth on April 18, 1589, under the naval command of Drake with the land forces under Captain John Norris. The fleet also carried Dom Antonio, the prior of Crato, who, now allied with Elizabeth of England, sought to restore his own claim to Portugal. It is no surprise that the images of invasion should appear in the dreams and imagination of some Spaniards. In Lucrecia de Leo´n’s dreams, the queen of England appears smiling, England is ‘‘well-stocked with supplies,’’ and Dom Antonio, the Portuguese pretender welcomed at Elizabeth’s court, is seen as actively drawing people to his cause (se acogiera a su bandera). These images of strength directly contrast with the dream image of Philip II, who is portrayed as a weak and pusillanimous king, incapable of defending the ports of his kingdom and deaf to the warnings voiced by the prophets of his land.13 But if we believe the commentary of the Portuguese Pero Roiz Soares in his Memorial (1628), we are presented with the contrary image and narrative of Philip II and his military commanders facing the English and Antonine threat with considerable vigor and efficiency. Roiz Soares reported that once Philip was aware of the English landing he took all necessary precautions and ‘‘he ordered that in Castile both great and humble be readied and in this kingdom and this city [Lisbon] he ordered the people mobilized and four colonels and their regiments be readied.’’14 Nevertheless, these observations seem to corroborate the fact that Philip’s defensive stance was deficient in that it remained too dependent on response to immediate threats and did not provide a permanent state of preparedness.15 To dream history, that is, to have oneiric visions of historical events, was no novelty. Since classical times various European cultures had paid attention to dreams, especially those that related to the collective destiny of peoples, believing those dreams to be auguries of the future. Despite the temporal proximity of Lucrecia’s dreams to the political and military events of the moment, her dream images did not always match reality, but perhaps more important, the images often fit with the perception or particular point of view of the young dreamer or her followers. We should not lose sight of the fact that as a general rule prophetic discourse fitted historical facts into

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a plan or schema and that, in this specific case, it was a plan that sought to denigrate the image of Philip II. The oneiric or pseudo-oneiric representation of the English attack on Portugal that Lucrecia presents seeks to portray those events as divine punishment of Philip II for his failures of rule. There was, in fact, a long Castilian and Portuguese messianic prophetic tradition into which Lucrecia de Leo´n’s dreams easily fit. There were the prophecies of ‘‘cumprimentos’’ in verse and prose that celebrated kings and princes who had come to bring a period of bonanza to their kingdoms. Some of these had been ascribed to Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic kings, to Charles V, and to Dom Sebastia˜o, the Portuguese king who had disappeared in the Battle of Alca´cer Quibir (1578), and to Philip II himself. The almost mystical and messianic dimensions of Philip II can be found in the chronicles, iconography, and literature that were produced at his court or by his admirers, many of whom saw him as the ‘‘New David,’’ protector of the Catholic faith. It is clear that in the complex geopolitics of the early modern era prophecies were a weapon of analysis as well as an expression of politics, although they also had a profound religious dimension. Students of prophetic discourse in the Renaissance have approached the topic from different paths. On one hand, Norman Cohn and Keith Thomas have emphasized external influences, particularly difficult economic and social conditions, as factors that explain the transformation of a passive millenarianism to an active one.16 On the other hand, the position of Robert Bruce Barnes and Marjorie Reeves, along with many others, is that there was a natural religious predisposition for men and women of that era to seek signs of predestination in historical events that would lead in a particular direction.17 In Europe kingdoms, religions, cities, corporate bodies such as religious orders, and individuals disputed and laid claim to their role as divinely chosen protagonists in history. Without doubt, an analysis of the content of prophetic literature of this period, of which dreams are an integral element, reflects the coexistence of both a secular and a religious mentality that is often difficult for modern observers to appreciate or understand. Within the context of Castile at the close of the sixteenth century, it was possible to ‘‘dream’’ the fall of the most powerful monarchy in western Europe, a dream that was not only that of Spain’s enemies but one also forged in the bowels of the empire by subjects disillusioned with the king and hopefully awaiting the arrival of an age of spiritual renovation (renovatio). Various prophetic critics of Philip II understood that the defeat of the invincible

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Armada, the military campaigns against Spain’s enemies, the seemingly incessant epidemics were a reflection of divine anger that punished the king and the kingdom for its failures. The attempted English invasion of 1589 was taken simply as yet another event to add to the list of divine warnings and punishments. Its inclusion within the framework of Castilian prophetic thought of the type that Alain Milhou has called of ‘‘nationalist character’’ (raigambre nacionalista) is in no way extraordinary since that prophetic literature always sought to use the materials that reality provided to enrich and expand the prophetic interpretation.18 The theme of the English expedition to conquer Portugal and deliver it into the hands of Dom Antonio appeared constantly in Lucrecia’s recorded dreams from February to August 1589. These dreams are a testimony of the fear of enemy invasion that circulated in the streets of Madrid at that time, and, moreover, they present a perception—merited or not—of the fragility of the monarchy and the king, facing foreign enemies and domestic rebels, those Portuguese who had never accepted the legitimacy of Hapsburg rule. Finally, these dreams present a dialogic and contestatory formula by which the oneiric-prophetic narratives of the period were forged in a curious dialogue between facts, rumors, perceptions, projects, and creativity. The dynastic crisis of Portugal had been set in motion in 1578 by the death in battle of the Portuguese king, Dom Sebastia˜o, while on a campaign in Morocco. During the crisis there had been pro- and anti-Hapsburg partisans among the Portuguese. Much of the nobility had favored union with Spain, but popular elements and certain members of the clergy had taken a ‘‘nationalist’’ position defending the right of the ‘‘Portuguese nation’’ to have a king of its own.19 Among this faction, some members of the Portuguese clergy actively used the pulpit as an arm in their struggle. In fact, pulpits were transformed into battlegrounds where the sacred word became a weapon in the service of both sides. The antiunion literature includes many of these sermons, although there were others that circulated in oral form, and others that were simply suppressed.20 Evidence of the fear that the impact of such preaching might have can be seen in a law issued on November 23, 1580, by the vicar-general, Fray Luis de Granada, which condemned certain clerics for voicing publicly their support of the cause of Dom Antonio. This document also mentioned the actions of bishops who had supported Dom Antonio and who had urged the people to follow him, thereby blessing resistance to the Castilians.21 This ecclesiastical support for

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the prior of Crato appears, as we shall see, in the dreams of Lucrecia de Leo´n, as does her fear of the meddling of foreign powers in support of his cause against the interests of Spain.22 A messianic and millenarian belief that the Portuguese were a chosen people with a divine mission flourished during the union of the crowns (1580–1640) as an ideology of political resistance, of hope for change, and of identity.23 So too did Sebastianism, a belief that the dead ruler was still alive and would return to claim his throne.24 Some of Dom Antonio’s backers were certainly influenced by a messianic prophetic tradition of a strongly nationalist character that could be widely found not only in Portugal but throughout the Iberian Peninsula in this period, and of which the dreams of Lucrecia de Leo´n also form a part.

The Invasion of 1589 As the years passed, the Iberian union had settled into a relative peace, but a certain desire for separation and autonomy never disappeared in some sectors of the nobility and among the Portuguese commoners who remained receptive to the appeals of the prior of Crato. Dom Antonio sought support for his claims from Elizabeth of England and Henry III of France, both of whom were bitter enemies of Philip II. After the failure of the Great Armada in 1588 and the resulting political demoralization in Iberia, conditions were particularly favorable for English support for the Portuguese pretender, an alliance that Dom Antonio’s supporters had long been seeking.25 In early 1589 the Drake-Norris expedition sailed from Plymouth with a number of objectives, among them the placement of Dom Antonio on the throne of Portugal. As I noted above, this goal was already known in Madrid thanks to the information supplied in the correspondence of Spanish diplomats. Surely, the rumors of war were not slow in reaching the streets and plazas of Castile, which explains why from the beginning of 1589 Lucrecia began to dream that various enemies of Spain were corresponding about their plans for invasion. In one of these oneiric messages, a mirror on which two armadas had been painted was sent to the queen of England. These fleets announced ‘‘the loss of ours and the victory of theirs,’’ an image that caused Lucrecia to comment that ‘‘it greatly frightens me to see it’’ (lo que me espanta mucho de ver) and add that ‘‘the ships at La Corun˜a are not safe’’ (no estaban seguros los de la Corun˜a).26 Months earlier Lucrecia de Leo´n had been right in her prediction of the defeat

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of the Great Armada, and now she warned of the danger to the ports of northwestern Spain. She also predicted the success of a military incursion carried out by enemy forces. Her preoccupation with the fragile defenses of the coastal areas, what she called ‘‘the weak parts of Spain’’ (partes flacas de Espan˜a), and her fear of an enemy invasion became an obsession in her imaginary world.27 Her dreams or vivid imaginings are clear evidence of a perception of the Spanish monarchy’s debilities among sectors at court, and that vulnerability appears repeatedly in her dreams. For example, one night the guides who appear in her dreams show her a sea filled with fish swimming on the surface, and when she asks one of the guides the meaning of that vision, he responds, ‘‘it is to make you understand that the enemies are not at home, and as the fish rises to the surface to eat when it senses a dead body, so they have sensed in you your weakness.’’28 This analogy, simple and beautiful in my opinion, underlined the intentions and proximity of Spain’s enemies and at the same time the weakness and moribund state of the kingdom, at least in the view of some individuals and groups at court. During these months the images of war and blood multiplied in Lucrecia’s dreams, owing, explained the guides in her dreams, to the fact that God had abandoned Philip II and his vassals.29 In this way, the attack of 1589 was located within the Castilian anti-Philippine prophecies of the period, and probably also within the literature critical of the expansion of Spain’s hegemony. Lucrecia de Leo´n’s fears were well grounded. The Spanish Empire at the time was fighting on various fronts, confronting the threat of foreign powers and the attacks of corsairs and pirates. The complex demands of defense caused the implementation of a heavy and deeply resented fiscal burden. Historian John Elliott has noted that the seventeenth-century ‘‘crisis’’ or ‘‘decline’’ of Spain, or more exactly Castile, had begun earlier as a result of a combination of policies to achieve the objectives of combating heresy and establishing hegemony in Europe. Elliott believes these policies were wrong because they incurred costs that along with an economic policy that eroded the basic pillars of economic growth had weakened the monarchy.30 Sentiments of frustration and consternation are clearly present in the writing of the Castilian reformers and memorialists (arbitristas) who offered solutions to the problems facing the monarchy. In a political tract written to Philip II in 1590, Bernardino de Escalante expressed his concern with the diverse nature of the monarchy, composed as it was of different ‘‘nations’’ and different ‘‘customs,’’ and concern that some of ‘‘these had been recently

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incorporated by conquest or by succession’’ (conquista y herencia) with natural resentment by the inhabitants. The monarchy, he believed, could not be sustained with so many endangered borders like that of Portugal.31 Certainly the defeat of the ‘‘Invincible Armada’’ was a bitter political, military, and moral defeat for Philip II and the Spanish monarchy that exacerbated the feelings of insecurity. Cervantes himself, despite his faith in the greatness of Spain, showed he understood the temporality and finality of empire when in his play Numancia he had the personification of war declare: ‘‘but time will come when I will change, damage the mighty, and help the weak.’’32 The joint attack lasted a few months and was finally defeated, in the judgment of historian Joaquim Verı´ssimo Serra˜o, because ‘‘everything was poorly executed,’’ in part because of the strategic error of tarrying in La Corun˜a, which had sacrificed the element of surprise in the attack on Lisbon. Philip II’s defensive efforts, the arrest and imprisonment of Dom Antonio’s supporters, and Philip’s effective policy of presenting the Portuguese invaders as allies of the heretic English undercut the expected rising of the city.33 The information that Lucrecia de Leo´n’s dreams relate about the English expedition of 1589 is contradictory and at times in error, but it is not the precision of the historical events, but rather the general perception of these events within some social groups in Castile, that makes the dreams useful and interesting. Her visions not only relate the advances and alliances of the enemy (although the dates do not always correspond to reality) and describe the faces of the main figures, but they also detail the tactics of the Spanish defense, and all of this within the context of an anti-Philippine critique. In one of the dreams there is a dialogue between Queen Elizabeth and a distinguished, but unidentified Portuguese gentleman. In this conversation, the English monarch asks this anonymous man, ‘‘When will the land be subdued?’’ (en cuanto serı´a la tierra llana), to which the man responds: ‘‘it won’t take long for all the Portuguese are as one, and there are few Castilians. . . . And that in assistance to Dom Antonio and his allies will come monks to support him, and these have a supply of arms.’’ This anonymous figure, probably Dom Antonio himself, seems to be mollifying the queen’s impatience at the expedition’s slow pace, referring most likely to the delay in taking Lisbon and the failure of a general rising of Dom Antonio’s supporters. Seeking to pacify the queen’s uneasiness, he explains

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to her that there exists a group of supporters within Portugal that includes many ‘‘illustrious Portuguese lords,’’ as well as many clerics, a reference to the support that he had among the Dominicans and Franciscans.34 Nevertheless, by this date both the English and their allied Portuguese forces had taken considerable losses in the fighting for Lisbon. We know that various communications from Drake and Norris to the Council of State sent from Cascais revealed that their intention to mount a second assault on Lisbon had been abandoned because of the lack of provisions, the deplorable state of their forces, and the lack of enthusiasm in the city for the cause of Dom Antonio.35 In his detailed account of the fighting, however, historian Francisco Caeiro emphasized that there was considerable concern in Spain during June 1589 because the loyalty of the Portuguese people still remained in question.36 Although less prominent in Lucrecia’s dreams, the difficulties suffered by the Portuguese, especially those of the people of Lisbon, are also portrayed. In her dream landscapes, the Portuguese capital appears deserted and its people suffering hunger. In one dream Lucrecia appears watching the siege of the city and observing the repression of Dom Antonio’s followers as fifty Portuguese are ordered hanged. In this dream she also sees the prince playing a drum as a symbol of war, and the Conde de Fuentes, armed and accompanied by a guard of three hundred soldiers, while various Portuguese merchants with letters of credit for Dom Antonio are arrested.37 These scenes of desolation, need, and repression have been sketched by the historians of the period, but despite the military reverses suffered by the pro-Antonine faction, particularly in Lisbon, Lucrecia continued dreaming and predicting the triumph of the enemies of Spain.38 Her insistence on a framework that downplayed the military reverses of the Portuguese pretender’s forces and predicted the fall of Philip II deserves some comment. By mid-July, when the conflict was already decided, Lucrecia continued recounting dreams that announced a Spanish defeat because such prophetic narratives had their own objectives and did not seek to adjust to reality, but rather to shape that reality. Her dreams needed to fit within an overarching prophetic plan that signaled the fall of the Hapsburg dynasty and needed to emphasize the evidence of divine anger, in this case, the English attack, more than Spanish military victories. The reverses of the anti-Hapsburg Portuguese were diminished by comments that made their situation seem less serious.39 Nor can we discard the fact that the news from Portugal arrived with enough delay to allow her to manipulate the narrative

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in order to keep her audience in suspense. Even at this date she continued to see ‘‘ships from London’’ sailing for the peninsula, cogs full of munitions and supplies, troops disembarking at Cascais, the people of Santarem contributing money to fund the attack, and alliances formed among all of Spain’s enemies, even the Moroccans and the Scots.40 In this context, Lucrecia dreamed of two women who echoed her prophetic message: the Infanta Isabel, the eldest daughter of Philip II, and the prioress of the convent of the Annunciation of Lisbon, Sor Maria da Visitac¸a˜o, better known as the Nun of Lisbon (La monja de Lisboa). In one dream, the Infanta Isabel warns her father that ‘‘as long as the enemy is not in his home, we will not be safe,’’ adding, ‘‘Your Majesty is obliged to protect your forces and ports at sea,’’ and reproaching him for not marrying her younger sister to the Duke of Parma and giving her the kingdom of Portugal as a dowry, as a strategy that would have avoided conflict.41 With these images Lucrecia criticized the king’s policy toward Portugal as well as his dynastic arrangements.42 Sor Maria offered Lucrecia other opportunities to validate her own authority. The Nun of Lisbon enjoyed considerable fame as a prophetess, especially because of her five bleeding wounds that simulated those of Christ. Her spiritual claims were widely recognized by such figures as Pope Gregory XIII; King Philip II; the viceroy of Portugal, Alberto of Austria; the famous author Fray Luis de Granada; and even Lucrecia de Leo´n’s own scribes. In Lucrecia’s dreams, however, the Portuguese prophetess appears instead as a foil who affirms and validates her own prophetic qualities. Both women commented on the political situation of their time. The Nun had predicted the triumph of the Spanish Armada and later, apparently influenced by various Dominican friars, she had tried to convince Philip II to leave Portugal and return the throne to Dom Antonio.43 Lucrecia used these political missteps for her own ends. The Dominican Order to which the Nun’s convent belonged had suffered because of its support for the Portuguese resistance against Philip II prior to 1580, and a number of restrictions had been issued to limit its intervention in political matters, at least on those issues unfavorable to the Hapsburg cause. Sor Maria had supposedly said, ‘‘If the king of Spain does not restore the throne that he has unjustly usurped, God will punish him severely,’’ a statement that quickly brought her to the repressive attention of the Crown and the Inquisition.44 This prophecy against the king was a clearly secessionist warning, and it was this political meddling that led to

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her trial by the Inquisition and to her sentence of perpetual prison and exile from her order and from Lisbon. The formal charges concentrated on her feigned stigmata and her pretense of divine inspiration. It is notable that despite the difference in their political stances and loyalties, Lucrecia expressing a Castilian viewpoint and Sor Maria a Portuguese stance, there were points of convergence in the prophetic discourse of the latter and the dreams of the former. Not only did both women claim to have charismatic gifts, but both predicted severe punishments for Philip II as a result of state policies that both of them thought wrong. It was precisely in this punitive and condemnatory characterization of his policies that their criticism was parallel, although their rationalizations and preoccupations were different, and to some extent, opposed. The affinity of the two women’s roles was recognized by Lucrecia’s supporters, one of whom, after the Nun was arrested, told Lucrecia: ‘‘Quiet sister, I trust in God that you will now take her place.’’45 In reality, the Portuguese nun became a central figure in Lucrecia’s dreams of 1588 and 1589, but she occupied a curious, contradictory position. On one hand, Sor Maria was a figure who approved of Lucrecia as a prophetess and legitimized her prophetic message, but on the other hand, she questioned Lucrecia’s abilities to perform such a role.46 In a similar fashion Lucrecia dramatized the debate that took place in Castile about the Nun of Lisbon. In one of her dreams, a bloody Sor Maria appears before a public comprising believers and mocking detractors. In another she appears in handcuffs saying that ‘‘God will free her and take her from that place so that she will not have to see the destruction of my country that is coming soon,’’ and she warns: ‘‘[Ay de ti] Woe to you Madrid, soon you will be dismantled by the tread of enemies, and woe to you [Ay de ti] Spain, soon you will be destroyed.’’47 There are obvious parallels and lines of convergence in the use of the theme ‘‘Ay de ti,’’ and the prediction of disaster for the people so characteristic of Iberian prophetism. Through the voice of the Portuguese nun, Lucrecia predicted the defeat of Dom Antonio’s supporters (which in reality was already clear), but to give continuity to her narrative she also returned to the theme of God’s punishment of Spain by concentrating on other conflicts with Spain’s potential enemies. In another dream episode, Lucrecia sees the arrival in Santare´m, Portugal, of Sor Maria’s uncle, an important leader in Dom Antonio’s forces, who exclaims, ‘‘if my niece had not been exposed, it wouldn’t have been so difficult to take Lisbon.’’48 Such statements are interesting because they suggest a direct relation between the

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Portuguese nun and the anti-Hapsburg political dissidents in Portugal, and they emphasize Sor Maria’s potential role as a moral force on the side of Dom Antonio’s cause. Lucrecia’s desire was to influence Philip II’s actions and she sought to employ the Nun for that purpose. When later questioned by her inquisitors about her relationship with the Portuguese nun, Lucrecia called her ‘‘an impostor,’’ adding that her visions ‘‘did not come from a good spirit.’’ This was a strategy by which Lucrecia sought to disassociate herself from Sor Maria, who at this time had already been condemned by the Inquisition and who also stood as a symbol of the questionable loyalty of the Portuguese.49 At the same time, Lucrecia had employed the Nun as an affirmation of the phenomena of predictive visions and dreams of which she herself was a part, and as testimony to her own role as the transmitter of divine messages. Despite their differences, they were sisters of the realm of revelations, sharing a role in this world of visions and dreams that so fascinated their contemporaries. This was a tactic that Lucrecia had also used in her relation with Miguel Piedrola de Beamonte, another street prophet who had been popular in Madrid before he was silenced and tried by the Inquisition in 1588.50 It suggests that there existed a perceived community of prophecy, based on competition but one in which the gifts of each member reinforced the validity of the forms, if not the content, of the dreams, visions, and prophecies.

Conclusion For Lucrecia de Leo´n, as a Castilian, the history of Portugal was an appendix to the history of Spain. Her view of the Portuguese reflected a general antipathy that at the popular level seemed to characterize the perception of both peoples, especially in the heart of the empire. For her, the military actions of 1589 were small episodes in a larger, supposedly divine story in which judgment was made against some historical figures, specifically Philip II. In that macronarrative, the destiny of the Kingdom of Portugal and, by consequence, the political actions of the prior of Crato during those years were relegated to a secondary level. Although Lucrecia neither spoke directly for or against Dom Antonio’s plans to restore his claim to the Portuguese throne, she did refer to the English and Portuguese in the attack as ‘‘enemies’’ who within her prophetic plan represented a ‘‘punishment of God.’’ Nevertheless, Lucrecia did present a clear and direct criticism of the

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Crown’s costly policies and the financial burdens on the Castilians, who suffered the heavy taxation that supported the bellicose and aggressive foreign policy of Philip II’s expanding empire.51 In particular, she condemned the Duke of Alba’s excesses in the Low Countries and, indirectly, the union with Portugal. Whether these were her own opinions or those of the members of the upper nobility who gathered around her remains unclear, but these ideas do bring us close to the critique of the anti-Philippine peace faction and indicate how their views articulated with the critical discourses of other peoples. On the other hand, she maintained an ambivalent position toward the separatist movement of Dom Antonio and his followers because, after all, the Portuguese were perceived as enemies whose resistance created political tensions in the peninsula. At the same time, the possibility of their victory justified or certified the political and spiritual changes that her prophecies predicted, thus confirming her validity as a prophet. The relationship of Lucrecia de Leo´n and the Nun of Lisbon reveals that the dreamers, prophets, visionaries, and saints knew of each other and sometimes had complex relationships, including the exchange of visual and prophetic concepts and ideas through their mediators and scribes. The various spiritual gifts or powers could be divided among them. It would seem that those who had, or claimed to have, the gift of prophecy, especially among those who had gained a certain renown as saints or prophets, often appeared in the dreams or visions of others where their presence could be used to validate the visionary’s gift or where their own supposed powers could be questioned, as was the case of Sor Maria within Lucrecia’s dreamscapes. Just as the political destinies of Spain and Portugal were united for sixty years, so too were the imaginary and prophetic worlds of the Castilians and the Portuguese, who nevertheless created dreams and fantasies that reflected their own particular reading of historical events. Many of the prophetic dreams of the early modern era help us recreate the political and religious history of the period. In this case, we get closer to the political views of a Castilian faction, which in turn allow us to get a closer look at their fears and utopian aspirations. Dreams are a historical source that allows the modern researcher to get inside the conflicts of that age and to see the mechanisms by which prophetic discourses are made and how other prophetic voices are accommodated within a larger historical narrative.52 Despite cultural, linguistic, and

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political differences, both Spaniards and Portuguese shared an ideologicalreligious root that depended on the promise of a messiah and of a Golden Age to come. Curiously, if the political utopia of a native ruler and savior (rey natural y Salvador) was crushed in Portugal at the close of the sixteenth century and in the early seventeenth century by the policies and propaganda of Philip II, some Spanish prophets like Lucrecia de Leo´n ‘‘dreamed’’ of a world in which his defeat would create conditions that would force Spain on a different, more moral and just path. For these dreamers and prophets, ethics, religion, and politics were never far apart.

Chapter 4

The Peasant Who Went to Hell Dreams and Visions in Early Modern Spain luı´s r. corteguera

In 1621, a Capuchin friar named Francesc de Canet read a copy of the trial before the Barcelona tribunal of the Inquisition of a peasant named Pere Porter, who claimed to have visited hell, where he found formerly powerful men, both lay and religious.1 Intrigued that the Inquisition had found Porter innocent of any wrongdoing, Francesc de Canet went to the town of Tordera, about forty miles north of Barcelona, to meet Porter. Except for a small correction, the man confirmed the statements in his trial deposition: ‘‘And so I, Fra Francesc . . . knowing the truth, was determined to copy it down for the greater honor and glory of our Lord God.’’2 So begins The Journey to Hell of Pere Porter, which claims to be the true account of his dreamlike experience. Was Porter’s voyage a dream? As we will see, the text claims that the experience was true and real, although many persons who heard the story firsthand assumed that Porter must have dreamed, or imagined, everything. Visiting hell was not the only dreamlike aspect of his story. So was the fact that the outlandish claims came from a peasant, who until then had been respected by his neighbors. The things Porter said about powerful men, which ordinary people usually avoided discussing in public, did not seem possible coming from the mouth of a simple peasant. Yet when witnesses concluded Porter was mad for insisting on the truth of his experience, a surprising turn of events made everyone wonder who was right. The story mixes fact and fiction in ways that frustrate a straightforward explanation about the precise nature of Poter’s experience. Whereas Porter

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was an actual person, Francesc de Canet was probably a pseudonym for an unknown author. Consequently, the date of composition given by Canet, 1621, is uncertain. The story circulated exclusively in manuscript form until the late nineteenth century. The two earliest manuscripts, presumed to date before 1621, do not mention Francesc de Canet.3 Besides the doubts about its author, key pieces of evidence—most notably, the Inquisition trial cited by Canet as the document where he first learned about Porter’s underworld travel—are missing and presumed lost.4 Since 1874, several print editions have drawn scholarly interest in the truth and purpose of Porter’s account. It turned out that several individuals Porter saw in hell were prominent historical figures, suggesting the story was primarily a political satire.5 At the same time, the naı¨vete´ of the tale and its unpolished style were thought to belong to a folk literature drawn to magical beliefs that appealed to popular audiences in Spain and Spanish America.6 Then in 1999, Josep Maria Pons i Guri published documents confirming the existence of Pere Porter, suggesting that, rather than fiction, Porter’s hellish vision may have been the result of extreme hunger or mental illness.7 Such doubts about the veracity of Journey to Hell and about whether Porter’s experience was a dream point to the larger and more fruitful subject of early modern representations of dreams and dreamlike experiences. As we will see, Porter’s story contains elements typical of fictional, nonfictional, and religious dream texts. Besides complicating any effort to determine the nature of his experience, this mix of elements reminds us of the diversity of early modern genres presenting dreams as miracles, prodigies, curiosities, or satires. At the same time, narratives might describe as dreamlike situations that defied the natural order—physical, social, or political— leaving it to readers to decide whether they were actual dreams or the result of invisible forces, credulity, illness, or deceit. A deeper examination of Porter’s account therefore offers an opportunity to study a broad spectrum of early modern ideas about dreams and dream texts. In discussing contemporary responses to Porter’s tale, I will consider two kinds of early modern audiences. The first audience consists of Porter’s neighbors, who heard his unbelievable claims directly from him. Journey to Hell records their reactions, which despite the doubts about the veracity of the text, provide a credible gauge to contemporary opinion about the merits of Porter’s story. The second type of audience consists of those who learned about Porter’s voyage from its written account. The story circulated in numerous manuscript copies dating from the mid-seventeenth century

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to the early nineteenth century. The precise number is unknown, but more than a dozen copies survive in archives and libraries.8 With minor variations, most versions of the story are the same as in Journey to Hell. With one notable exception, we have no written reactions to the tale. As we will see, one of its first readers dismissed the story as little more than the delusions of a madman, if not plain and simple fraud.9 That did not deter other, mostly unknown, readers from finding the story sufficiently interesting to make their own copies. Unfortunately, we can only surmise their responses by examining Porter’s story in the context of other early modern works. Responses to Porter’s account did not reflect so much a debate about reason versus magic, or between a secular and a religious outlook. Believers could accept miracles and demonic intervention on the one hand, and on the other hand admit that strange phenomena occurred that did not fit easily within the explanations available. How to represent actual situations that, like dreams, seemed true but defied explanation? How to distinguish between the strange but true and the fraudulent? Or between a true event that seemed a mere figment of the imagination and the delusions of a madman? Journey to Hell provides two answers to these questions. First, early modern Europeans granted the status of what I will call the oneiric to a broad spectrum of strange experiences and situations lying somewhere between the world of sleep and that of the real. Second, in order to demonstrate the truth of these oneiric experiences, early modern writers adopted a number of strategies used in accounts of miracles and apparitions, strange news, and what were known as prodigious histories. Before examining these issues in more detail, let us accompany Porter in his underworld adventure. On August 23, 1608, Porter was at his home in Tordera when court officials arrived with a warrant.10 He had to pay a long-overdue loan immediately or have his goods confiscated. Porter was aghast: That loan ‘‘had been cancelled many years ago,’’ he insisted, noting that ‘‘the notary who recorded the cancellation was dead.’’11 The officials responded that the cancellation did not exist and that the lender claimed Porter had not paid. Since Porter had a good reputation in his town, when he asked for time to collect some debts owed him in a neighboring town to pay off the loan, the officers gave him one day to bring the money. Porter was in a state of disbelief as he began his journey not knowing whether he would find the necessary money to avoid the loss of his possessions. While on the road, an elegant-looking young man riding a horse and

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pulling another approached him. The young man asked Porter what was wrong. Hesitating at first, Porter related his dilemma. ‘‘I’ll help you get out of it,’’ said the young man, and invited Porter to get on his other horse. Again hesitating, ‘‘Porter crossed himself’’ and mounted the horse. Then ‘‘everything changed; and the hairs on his head curled up [arrisaren]; and he heard and saw the animals talk to each other’’!12 The young man promised to take Porter to the dead notary to find out the truth about the loan cancellation. ‘‘Hold on to your horse,’’ said the young man, ‘‘I’m the Devil.’’ The horses began to gallop over lands and seas at an astonishing speed while Porter cried out: ‘‘Jesus save me, don’t forsake me! Blessed Virgin, be with me!’’13 Soon they reached hell, and the search for the notary began. The devil led Pere Porter in his search for the evil notary who had defrauded him. During his otherworldly expedition, which lasted several days, Porter witnessed numerous infernal sights and recognized familiar faces from Catalonia’s political elite. He saw judges, lawyers, and notaries condemned to eternal suffering for failing to carry out their official duties during their lifetimes. He recognized four judges of the Royal Audie`ncia, the high court of appeals in Barcelona, who ‘‘used to say they were gods of the land.’’14 One Audie`ncia judge who had prevented the construction of a dam to reduce famine in Catalonia now suffered ‘‘great trials’’ at the hands of demons. A legal advisor (assessor) who had given bad counsel to judges ‘‘sat on a chair of fire for failing to fulfill his office.’’15 A man who had been veguer of Barcelona, a royal officer charged with the policing of the city, along with his assistants, a fiscal attorney (procurador fiscal), and a town treasurer (clavari), ended up in hell for persecuting innocent people. Demons gave bags of burning money to a Barcelona lawyer for ‘‘misleading good people’’ and for convincing them to waste their money on countless trials. The lawyer’s former clients, who had followed him to hell for their evil deeds, now shouted at him: ‘‘Damn you evil man, you wicked deceiver!’’ Meanwhile, the lawyer repeated over and over the same words that brought his damnation: ‘‘You’re right, you’re right, don’t worry and we’ll win.’’16 The devil finally brought Porter before Jalmar Bonsom, the notary who failed to record the cancellation of the peasant’s loan, which authorities threatened to collect by confiscating Porter’s property. The notary confessed that he had hidden the loan cancellation after quarreling with Porter’s father but refused to divulge the secret place where he had put it. Painfully prodded by demons, the notary finally revealed where in his house the document still lay hidden.

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Having fulfilled his promise, the devil left it to Porter to find his way out of hell. The peasant wondered whether he too would spend the rest of eternity in hell. Then he saw a brilliant light and walked in that direction to take a closer look. It was an opening that led above ground. Saint James called on the peasant to come up. After helping Porter escape hell, the saint disappeared. The peasant now felt the exhaustion of eight days in hell without eating or sleeping. When he tried to buy food with his silver coin, he was told that Catalan currency was not accepted in the Kingdom of Valencia. He was in the town of Morvedre (now Sagunt), about two hundred miles south of his hometown. The famished man fainted. Fortunately, a neighbor from Porter’s hometown who happened to be passing by on business found the peasant lying on the road and took him to a house. There, he spent one month recovering from his exhausting otherworldly experience. Once he felt strong enough, the peasant began the long journey back home, which took him another month. Pere Porter arrived in his town on November 1, All Saints’ Day. There he found that all his goods had been confiscated to pay his debt. When his neighbors inquired about his long absence, he told them that he had been in hell, where he saw the notary Jalmar Bonsom. Some of his neighbors told Porter that he was foolish and crazy for saying such things. The peasant retorted by pointing out that he had spotted some of their relatives in hell. He then announced that the next day he would go to the dead notary’s house to show everyone the truth. As promised, the very next day a large crowd watched as Pere Porter arrived accompanied by local officials at the dead notary’s house in a nearby town. Although some people told Porter to go home, the notary’s relatives agreed to let him come inside the house to prove him wrong. The peasant entered a room, examined the floor, and asked for five tiles to be removed. There it was: a book with the record of his loan cancellation! ‘‘At that same moment, Porter knelt, joined his hands, and raised his eyes to Heaven saying ‘Thank you, my Lord God Jesus Christ.’ ’’ Meanwhile, the people who had come to laugh at Porter remained stunned, ‘‘neither talking, nor moving . . . pale . . . as if they were all enchanted.’’17 In most accounts of travel to the underworld, protagonists are usually ambiguous about whether they dreamed an experience that defied rational

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explanation. Such is the case with Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid (bk. 6), who returns from the underworld through one of the two Gates of Sleep; or Dante, who could not recall how he reached hell, since ‘‘I was so full of sleep.’’18 The connection between dreaming and underworld travel is explicit in Suen˜os (Dreams), written by the great Spanish writer Francisco de Quevedo in 1612, although published almost twenty years later. Quevedo dreams that he is, like Dante, a poet who travels to an underworld. As in Porter’s hell, Quevedo’s underworld teems with notaries, judges, and lawyers—so many lawyers that their long beards obstruct his path.19 In 1614, Miguel de Cervantes poked fun at the literary tradition of underworld travel by recounting, in the second part of Don Quixote, the knight-errant’s journey inside the mysterious cave of Montesinos, in La Mancha. Rather than find hell, Don Quixote has a vision of a fabulous palace inhabited by a host of characters typical of chivalric novels, such as knights, ladies, and magicians. His squire, Sancho, however, dismisses the story as nothing but the dream of a madman.20 In Journey to Hell, one key detail suggests that Porter may have dreamed his travel to hell: the incident when, shortly after the vision of Saint James leading the peasant out of hell through a bright opening, Porter collapsed unconscious and only woke up after his neighbor recognized him lying on the road. This is significant, since this was the first time anyone had seen the peasant since his disappearance eight days before, on August 28. Once Porter’s neighbor found him a place to rest, as we have seen, the debilitated peasant required one month to recover from what seemed to be an illness. However, two facts challenged the explanation that the man had dreamed everything: first, Porter’s unexplained arrival in Valencia, which at least one neighbor could corroborate; and second, and more important, his discovery of the documents in the notary Bonsom’s house, which a large public witnessed. The latter in particular seemed the only certain proof that something unexplainable had taken place—something like a dream. According to the early eighteenth-century dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy, son˜ar (to dream) meant ‘‘to stir up some species of fantasy [while] sleeping,’’ but also ‘‘to discourse fantastically, and to affirm as true what is not.’’21 The distinction is subtle but important: if there was some doubt whether Porter had imagined his voyage in his sleep, everyone agreed he was ascertaining something that could not be true. In other words, the strange things that happened to Porter between August 28 and November

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1—his flight across the air, his tour of hell, his unexplained reappearance in Valencia, his discovery of missing documents buried under a floor—were the stuff of dreams, whether or not he actually dreamed them. In the early modern period, the oneiric spilled over the narrow confines of sleep to include a broad field of experiences with a complex relationship to the real. We find the difficulty of determining the precise boundary between what was real and what was not in Sebastia´n de Covarrubias’s dictionary, Tesoro de la lengua castellana (Treasure of the Castilian language), first published in 1611, three years after Pere Porter’s voyage to hell. At times Covarrubias seems confident that a clear line separates the real from the fantastic. Fantasy (fantası´a) is just ‘‘imagination,’’ whereas something real ‘‘has a physical and true existence.’’ In this sense, to define a ghost (fantasma) as a ‘‘false imagination’’ seems redundant.22 Yet since ‘‘real’’ also meant ‘‘certain and truthful’’ (cierto y verdadero), could there be a real, or true, imagination? We can surmise the answer from Covarrubias’s definition of the verb to dream (son˜ar): even though dreams are fantasies that have only ‘‘some appearance of truth,’’ that does not apply to ‘‘revelations and other divine things made by God to Joseph and other saints,’’ because they were true.23 Likewise, whereas revelacio´n (revelation) ‘‘sometimes means the gift God makes to some of his servants, letting them understand some mysterious secret,’’ other times they are ‘‘illusions of the devil [demonio] or a weakness in the head,’’ as happens to beatas, laywomen who observe religious vows without formally entering an order, ‘‘who form a hundred absurdities in the fantasy.’’24 In short, dreams, imaginations, illusions, and fantasies might be real and true, or they might not. A state of enchantment also partakes of the uncertainty felt while dreaming. The aim of putting a spell (encantar) is to do something, or use some words, in order to pretend something is ‘‘true and real, which is not and does not exist.’’25 For that very reason, Porter’s stunning discovery of the hidden documents under the floor of the notary’s house left everyone unsure ‘‘whether they were in heaven or on earth,’’ as if enchanted (encantats).26 At that moment, the solid foundation on which everyone had established that Porter’s crazy ‘‘dream’’ was not real turned to quicksand. An additional element in Porter’s vision made it especially strange, namely, the fact that a peasant offered a harsh criticism of corruption among judicial and political officials. The gallery of political figures, lawyers, and notaries condemned to eternal suffering suggests a sweeping

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condemnation of the administration of justice in the Principality of Catalonia during the reign of Philip III.27 At the top of the political hierarchy were the judges of the Audie`ncia of Barcelona. These ‘‘gods of the land,’’ as Porter described them, enjoyed great powers. Their tribunal constituted the supreme court of the principality; beyond them, litigants could only appeal to the king. If the corrupt judges of the Audie`ncia could not deliver justice, what hope did Catalans have? In addition to their judicial duties, the judges of the Audie`ncia acted as ministers of the viceroy, the king’s alter ego. Their administrative malfeasance could be seen in the episode where the devil told Porter that one of those ministers had prevented the construction of a dam to irrigate the countryside and stop the terrible famines that affected the principality during those years. Porter did not mention seeing any viceroys or kings in hell, but they would have been guilty of failing to stop the abuse carried out by judges, officials, lawyers, and notaries. The messenger, rather than the seriousness of the political criticism, distinguishes Journey to Hell from contemporary Spanish political satires presented as news or travels to the underworld. In Francisco de Quevedo’s Dreams mentioned above, his characteristically acid attack on the immorality of Spanish society spares no one, even though unlike Porter, Quevedo does not mention individuals by name. However, Quevedo’s criticism came from an educated nobleman. In 1591, the anonymous Pasquı´n del infierno (Broadside from hell) offered a dialogue in a pagan hell—ruled by the god Pluto—on the events of May 24 of that year in Zaragoza, the capital of the eastern Spanish kingdom of Aragon. On that day, rioters fatally wounded the Marquis of Almenara, the viceroy of Aragon, which led to a revolt quashed by an army sent by Philip II.28 In Broadside from Hell, two former royal officials and a historian interrogate the viceroy, who explains the evil misdeeds that culminated on that ill-fated day. Whereas Journey to Hell describes an innocent peasant’s discovery of abuse among Catalonia’s political class, Broadside from Hell is a relentless indictment of the viceroy and his treacherous allies by someone evidently familiar with politics in Aragon.29 The idea that a country bumpkin like Porter would have traveled to hell and come back to smear the reputation of Catalonia’s lay and religious authorities defied early modern assumptions about politics. In countless villages, towns, and cities across Europe artisans and peasants enjoyed limited participation in local government. Pere Porter himself participated numerous times in his adult life in his hometown’s general council.30 But

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not everyone saw such political participation favorably. Common people did not have a place in politics because, as the dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy asserted, ‘‘vulgar people . . . have neither esteem nor distinction in the republic.’’31 Across Europe, the entry of common people into politics often elicited a sense that something unreal was taking place. Such is the case with ‘‘street prophets’’ and visionaries of humble origins, who like Pere Porter warned of widespread corruption or impending disasters. Between 1494 and 1530, Italians marveled at the large number of self-styled prophets, including women and illiterate common people.32 In sixteenth century Spain, the tinker-turned-soldier-prophet Miguel de Piedrola, the ex-soldier and healer Domingo Navarro, and the visionary dry cleaner ‘‘Mr. Spot Remover’’ (Sacamanchas) all warned of catastrophes in the Spanish empire. The most daring of these street prophets was Lucrecia de Leo´n, the daughter of a legal agent, who gained an important following for her visionary dreams that denounced King Philip II for his sins and failed policies.33 For early modern England, Keith Thomas has written about the existence of a ‘‘small army of pseudo-Messiahs.’’34 For instance, in 1562 Elizeus Hall, who called himself Ely the carpenter’s son, claimed to have seen heaven and hell and to be God’s messenger to Queen Elizabeth and to all princes.35 In 1648, the German vintner Hans Keil attracted attention for saying that an angel ordered him to warn his prince ‘‘to bring the sword against all . . . wickedness. For the Lord will send such a terrible weather that people will run together and cry, ‘oh woe, oh woe.’ ’’36 That vulgar men and women said such strange things openly suggested the workings of divine will or of diabolic artifice. Catholic and Protestant writers also cited divine or diabolic intervention to explain unbelievable popular rebellions. Huguenot martyrologist Jean Crespin asserted that ‘‘an extraordinary power [vertu] from God’’ was at work when a small band of artisans, women, and children in Rouen achieved the feat of ‘‘cleaning out’’ all of the religious images in fifty Catholic churches in the brief span of twenty-four hours.37 Calvinist preachers in the Netherlands offered the same explanation for the 1566 iconoclastic riots that triggered the Dutch Revolt. According to Phyllis Mack Crew, ‘‘iconoclasm verified the superiority of the Reformers’ miraculous powers, since the ministers were able to commit such scandalous actions against the [Catholic] Church and remain unpunished.’’38 In early seventeenth-century France, when a rebel leader condemned to hanging came down alive from the gallows, the crowd called it a miracle. Likewise, the uncorrupted corpse

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of an executed French rebel leader days after his execution was seen as a divine sign.39 According to Father Gaspar Sala, God was behind the popular revolt against royal authorities in Catalonia in 1640: ‘‘Since God tends to put his divine voice in the voice of the people, He put the sword of justice in their hands in order to carry out the punishment’’ of royal soldiers and officers.40 During the Neapolitan revolt of 1647, supporters declared that the Virgin of the Carmine had miraculously prevented an assassination attempt on the fisherman and rebel leader Masaniello. Witnesses interpreted a white dove circling above Masaniello’s head as a sign that he was ‘‘a man sent from God.’’41 Despite his later assassination, miracle stories about the fisherman’s inexplicable rise and fall continued to circulate in Italy and abroad. Presenting Porter’s story as a miracle points to the first of several models followed in Voyage to Hell to defend the truth of his oneiric experiences. The story follows the examples seen above that seek to explain the unbelievable entry of vulgar people in politics. ‘‘God has made a great miracle in this man,’’ explained Francesc de Canet, ‘‘to assure us that God protects good men and punishes evil ones.’’42 Yet it was not the case that simply asserting that any given event was a miracle sufficed to make it credible. Late medieval and early modern readers knew, and expected, that sometimes claims to miracles and visions would be fraudulent. In order for their miracle stories to be believable, their tellers made certain their accounts met their readers’ expectations—including those of church authorities— about what was possible and what was not. For example, the social and economic standing of seers could reassure readers about the veracity of an apparition.43 Pere Porter met those expectations; and for this reason, his tale includes that information in order to give greater credence to his miraculous account. Early on, we learn that he came from modest origins, but not from the very poor; he was a God-fearing, married peasant and a trusted man in his community. In addition, the fantastic and unreal elements in Porter’s story stay within the limits of what seemed possible in a miracle. For example, the peasant has no special powers. The devil made possible Porter’s flight to hell; the vision of St. James made possible his exit. Porter was not only powerless, but the underworld journey left him so weak that he had to rest in bed for a month. Corroborating the truth of a vision or miracle required proof.44 Consequently, according to Voyage to Hell, Francesc de Canet questioned

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witnesses familiar with the case. He traveled to Tordera, where he interviewed a priest who vouchsafed for Pere Porter’s respect in his community. Canet then interviewed Porter to corroborate the accuracy of the Inquisition’s account. In addition, Canet provided theological arguments to corroborate that the peasant’s sightings in hell did not contradict Catholic theology. The story contains numerous names of individuals and other details that contemporary readers would have recognized and which later scholars have confirmed. Therefore, we know for a fact that Pere Porter was a real person and that Jalmar Bonsom was a notary, even though it has not been possible to confirm the story about the loan cancellation.45 Porter’s voyage also draws on the genre known as the prodigious story, or the prodigious history. According to Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, ‘‘a prodigy was a disturbing and unusual event, one apparently contrary to nature and therefore attributable directly to God.’’46 What might seem impossible at the human or natural level God could make real to reveal a spiritual truth. Natalie Zemon Davis describes one such example of an histoire prodigieuse in The Return of Martin Guerre, set in southern France in the late sixteenth century. Like Pere Porter, Martin Guerre was a peasant who made a surprise return to his hometown after a long absence—in his case, of several years. Not long after his arrival, relatives and neighbors began to doubt that the man who had returned was the real Martin Guerre. ‘‘The prodigious is strange,’’ Davis explains, ‘‘though not necessarily unique; it is rarer than other events of its kind.’’47 Prodigious stories try to reassure the reader of their truth by presenting convincing evidence. In the case of Martin Guerre’s tale, the judge Jean de Coras, who presided over the investigation to determine the true identity of the man who claimed to be Martin Guerre, based the veracity of his story on trial depositions and on his questioning of the protagonists. Similarly, the alleged author of Porter’s own prodigious story, Francesc de Canet, as noted earlier, declared that he first learned about Porter’s story from an Inquisition trial deposition and later questioned Porter in person; he also appended a brief theological discussion, allegedly by the Inquisition, which explained how it was possible to travel to hell and come out of it alive.48 Of course, as strange as the story of Martin Guerre was, there were no fantastic elements as in Porter’s tale. News stories, known in Spanish as avisos (notices or warnings) and relaciones de sucesos (relations, or reports of events), provided another contemporary model for presenting dreamlike events as real.49 These early

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modern news stories combined reports of serious events, such as battles and royal ceremonies, with stories of miracles, diabolical visitations, and monsters. One typical publisher and author of these news stories was Juan Serrano de Vargas y Uren˜a, born in the university town of Salamanca, and active in Seville in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Most of his news stories dealt with serious events, such as wars, the activities of Spanish monarchs, and religious ceremonies. Occasionally he also published what we would label today as ‘‘weird news,’’ such as the destruction of a church by a lightning strike or an earthquake. By far the strangest of the strange news published by Serrano de Vargas was his 1624 True Portrait of the Monstrous Fish Found in Germany.50 According to the story, a fisherman caught the fish in a river in Poland, and immediately took his extraordinary find to his hometown, where people wondered if it was a fish or a mermaid. Clearly, it looked like neither: ‘‘It has the face of a man, and an Imperial Crown,’’ a crucifix sticking out of its mouth, and two ‘‘feet,’’ one a lion’s and the other an eagle’s. The so-called fish was covered with symbols such as weapons, skulls, and flags, which readers could examine in the accompanying illustration. The finding coincided with events related to what would become known as the Thirty Years’ War. There was little doubt this was a prodigy sent by God as a warning. The skulls, swords, guns, cannons, and flags on the fish suggested a deadly message; the story’s author confessed only God knew their true meaning. The Spanish did not have a monopoly on such works. In 1642, the English public could read The Marine Mercury; or, A True Relation of the Strange Appearance of a Man-Fish . . . Having a Musket in One Hand and a Petition in the Other, which described a monster who denounced rebels and plots by foreign princes against Charles I during the English Civil War.51 Interest in such stories was not so much the result of widespread ignorance or an effective pulp press. Rather, readers expected numerous extraordinary events, like dreams, to confound the senses and challenge the seemingly clear division between fantasy and the real. The Catalan word for these news stories, relacio´, appears in the title of several early manuscript copies of Porter’s tale: Relacio´ y memoria y espanto´s viatje que feu Pere Porter (Report and memoir of the frightful journey made by Pere Porter). Its alleged author, Canet, wrote it in 1621, only three years before Serrano de Vargas published his True Portrait of the Monstrous Fish. The title of another version of Porter’s story also fits well the category of news stories: Cas raro d’un home anomenat Pere Portes, de la vila de Tordera, que vivint entra` i eixı´ de l’infern (Strange case

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of a man named Pere Portes [sic], from the village of Tordera, who, living, entered and exited hell).52 If Porter’s Journey to Hell shares many of the strategies used by the early modern news genre to prove the veracity of its strange accounts, it could not rely on one of its most important strategies, namely, the authority of its author. Although his identity as a friar sought to reassure readers about the tale’s truth, there is not a shred of evidence that friar Francesc de Canet existed or about the author’s identity hidden behind this pseudonym. By the early seventeenth century, texts narrating miracles, prophecies, or unusual stories by anonymous or unknown authors had become a trope ridiculed by none other than Miguel de Cervantes. In Don Quixote, whose first part was published in 1604—four years before Porter’s voyage to hell— Cervantes claims that the adventures of the knight-errant and Sancho Panza come from an Arabic manuscript by a spurious chronicler named Cide Hamete Benengeli.53 Likewise, Voyage to Hell was purportedly an account based on an Inquisition trial. The narratives by Cervantes and Canet therefore reveal extraordinary tales from sources not available to the public, to which they had privileged access. But whereas in Don Quixote there is no question that the revelations found in Benengeli’s chronicle were the laughable adventures of a fictional poor hidalgo, nothing in the Voyage to Hell suggests that its author intended readers to view this account as fiction. Ultimately, the veracity of the Voyage to Hell relies on the miraculous events that happened after Porter left hell and returned to his hometown. Its true author may have been a mystery, but anyone who doubted the story’s claim could verify it the same way its supposed author said he had done, namely, travel to Porter’s town of Tordera, where they could interview residents about the extraordinary events that had taken place. By doing so, the skeptical reader would confirm the oneiric events in Voyage to Hell. In Porter’s story, the peasant’s alleged travel to the underworld elicited a diversity of reactions. When Porter first told the neighbor who found him in Valencia that he had just come out of hell, the neighbor assumed that Porter was hallucinating. When the peasant arrived in his hometown and repeated the claim, his neighbors told him he was a fool (ignocent), insane, and a madman (orat i loco).54 Eventually, and in response to denunciations made by Porter’s neighbors, the Inquisition investigated the case. Allegedly the Inquisition concluded that Porter had indeed told the truth.

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We have another contemporary response from an eminent reader of Porter’s account. The Bibliothe`que Nationale in Paris owns what is probably the earliest manuscript copy of Porter’s tale dating from the early seventeenth century, not long after the events described in it. The manuscript belonged to the Catalan lawyer, chronicler, and diarist Jeroni Pujades, who lived between 1568 and 1635. No less important than the existence of this early copy of the story is a series of marginal notes Pujades made. His interest in the story stemmed in large part from a passing reference the peasant made to Pujades’s father, Miquel. Pere Porter did not see Miquel Pujades in hell; however, the peasant claimed that Pujades senior had in his possession a notebook that belonged to Dr. Gabriel Maduxer, who was Miquel’s predecessor in the office of advocat dels pobres, or counsel for poor convicts, in Barcelona. Allegedly, this notebook contained evidence that Maduxer had committed crimes that led to his eternal damnation, as Porter had witnessed. Jeroni Pujades noted in the margins of his manuscript copy that he recalled hearing about a case like Porter’s coming before the Inquisition in Barcelona, although the lawyer did not know what if anything came of it.55 Nonetheless, Pujades offered the following verdict on the veracity of Pere Porter’s story: ‘‘Of the faith one should have in this report [relacio´], I, Dr. Jeroni Pujades, citizen of Barcelona, have my doubts.’’ He based his opinion on alleged errors of fact. Pere Porter had been wrong to mention Pujades’s father: ‘‘I doubt that all of this is anything more than a satire or humbug,’’ because Miquel had died in 1585, nearly two decades before the Duke of Monteleo´n became viceroy, from 1603 to 1610.56 (In fact, Pujades was wrong, since Porter never said that Pujades senior was counsel to the poor during the administration of Viceroy Monteleo´n.)57 Pujades had a second reason for doubting the truth of Porter’s voyage to hell. While living in the county of Empu´ries, where Porter’s hometown of Tordera was located, Pujades heard similar ‘‘fables’’ from Pere Vila, an official in the county’s court. This Vila was an unsavory character, who admitted to Pujades making a living ‘‘from simple persons who paid him a few reals for him to look the other way.’’ Eventually, Pere Vila’s corrupt practices led to his banishment from the county, although he later managed to obtain a post at the royal court in the city of Girona. ‘‘The Devil has great means,’’ observed Pujades.58 Pere Porter would have agreed, noting that hell was full of officials like the corrupt Pere Vila. Before we conclude that Dr. Jeroni Pujades’s dismissal of Pere Porter’s story reflected the typical skepticism of educated men toward the fantastic,

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it is important to point out that on other occasions Pujades was willing to believe in miracles and prodigies. For example, on November 4, 1602, Pujades wrote in his diary reports of a ‘‘balloon in the shape of the long tail of a meteor [estela], as big as a hill, very bright, lighted like the flames of a fire,’’ to which he added, ‘‘May God be pleased that it be a good presage.’’59 In another diary entry, Pujades described meeting a woman who heard the moans of his deceased mother and talked to her spirit in a house he owned in Barcelona. When Pujades learned that his mother had asked for masses in her memory and that of Pujades’s deceased wife, he promptly complied.60 In short, Pujades denied that Porter’s journey to hell could have been true, but like most of his educated, even erudite, contemporaries he still admitted the possibility that fantastic and supernatural events could and did happen. Had the story’s central message been the revelation of the crimes committed by the specific individuals found in Porter’s hell, the tale would have made sense only to readers familiar with politics in Catalonia in the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century. Yet that was not the case, as is demonstrated by the numerous manuscript copies that survive from the second half of the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century, as well as the multiple printings since its first one in 1874.61 Its lasting appeal came instead from the universal hope that the high and mighty who fail in their duties and abuse their power will at least receive their just reward in the afterlife. As time passed and the names of the eternally damned faded from memory, the peasant’s voyage lost what had initially made it frightful, becoming instead quaint and inoffensive. Nonetheless, the mysteries surrounding Pere Porter’s tale should not let us lose sight of the broader question of how early modern storytellers tried to explain the intersection of the real and the unreal, of the true and the fantastic. It may very well be the case that the author of Journey to Hell intended to produce a political pamphlet. Nonetheless, that does not explain why the author made such an elaborate effort to create a sense of verisimilitude. Did the author think that the use of real names and facts would more effectively convince readers of the sad state of the justice system in Catalonia than, say, describing actual cases of abuse? If the author’s goal was to appeal to a more popular and less educated audience, why assume that verisimilitude had greater popular interest than biting satire, such as Francisco de Quevedo’s wildly imaginative Dreams or the Aragonese Broadside from Hell, neither of which pretends to recount a real

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journey to hell?62 In short, Pere Porter’s otherworldly story alerts us to the need to examine the range of narrative models available in each society in any given historical moment to explain the dreamlike overlap between the real and the unreal. Rather than focus exclusively on proving or disproving the veracity of oneiric situations, we need to consider as well what made them believable. Reading Porter’s story from this perspective suggests, for instance, an underworld of stories that include dreams and visions often presented as popular or vulgar, as opposed to the stylized and literary, naı¨ve and credulous, as opposed to erudite and scholarly. Porter’s story aimed to be popular in the sense of having broad appeal rather than aimed at an unlearned audience. Lacking full credibility, it relied on a believing, even credulous, audience to see the truth beyond the dubious details. In time the story shed its original political criticism—satirical or literal—and lived on as a quaint curiosity, a believe-it-or-not morality tale.

Chapter 5

Dreams and Prophecies The Fifth Empire of Father Antonio Vieira and Messianic Visions of the Braganc¸a Dynasty in Seventeenth-Century Portugal and Brazil luı´s filipe silve´ rio lima translated by anna luisa geselbracht

In 1699, two years after his death, Father Antonio Vieira (1608–97) appeared in the dreams of his fellow Jesuit and old friend Father Jose´ Suares. On his deathbed in Salvador da Bahia, capital of the state of Brazil, Suares dreamed he was crying and Vieira was drying his tears. With this illustrious vision, the dying man felt comforted, and he prepared to die in peace.1 Retold and highlighted as a caso notavel (notable case) by Father Joa˜o Antonio Andreoni, the rector of the college in Bahia and Vieira’s former assistant, the episode indicated Vieira’s growing prestige and authority within the Jesuit Order—an authority confirmed in heaven by his sudden appearance in dreams as a messenger from the beyond. Vieira’s authority, however, was derived less from postmortem miracles or visitations in dreams than from the legacy of his sermons, his—often controversial— missionary and political activity, and the ideas he expressed during his life about the coming ‘‘Fifth Empire.’’ This essay shows how Vieira’s understanding of the Fifth Empire framed the Portuguese monarchy, its overseas dominions, and the Society of Jesus—with its efforts to convert the ‘‘foreign peoples’’ of the New World to Christianity—as agents and executors of a divine plan for the final chapter of human history.

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Contemporaries treated Vieira’s appearances to others in their dreams and visions as evidence of a divine design that would ultimately be realized in the Fifth Empire, rather than as a sign of Vieira’s own saintliness— something that would have been inappropriate for this modest seventeenthcentury ecclesiastic and man of letters. In life, Vieira had cast himself as an incisive and ingenious interpreter of dreams and visions, analyzing them both theologically and politically. Thus, on the rare occasions when something was revealed to him in dreams, it was as corroboration of the correct interpretation of revelation given to others. Vieira affirmed his role as interpreter in his Livro anteprimeiro da Historia do Futuro, a prophetic tract written during the 1660s and printed, posthumously, in 1718. In it, the Jesuit sought to interpret the dream prophecies written about the future of Portugal in the same way that the biblical figures Daniel and Joseph had deciphered the dreams of kings and pharaohs.2 As he made clear, he accomplished this not because he had some divine quality of his own, but because he served as a ‘‘small instrument’’ of divine Providence. As a Jesuit priest, Vieira was an instrument authorized by the Tridentine church. He sought to demonstrate—with support from a variety of sources—the truth of prophetic dreams announcing the arrival of a fifth and final empire. This empire would be led by the Portuguese people (the new Chosen People) under their king, who would be of the Braganc¸a dynasty, and who would cooperate with the Holy See through the person of the pope. In Historia do Futuro, dreams provided essential evidence to support the notion of a Fifth Empire. Vieira believed three biblical prophecies (two in Daniel and one in Ezra) had described the succession of four empires: Chaldean, Persian, Greek, and Roman. Two of these prophecies had been revealed in dreams: Daniel’s prophecy of the four beasts (Dan. 7) and Nebuchadnezzar’s vision of a statue made of gold, silver, brass, iron, and clay (Dan. 2).3 This last was perhaps the most important for Vieira’s Fifth Empire as well as for the messianic and millenarian beliefs of the seventeenth century.4 Vieira, however, was also inspired by another source: the sixteenth-century Trovas (rhymed quatrains) by the cobbler of Trancoso, Gonc¸ alo Anes Bandarra, a text organized around three dreams. The Trovas had circulated and been widely read throughout the Iberian Peninsula since the end of the sixteenth century. Printed in Portuguese on French presses in 1603 and 1644,5 Bandarra’s dreams were themselves an interpretation of biblical prophecies, presented as analogous to

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the visions of Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel, and Ezra, which gave Bandarra ‘‘a role as intermediary of the divine message and will.’’6 The significance Vieira attributed to dreams was hardly unique. In the seventeenth century, the exegesis of biblical visions connected with the five kingdoms formed the foundation for messianic hopes linked with the Portuguese monarchy. This was true both of those (called Sebastianists) who were still awaiting the return of King Sebastia˜o, lost in the Battle of Alca´cer Quibir in 1578, and those who believed that the designs of Providence would be carried out by the new Braganc¸a dynasty, which rose to power in 1640, after sixty years of dual monarchy with Spain under the reign of the Hapsburgs. In 1580, Philip II of Spain had assumed the throne of Portugal under the title of Philip I of Portugal. He was succeeded by his son Philip III, who became Philip II of Portugal in 1598, and by his grandson Philip IV (III of Portugal) in 1621. During this period, Madrid became Portugal’s actual capital, and Portuguese dominions were thus integrated into the world’s greatest empire. After the Restoration of 1640 and the ascension of Joa˜o IV of Braganc¸a, Lisbon once again became the seat of the royal court, but wars against Spain to establish the new dynasty lasted until 1668, ending with the Treaty of Madrid, during the last years of the reign of the Joa˜o IV’s second son, Afonso VI. The period between 1580 and 1668 was marked by the construction of two messianic movements, Sebastianism and Joanism, which both spawned visions of Portugal as the head of the Christian world. These messianic movements, linked to the Braganc¸as, were politicalprophetic movements that translated and updated a traditional royal prophecy present on the Iberian peninsula known as Encobertismo, the anticipated return of the ‘‘hidden king’’ (the ‘‘Encoberto’’). But they projected this tradition onto the social, political, and cultural outlines of the Portuguese Empire of the seventeenth century, an empire that stretched from Brazil to Macao and from Lisbon to Salvador. They then used these prophecies to envision scenarios favorable to Portugal’s growth and to the achievement of the empire’s ideological project.7 These movements gained force, surviving various political disputes, to formulate grander designs for the Portuguese Empire. Such grand designs included Vieira’s conception of the Fifth Empire. This vision exceeded the mere defense of the kingrestorer, Joa˜o IV, and his heirs, and foresaw the construction of an ultimate and universal imperium (sovereign power) over the entire globe. Dreams of the five kingdoms fed millennial expectations outside the Portuguese Empire as well. During the English Revolution, the

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‘‘Fifth-Monarchy Men,’’ whose name indicated their inspiration in the book of Daniel, tried to establish the fifth reign of the ‘‘saints’’ on the earth, destroying property, challenging those nobles who defended the status quo, and, after deposing the king, establishing a republic governed rigorously by biblical law. In the Low Countries, the rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel proposed that the stone of Nebuchadnezzar forecast the Hope of Israel (the title of a book he wrote), feeding the messianic expectation of Dutch Jews scattered across the Old and New Worlds who had already been stirred by the news that the lost tribes had been found in the Amazon.8 Although these examples come from different (even, sometimes, antagonistic) religious traditions, they are quite similar to the ideas in Vieira’s Fifth Empire. All considered the problems of power, legitimate rule, and a reshaping of governance amid the political, social, and religious crises of seventeenthcentury Europe,9 and all drew on a common biblical repertoire of dreams and prophecies. There were also a few actual connections between these movements. Ben Israel and Vieira met each other in 1646 in Amsterdam and debated the interpretation of Daniel’s dreams. Ben Israel tried to negotiate the admission of Dutch Jews to England during the Protectorate, connecting the prophesied fate of the Jewish nation with the future of England. These connections are suggestive, but they allow us a glimpse of the broader circulation of messianic projects and texts through which various groups shared common prophetic ideals. Thus, a widespread millenarianism in the period crossed boundaries of nation and religion. Yet neither of these contemporary millennial movements reached the importance or longlasting influence of visions of the Fifth Empire in the Luso-Brazilian context. In the Portuguese world, the interpretation of dreams claimed a central role in both political and providential arguments that asserted that the Portuguese nation would lead the Fifth Monarchy. After the Battle of Alca´cer Quibir and the unification of the Iberian crowns, attention to dreams became increasingly important. The interpretation of prophetic dreams forged a rationale for Portugal’s primacy over other Christian nations at a moment in which, for the first time, the very identity of Portugal was threatened. Dreams were linked to the very foundation of the Portuguese monarchy; the legendary Miracle of Ourique held that Christ had appeared to Afonso Henriques, the first Portuguese king, in 1139. The ‘‘Oath of Afonso Henriques’’ offered documentary proof of this miracle. Forged at the end of the sixteenth century and propagated in the seventeenth, this

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text included a prophetic dream reminiscent of the dreams of Gideon and the Midianites in the Bible, as well as of Constantine’s visions in the midst of a spectacular infrastructure of prophecies.10 It confirmed the vision of the Cross of Christ and the announcement of the election of the Portuguese people as the new Chosen People, who would replace the Jews and have as their mission the conversion of the whole world to Christianity, carrying ‘‘the word [of Christ] to foreign nations.’’ Thus, ever since the founding moment of the realm on ‘‘pedra firme’’ (solid rock) as announced by the Savior to the first king in the ‘‘Oath,’’ dreams had played a role in defining the special place of the Portuguese kingdom in the empire of Christ. This destiny had been reaffirmed later by a variety of other dream texts, including those of Bandarra, which were compiled and interpreted throughout the seventeenth century. Thus, according to the seventeenth-century historical narrative, the idea of Portugal (and, more specifically, of the Portuguese Empire) had been revealed in dreams, something which had not occurred in other European states or their New World colonies. Moreover, in the seventeenth-century Portuguese realm, prophetic narratives based on dreams underscored an idea of Lusitanian monarchy that was intimately linked to New World conquests. Father Vieira’s Fifth Empire was one of the best—if not the best—examples of this.11 The Jesuit Antonio Vieira had been born in 1608 in Lisbon, but came to Brazil as a child. He was raised, educated, and ordained in Salvador. He returned to Portugal as a member of a delegation sent by the governorgeneral of Brazil to mark the 1640 Restoration of the Portuguese Crown.12 The commissioners departed in the beginning of 1641, intending to recognize the new king, Joa˜o IV, and to prove the loyalty of his Brazilian vassals—that is, they sought to clear up any suspicions about Brazilian loyalty, either that Brazilians preferred the Habsburg dynasty that had governed Portugal since 1581 or that they remained allied with Philip IV of Spain, formerly Philip III of Portugal. Vieira’s fame as the great orator from Bahia guaranteed him a place in the delegation. Vieira was successful in the pulpit, showing his particular commitment to defending the new dynasty. His oratorical gifts reaffirmed Brazil’s loyalty to its new king. In Lisbon, he immediately became the royal preacher, an advisor to the king, and tutor to the crown prince, Teodo´sio. He was named ambassador to a variety of diplomatic missions to gain support for the new dynasty, then at war against the Austro-Spanish Hapsburgs, one of the strongest dynasties in Europe. He traveled in delegations to France, Italy, and the Netherlands, and this is

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when he met Menasseh Ben Israel in Amsterdam.13 Because of internal pressure from his brothers in the Jesuit order, Vieira returned to Portuguese America in 1653. But rather than return to his former home in Bahia, he went to the state of Gra˜o-Para´ and Maranha˜o, where he led a mission to the Amazonian Indians, and to the north of the state of Brazil. It was there that, still reeling from the death of King Joa˜o IV in 1656, Vieira in 1659 wrote a letter to the Jesuit Andre´ Fernandes, bishop of Japan and confessor to Joa˜o’s widow, which he titled ‘‘Hopes of Portugal, Fifth Empire of the First World and Second Life of King Joa˜o IV, written by Gonc¸aleannes Bandarra.’’ Its title was possibly reminiscent of another Hope, that of Israel, written and printed nine years before, in 1650, by Menasseh Ben Israel.14 In 1661, the Jesuits were expelled by the colonists of Maranha˜o because of conflicts over the enslavement of the Indians. When Vieira returned to Portugal, in the 1660s, the ‘‘Hopes of Portugal’’ generated problems for its author, and the Inquisition used it to launch an investigation. Summoned to Coimbra for interrogation in 1663, and remaining a prisoner there until 1666, the Jesuit had to demonstrate to his inquisitors, both orally and in writing, that his Fifth Empire was not a heretical conceit. Eventually freed, but condemned to silence, the nearly sixty-year-old Vieira went to Rome. There he sought papal intercession to revoke his conviction, which he finally obtained in 1675 with a papal letter revoking the sentence of the Portuguese Inquisition. His reputation restored, Vieira returned to Lisbon, but he failed to win the same acceptance at the Portuguese court. Eventually, he went back to Salvador in 1681. There he dedicated himself to the prophetic writings he called his ‘‘altos castelos’’ (‘‘high castles’’), while complying with the order from his Jesuit superiors to complete revisions of his sermons for publication. Vieira was not destined to live to see the completion of either of these two projects. In 1699, the same year in which the deceased Vieira appeared in the dreams of his friend and Jesuit brother, the twelfth volume of Vieira’s sermons was released in Lisbon. It was the last volume that had been revised and organized by the author. Vieira’s prophetic texts never fully made their way to print. The manuscripts were copied and circulated in several versions during the eighteenth century, although only a minority were ever published. Vieira developed his view of a Fifth Empire led by the Braganc¸a dynasty during the second half of the seventeenth century. Prophetic themes related to the dynasty had appeared in his sermons since 1642, when—recently

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arrived in Portugal to greet the new king—he delivered his ‘‘Sermon of the Good Years’’ in the Royal Chapel.15 In it, he spoke of an empire led by the Braganc¸a monarchs, who would subjugate the entire world exactly as God willed. Although he forecast the special role of Portugal, Joa˜o IV, and his descendants in earlier letters and sermons, the first of Vieira’s texts to offer an organized picture of the Fifth Empire was the ‘‘Hopes of Portugal,’’ which contains the first identifiable occurrence of the term ‘‘Fifth Empire’’ in any of Vieira’s texts. This 1659 letter was more an argumentative commentary on Bandarra (designed to prove that the deceased Joa˜o IV was Encoberto) than it was a treatise about the Fifth Empire. For example, the dreams in the book of Daniel appear little, or not at all, and even discussion of the Fifth Empire is more restricted than the subtitle (‘‘Fifth Empire of the First World and Second Life of King John IV, written by Gonc¸aleannes Bandarra’’) might suggest. Over time, the dreams of both Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel appear in Vieira’s sermons with some frequency, but they function primarily as figures in temporal succession. They are used in an allegorical, homiletic, or moral sense rather than as literal prophecies forecasting worldly regimes. The dreams also serve as metaphors or analogies through which one might assess the actions of the Portuguese Crown and the church. In sermons like ‘‘Husband of the Mother of God’’ (1644) and the three sermons reunited under the name of ‘‘Sleeping Xavier’’ (1694),16 Vieira compares the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar with the dreams of Joseph, the patron saint of King Joa˜o IV, and with those of St. Francis Xavier, using these themes to explore the larger Jesuit and Portuguese mission.17 In such sermons, Vieira focuses on defining the dream, but does not make his ideas about the Fifth Empire explicit. In the ‘‘Sleeping Xavier’’ sermons, for example, dreams are defined as the ‘‘relics’’ of waking cares. Vieira drew from the Aristotelian idea that dreams were traces of diurnal activities, of waking thought. What was dreamed while sleeping was a reflection of what was done—or desired— while awake. Drawing on catechisms, doctrine, and Catholic commentaries,18 Vieira, when he spoke of dreams, maintained that only those who concerned themselves with the present were able to dream about the future. So a prophetic dream, besides being a product of divine revelation, was also necessarily a reflection of the life of the dreamer. This was an essential part of Vieira’s claim that the prophetic dream of the ‘‘Apostle of the Orient’’ (the missionary saint and Jesuit, Xavier) was about the mission to and the

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universal conversion of all people. Xavier’s spiritual goals were obvious, in the same way that Nebuchadnezzar’s position as a great emperor meant that his dream was about the monarchies of the world. Even prophets could expect dreams that reflected their preoccupations before bedtime. Dream and life, therefore, could not be separated. This also permitted Vieira to say that the dreaming Xavier acted as a saint, because he dreamed of saintly things; the dreamer’s concerns determined his dreams, and therefore his prophecies. In this view, it was essential to act in a Christlike manner if one wished to have dreams that would contain revelations from God and that would indicate, by the grace they bestowed, the future of the Jesuit mission, of the Portuguese realm, or, indeed, of humankind as a whole. Vieira’s discussion of dreams deployed the Catholic conception of the Theatrum mundi (the world stage) not only to reveal the illusory and deceptive nature of appearances but also to reveal how human history leads inevitably to the manifestation of God’s divine design. The idea that life is a dream was a repeated motif in Vieira’s sermons. Once this basic proposition was proved, he would prescribe that Christian dreamers use waking vigilance to transform both sleep (itself like death in miniature) and its deceptions into conscious thought. If life was a dream, then both sleeping and waking experience must be equally images of Truth, as they could have no substance in themselves. Therefore, he argued, it would be worthwhile to pay close attention to both types of experience. In this sense, Vieira said, dreams were ‘‘relics’’ of the dreamer’s concerns, and vehicles through which grace might reveal God’s divine plans to humanity. To interpret these plans, it was necessary to interpret the symbols of dreams—the images presented to humans. Humans could understand the images, and through them, with proper scrutiny, could discern eternal truths. But a dream was also, of course, a product of the dreamer’s waking life, and, therefore, it represented these waking concerns as well. The apparent paradox is related to the problem that Vieira considered in the ‘‘Sleeping Xavier’’ sermons. How could the greatest of the saints appear sleeping and dreaming if the defining characteristic of sainthood was eternal wakefulness and vigilance? Much as a dream was the result of waking thoughts, waking life was also a dream. In this sense, waking life was akin to sleep, and the products of sleep—the dream—both caused it and completed it. Dreams were thus both reflections of waking life and, in some ways, more truthful than this waking life, which was, after all, ‘‘only a dream.’’ Yet dreams were meant to be read within the logic of figural interpretation.

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At the moment of its recording, the dream acquired various figures that composed the text. Vieira indicated that there was no importance to the material world beyond God and his intentions: the rest—all of it—was only an effect, figures authored by the Creator. These figures pointed to the dream of the Fifth Empire, which Vieira believed would be realized in his own time. Although Vieira’s sermons were often concerned with the destiny of the universal mission and the essential role of the Portuguese monarchy in Christianity, in the majority of his sermons, the Fifth Empire hovered just under the surface of the text. Vieira finally named the Fifth Empire outright in his ‘‘Thanksgiving Sermon on the Birth of Prince Joa˜o,’’ which he preached on December 16, 1688, in Bahia. This sermon was printed in the volume Palavra de Deus empenhada e desempenhada in 1690.19 The sermon congratulated the Portuguese royal couple Pedro II and Maria Sofia of Neuburg on the birth of their first son. The ship with news of the birth docked in Salvador in December, and the priest, already quite weak, resolved to thank God and Saint Francis Xavier (for his intercession) on the birth of a male heir. Vieira declared that Portugal would be the Fifth Empire dreamed by Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel and promised in Ourique. Its head would be the newborn crown prince, Joa˜o. But even as the ships made their way toward Portugal bearing news both of Vieira’s sermon and the celebratory parties in Brazil, the infant heir died. Following the prince’s death, Vieira rearranged his hopes.20 The thanksgiving sermon that he had preached in 1688 in Salvador contained the highlights of his prophetic tracts, or ‘‘altos pala´cios.’’ These works included the ‘‘Hopes of Portugal,’’ but also the History of the Future (preceded by its introductory Livro anteprimeiro) and the Clavis Prophetarum (Key to the prophecies), the project to which he dedicated the final part of his life. In addition, Vieira’s prophetic work included the two ‘‘Representations,’’ written for his Defense Before the Tribunal of the Holy Office, and the text Apology for the Things Prophesized, which was possibly an initial draft of what became the ‘‘Representations.’’21 The sermon printed in Palavra de Deus empenhada e desempenhada had been transcribed from an oral presentation to a large Brazilian audience, and only later was it printed in a book intended for a Lusitanian audience and, possibly, for readers throughout the empire. In these unfinished works, the Jesuit developed and defended his theory about the Fifth Empire, showing its bases, organization, mission, purpose, means, and methods.

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In contrast to the Sebastianists, Vieira’s interpretations of the book of Daniel and the Trovas of Bandarra did not dwell on any specific king as the one who would fulfill the prophecy; he merely implied that it would be one of the heads of the house of Braganc¸a. When he did name a specific king, as in the ‘‘Hopes of Portugal’’ or the ‘‘Sermon of Thanksgiving,’’ it was generally in familiar letters22 and panegyric sermons.23 Therefore, by means of sleight of hand, it was possible for Vieira to move beyond his error about the deceased crown prince Joa˜o. In his prophetic texts (excepting ‘‘Hopes’’), Vieira’s main objective was not to prove who would be the monarch, but rather to explain why Portugal would be the nation chosen to lead the empire of Christ. In the incomplete ‘‘History of the Future,’’ Vieira opened his explanation of the Fifth Empire by explaining why ‘‘our [Portuguese] Empire is that Fifth Empire, and what the other four empires were.’’ This distinction had to be made, according to the Jesuit, having seen ‘‘in our age so many empires, most of which are barbarous and political nations like those that have risen and fallen in other ages.’’ In response to this imperial multiplicity, Vieira postulated a History of the Future founded on ‘‘Divine Scriptures; whose prophetic history . . . only covers the first [empire] that began and rose and those empires that followed it in continuous succession until the present day, which in the space of four thousand years have comprised, in union with this [first empire,] four.’’24 The History of the Future, therefore, was not a ‘‘political’’ or secular history; its mode of analysis was not that of a ‘‘human author or historian.’’ It was a ‘‘prophetic history,’’ taken from the scriptures. It thus discusses the future and specifies events, people, and places, as explained in the Livro anteprimeiro. In order to treat as history the ‘‘hidden hemisphere’’ of time—the future—it was necessary to work from the basis of divine word. The Jesuit began his first book with canonical prophecies in order to ‘‘provide a firm basis for the hope for this grand future,’’ before turning to ‘‘the prophecies which Faith teaches us are true.’’ He started with Daniel, ‘‘not only because the spirit of prophecy is so well illustrated’’ there but also because Daniel was the prophet of kings and monarchies. Nebuchadnezzar’s dream was ‘‘the first building block in Daniel’s grand prophecy.’’25 If this prophetic history was about the arrival of the fifth and final empire, which would rise above all other empires and monarchies, and if a history of the future could only be founded on true prophecies, drawn primarily from the Bible, then the chosen prophet should be a man who knew such material well.

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Following the logic of all exegetical commentators, Vieira created a paraphrase of the biblical dreams so that he could then explain the significance of the kingdoms that Daniel had not revealed to the king. The head of gold on the statue was the ‘‘Empire of the Assyrians,’’ as the prophet said. The other parts of the statue were ‘‘silver, which is the second metal,’’ or the empire of Persia; bronze, the third metal, which symbolized the Greeks; and iron, the fourth metal, which represented the Romans, who made up the fourth empire. The order also proceeded logically in terms of the worth of the metals, going from greater to lesser value (gold, silver, bronze, iron). In the same way, the images proceeded from the higher to lower parts of the body (head, chest and arms, belly, legs and feet, which ‘‘are the last part of the body’’). The empires proceeded in chronological order, but were also symbolized by analogy with the material used and the section of the statue. The iron that symbolized the Fourth Empire was a reflection of the force and military strength of the Roman Empire; likewise the Roman Empire’s division between the Orient and the Occident was analogous to the statue’s two feet on the earth: one in the West, in Rome, and the other in the East, in Constantinople, which had been taken by the Turks. The ten toes were the remnants of the Roman Empire, torn apart in its decadence. In the toes could be seen ‘‘everything that . . . the Christian Princes in Europe had, and everything that in Europe, Africa and Asia had been taken over by the Turks.’’ Because of the disunity of the toes and the fragility of clay mixed with iron, it was impossible to form a firm alliance among the Christian European nations, despite the many royal marriages intended to promote unity. This statue and its ‘‘weakness in his extremities’’ would be destroyed by the rock, the fifth and final empire.26 Because God was revealing ‘‘grand things,’’ Vieira argued, he would reveal ‘‘the same mystery in repeated visions’’ and duplicate ‘‘the same revelation to different receivers.’’27 God repeated previous revelations in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream about the statue in Daniel’s dream of the beasts. The Jesuit analyzed Daniel’s dream, guided by his interpretation of the vision of the statue. He once again identified the four empires and their eras, and he proved that the last empire was yet to come. The next sections of Vieira’s text are incomplete. As Adma Muhana has indicated, Vieira’s prophetic writings often repeat themselves.28 The structure of the second book of History of the Future is quite similar to the structure of the ‘‘Second Representation’’ found in the Defense Before the Tribunal of the Holy Office. In both, the analysis was based on the book of Daniel and relied, above all

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else, on references to authoritative texts, to biblical passages and their exegesis, and to citations of canonical prophecies. This emphasis cannot be attributed solely to censure or condemnation by the Inquisition; it is the result, instead, of a second source of support for Vieira’s analysis, after the source on which Vieira based his ‘‘First Representation’’ and Livro anteprimeiro; a noncanonical and more modern foundation—Bandarra’s Trovas. Because Bandarra was a modern source for Vieira, it became important to the Jesuit to justify his use of the Trovas. Perhaps the biggest problem, explored in the letter ‘‘The Hopes of Portugal,’’ was the fact that the Trovas were neither canonical nor authorized prophecies and that the author, Bandarra, was a mere cobbler.29 Vieira’s principal argument for their validity lay in the confirmation, by means of subsequent historical events, of that which had been forecast in the prophet’s verses. The inquisitors’ questions to him had revealed a second problem: how could dreams be trusted, when dreams could be fruits of the imagination? Even more to the point, how could dreams be trusted if the dreamer was unauthorized, illiterate, and burdened by the taint of crypto-Judaism? Belief in dreams was the province of peasants, of superstitious crones, of heathens. To make matters worse, the dreams recorded in Trovas were those of ordinary people rather than of princes, bishops, nobles, or saints. In addition, any attempt to predict the future by means of dream interpretation verged on divination, which both broke the first commandment and could be prosecuted as a crime according to the fifth book of the Ordinances of the Realm.30 In this sense, only a tiny minority of people were thought capable of prophesying in dreams, and these credible prophets were most convincing when they were leaders of Christian or temporal kingdoms. Although everyone dreamed, only some were allowed to see the future. Dreams, thus, united everyone in a common experience (everybody dreams) and yet differentiated those whose dreams could constitute prophecy (only a very few could dream of the future). This paradox mirrored the paradox of both equality and hierarchy in the mystical body of Christ. Any person who dared to publicize his or her dreams without proper authority should therefore be punished—either by the Inquisition or by the Crown. The inquisitors held, as a rule, a great distrust of visions and especially of those received in dreams. This was because they considered them, first, to be the fruit of fertile imaginations with little discretion (when they were not the products of outright demonic influence) and, second, because such dream reports could disturb the peace and contravene the authority of the

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church. Indeed, they issued an edict in 1665 prohibiting any use of Bandarra’s Trovas.31 Furthermore, when church officials interrogated Vieira about his use of the Trovas, the inquisitors claimed that the poet himself had said that his verses described only dreams, and, therefore, they argued that these could not be interpreted as divine revelation. Both in his interrogation responses and in the text of his ‘‘First Representation,’’ Vieira argued that the dream, one of many types of vision, was perhaps also the best. Bandarra had written insistently that he ‘‘saw’’ his dreams, indicating that they were not simply products of his nocturnal imagination but were truly visions. Vieira also tried to demonstrate the validity of Bandarra’s dreams, pointing out in a few passages of the Livro anteprimeiro that the Spaniards were wrong to have devalued Bandarra’s visions solely because they came to him in a dream. Vieira reaffirmed the value of the Trovas as prophecy. The similarities between Vieira’s two manuscripts allows us to extrapolate the unfinished chapter of History of the Future on the basis of what is written in the ‘‘Second Representation.’’ Here, Vieira first clarifies that the Fifth Empire would be limited to Christ and for Christians and that it would be both temporal and spiritual at the same time. Vieira then went on to mention the extension of the empire; the universal conversion of all people, including the Jews, and the extinction of all types of faithlessness; the means and instruments by which this conversion would be accomplished; the installation of universal peace; the arrival and defeat of the Antichrist; the era in which the empire would come; and, finally, the nation from which the emperor would come—Portugal. Some of the chapters in History of the Future corresponded to the first seven ‘‘questions’’ in the ‘‘Second Representation’’ in their arguments, examples, and even whole paragraphs. The first chapter of the second book of the History, for example, developed an important topic that was also covered in the ‘‘Second Representation.’’ Vieira emphasized the familiar (to his readers) metaphor of the rock to underscore that the Fifth Empire would be Christian.32 In both texts, Vieira names Christ as a rock and alludes to biblical instances in which Christ is symbolized as a rock as well. Remember that a rock crushed Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, and this ‘‘rock’’ (the Fifth Empire) was thus a Christian empire, crushing the legacy of the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians, and the Assyrians. Of course, in the Portuguese context, the metaphor of the rock was also reminiscent of the Miracle of Ourique, in which Christ had established Portugal on ‘‘pedra firme’’ (firm ground). There is an explicit verbal pun

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here, in which Saint Peter’s very name (‘‘Pedro’’) conjures up the rock (‘‘pedra’’) which is Christ and the Christian church.33 As early as 1641, Antonio Paes Viegas had already written that, in the same way that Christ had founded the church with Peter as his rock, so too had he created the Portuguese realm in Ourique on ‘‘pedra firma.’’34 In the ‘‘Thanksgiving Sermon,’’ Vieira also affirmed that Ourique was the founding rock of the realm and its offspring, as future emperors, would be the founding rock of the Fifth Empire. The image of the rock also led Vieira to affirm that Christ would be supported by a literal and earthly kingdom that would be the Fifth Empire. Both in History of the Future and in the ‘‘Second Representation,’’ Vieira affirmed that the Fifth Empire would be ‘‘on the earth and of the earth,’’ not in heaven.35 In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, Daniel revealed that the rock would fall on the earth and would grow over it, occupying it entirely; therefore, to Vieira, it could only symbolize an earthly dominion, not a celestial one, as many others had asserted. More than this, the expansion of the rock symbolized the empire’s growth and eventual dominion over all other realms, converting them to Christianity in the process. Even though Christ had said that his reign would not be of this world, the fact that Christ was the rock and the rock was over the earth meant that there was no other conclusion than that the empire would be earthly. Of course, the reign of Christ could not be like other temporal empires, because all of those were worldly and, as such, were destined to disappear. In contrast, Christ’s reign would come and stay.36 In the Livro anteprimeiro, Vieira justified the title of the treatise ‘‘Fifth Empire of the World,’’ arguing that ‘‘the World of our promised Empire is not the world in this sense’’ of earthly, worldly things. The world that he spoke of was ‘‘the World that God grew, the World that they do not know, the World that one must know’’; in other words, the world past, present, and future. United, this Fifth Empire of Christ would be the empire of the world not only in title, as with the Habsburgs, but also a ‘‘true dominance and subjugation’’ of the entire globe.37 Christ would possess the true empire (imperium, which, of course, also means simply power).38 In Vieira’s description, the empire of Christ would be constituted of the two swords of power, which would form a double crown, of both silver and of gold. The silver was the symbol of a temporal empire and the gold of a spiritual one. These precious metals symbolized the importance of the two types of power (spiritual and temporal) in securing Christ’s reign on earth.

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Each was an expression of the dual nature of the empire—and of the rule of Christ—as both king and priest.39 As incarnation of God, Christ had dominion over all both by law and by right, and had been reaffirmed by his sacrifice for the human race. In spite of this, Christ did not yet have possession of his empire because his vassals—all of humanity—were rebellious and disobedient.40 This was the circumstance that necessitated universal conversion of the entire globe and all nations and the suppression of all types of infidelity—heathenry and idolatry, Islam, heresy, and Judaism. In order for the reign of Christ to come, the subjugation of all humans, and their conversion to the universal Catholic faith, was necessary. The ultimate goal of the empire of Christ was to convert the globe to the Word of God and to organize the people into one flock beneath a single pastor. Therefore, in several chapters of the ‘‘Second Representation,’’ Vieira emphasized the conversion of Jews to Catholicism, the return of the ten lost tribes, and their embrace in the bosom of Christianity. He also underscored the importance of the discovery of America and of evangelism there. The third book of Clavis prophetarum was dedicated almost entirely to the theme of spreading the Word across the globe, and here Vieira cited many examples from the Indians of the Americas. In Livro anteprimeiro, the conversion of the New World appeared as an indication of the strength of the Portuguese people and as an essential stage in the coming of the Fifth Empire. Defining God’s instruments for the execution of his plans on earth was also a crucial focus for Vieira. In particular, he lingered over the double crown of silver and gold, worn by two princes, one secular (the emperor) and the other ecclesiastic (the supreme pontiff).41 The gold crown belonged to the pope, the silver to the emperor. The emperor should be from Portugal because the Portuguese king had been chosen in the countryside of Ourique by Christ ‘‘as founder and destroyer of realms and empires’’ in order to ‘‘found an empire for Myself [Christ], so that My name can be carried to foreign nations.’’42 The Savior did not appear to the first Portuguese monarch only to establish a Lusitanic reign; his presence also announced that from this reign would come an empire destined to convert the entire world to Christianity. In the last chapter of the ‘‘Second Representation,’’ Vieira distinguished the foundation of the Portuguese reign from the Fifth Empire, to be led by Portugal, to be sure. At the same time, Christ ratified the Lusitanic monarchy and also proclaimed an empire for

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himself (‘‘for Me’’) in the person of Afonso Henriques and his descendants. The empire of Christ, fifth and last, would have as its temporal leader the Portuguese kings descended from Afonso I. In this sense, Vieira saw Ourique as a double foundation: for the existing monarchy, established in that moment and cemented with the coronation of the king, and for the empire that would be, to be led by the king’s descendants. From the Portuguese realm, as predicted in the countryside of Ourique, the empire would emerge in some future moment, and Vieira thought the time was now. The institution of the power of the Portuguese monarchy and of the future Fifth Empire comprised two distinct spheres that were linked together in the divine plan. Ourique contained two different moments: one close and present (the foundation of the realm) and the other distant and future (the establishment of the Fifth Empire). Both had been revealed and could now be seen. The final moment had arrived, just as Bandarra had said it would. Because of the peculiarities of prophetic time, the selection of Portugal at Ourique had to be a result of uniquely Portuguese characteristics. The Portuguese people were pious and saintly, just as would be the people of the Fifth Empire after the arrival of the ‘‘Son of Man’’ (as the angel told Daniel in his dreams). Portugal was a nation descended from Tubal and his sons, the ‘‘inheritors of the blessing and of the estate’’ of Jafet, son of Noah (Gen. 9). In Daniel, it seemed as if, at least according to Vieira’s reading, the Fifth Empire would arrive only after the defeat of Islam: yet among the Catholic nations, there was no greater enemy of Islam than the kings of Portugal. It was the Portuguese kings who had been chosen ‘‘to conquer so many and such new peoples,’’ and who had spread the faith to the newly discovered Indies. If temporal conquest proceeded in the service of spiritual conversion, there could be no better candidate than the Portuguese king, who always observed this principle. In Vieira’s view, Portugal would be the seat of the Fifth Empire because of its imperial expansion, which permitted the evangelization of the ‘‘foreign nations’’ as the empire’s ultimate objective. The Lusitanic monarchy was subordinated to the empire of Christ: and the Portuguese mission of evangelization centered implicitly and sometimes explicitly in the action of the Society of Jesus. According to Thomas Cohen, it was the missionary experience of Vieira among the Tamoios in Maranhao during the 1650s that defined his later prophetic writings.43 This centrality of the New World in Vieira’s plans

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(the fruit of his missionary experience) demanded a reevaluation of the Portuguese Empire, including its very organization. Vieira’s proposal subordinated the institutions of the church and empire to the realization of a divine design. In Cohen’s reading, it was the subordination of authority to the missionary experience that was one of the reasons—if not the principal one—for Vieira’s detention by the Holy Office. It was this that explained the antagonism directed against him by both the court and the Portuguese church (and perhaps even by members of his own order). For Vieira, the path to the Fifth Empire passed, necessarily and unequivocally, through the evangelical mission in the Americas, via the action of his own religious order. His time in the state of Gra˜o-Para´ and Maranha˜o—during which he wrote his epistle ‘‘Hopes of Portugal’’—was the basis for all that came later, during his confrontation with the inquisitors and his imprisonment during the decade of 1660s, in his project of the Fifth Empire. The Fifth Empire would not be constructed solely on the greatness of Portugal as demonstrated by their defeat of the Moors. Even though the Moors symbolized the Antichrist for many Christians—the very horn of the beast, in Daniel’s dream—the Reconquista was just a step along the road to the universal conversion that would subject humanity to Christ’s leadership and create a true Christian empire. As in ‘‘Sleeping Xavier,’’ the conquest by weapons (armas) would clear a path, but this temporal conquest was only in service of the conversion of souls (almas).44 Xavier, in his dream, indicated that the Portuguese conquests both depended on and must be subordinate to the catechizing mission.45 In this fashion, the Jesuit mission, both in the Orient and in the West Indies, served as an essential building block of the Fifth Empire. Although his main example was the ‘‘Apostle to the Orient’’ Francis Xavier, Vieira remained preoccupied by the New World, particularly in the Clavis prophetarum. Arnaldo do Espı´rito Santo has argued that the ‘‘grand dream [of Vieira was] to be in the New World what Francis Xavier was in the Orient.’’46 The New World—a space to be discovered, converted, and dominated—functioned as a model for Vieira’s worldwide project. The Fifth Empire was to be founded on universal conversion and on the expansion and consolidation of the Christian monarchy as a worldwide empire, steps that were advancing under the Jesuit mission, first in Asia, now in America, along with the expansion of Portuguese rule in those regions as well. Messianic interpretation of prophetic dreams predicted the establishment of a new realm, one that would carry forward the principles

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that governed Portugal and Christianity and perfect them via the conquest and conversion of the earth. Vieira understood the reading of dreams as a manifestation of the improvement that had already occurred, or, at least, as evidence of a still-dormant potential. In this sense, then, the prophetic dream did not occupy a privileged position in the work of Vieira and others of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries solely because of its role in the foundational narratives of the Portuguese monarchy and its imperial destiny. The prophetic dream denounced the transient aspects of the world and announced that the only Truth lay in following a divinely ordained plan. The effectiveness of dream interpretation and reinterpretation in the formulation of Vieira’s discourse about the Portuguese Empire was linked to the conception of the dream as a perfect metaphor for life. At the intersection of these two vectors—a conception of the world as a dreamed theater (waking life ‘‘as a dream’’) and the real power of prophetic dream narratives—it became possible for prophetic dreams to serve as foundations for the construction of the towering prophetic edifice that Vieira named his ‘‘altos castelos’’—his vision of the Fifth Empire.

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PART II Intercultural Encounter

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Chapter 6

Flying Like an Eagle Franciscan and Caddo Dreams and Visions carla gerona

When the Spanish marched into east Texas in the late 1600s, a large convoy of soldiers and priests brought horses, cattle, and trade goods; in addition, the missionaries came armed with their visions. Early on the Franciscans from the Colegio Aposto´lico de Propagande Fide (Apostolic College to Propagate the Faith) in Mexico who sought to found missions in the region wrote about the abundant rivers, flora, and fauna, describing east Texas as ‘‘more fertile than the land of Spain.’’ They also had high opinions of the Caddo Hasinais, or the people they mistakenly called the ‘‘Tejas.’’ One Franciscan optimistically noted that if the ‘‘evangelical ministers learn the language they will reap great fruit’’ from the ‘‘meetings where various tribes assemble.’’ Several decades later another Franciscan missionary wrote explicitly about the Hasinai visionary practices. To join the Caddo priesthood young initiates would ‘‘relate what they have dreamed,’’ turning their dreams into songs. The same Franciscan also described the priests’ own visionary epiphanies, many of which related to their travels. This suggests that during this period of Caddo-Spanish interaction both groups valued their visionary experiences, and raises the question of whether Spanish and Caddos could exchange their dreams and visions with each other.1 To explore this question, one must first examine the ways in which each group understood these experiences—a task fraught with difficulties. For one thing, it may be impossible to know the exact nature or even the truthfulness of their dreams and visions—all we can go by is what the historical records said, and try to understand their language for what might have

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been different phenomena that were sometimes conflated or left unexplained. This raises an even bigger issue: the Spaniards told their own story while the Caddos did not. Contemporaneous historical sources came solely from the perspective of Europeans, and in particular, from the Franciscan priests. Nonetheless, analyzing these Spanish texts can shed light on dreams and visions in this contact zone. The sources especially show how the priests came with a deep belief in the value of visionary experiences and a well-developed system to analyze and record them, one that accorded the most true experiences to themselves. But Franciscan sources also show that the Spanish understood that indigenous Americans likewise turned to their dreams and visions for guidance and held their visionaries in high esteem.2 This essay follows European and indigenous visionaries and their visions as they traveled their worlds: Spain, New Spain, Texas, and Indian Territory. It locates the place of dreams and visions in a specific moment of history: the larger post-Columbian exchange of peoples, goods, and ideas, especially between the Franciscans and the Caddos. When they first met, both groups valued their dreams and visions for the powerful knowledge they produced, and both recognized that exchanging these experiences might provide an important means of communication. Nonetheless, in the end, they found it difficult to agree on common meanings.

From Spain to New Spain Even as Spain entered the age of the Counter-Reformation, early modern Spaniards continued to place great value on their dreams and visions. Thus a twenty-one year-old laywoman from Madrid, Lucrecia de Leo´n, could claim to have significant dreams, and she had no shortage of people with whom to discuss them. Lucrecia confided hundreds of dreams to family and friends and consulted different experts to help her interpret them. Her mother encouraged what she considered God-sent dreams, and Lucrecia conferred with the local beatas (pious women) who devoted themselves to Christ as well as a morisca (Moorish) boarder who understood Arabic prophetic traditions. She also shared her quixotic dreams with a former governor of Yucatan who studied astrology and a number of street prophets who criticized King Philip II and Spain. Most detrimentally to Lucrecia’s spiritual career, she reported them to her religious confessors, including a canon connected to the cathedral of Toledo and the head of Madrid’s Franciscan

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convents. Because these last two believed in the prophetic nature of Lucrecia de Leo´n’s dreams, they recorded them and eventually drew the attention of the Inquisition, which led to the visionary’s trial and incarceration. According to Richard L. Kagan, early modern ‘‘female seers were more likely to be burned at the stake than elevated to sainthood.’’ Yet as Kagan also notes, women’s spiritual experiences provided ‘‘an important means to exercise autonomy and authority.’’ Dreamers and visionaries in fact found many allies—including people with Christian training, Islamic backgrounds, and American experiences.3 For hundreds of years Spaniards had venerated saints, some biblical and others local, most of whom counted dreams or visions among their spiritual accomplishments. To be sure, early moderns increasingly thought of reason and prophecy in bifurcated ways, and privileged the former over the latter. But to deny the religious nature of all dreams and visions would have challenged the older tradition, thus even the Holy Office of the Inquisition did not punish all visionaries. Instead of banning dreams and visions, the inquisitors (and other religious bureaucracies) sought to control them, continuing to elevate some as spiritual, prophetic, and meaningful. Wellknown and celebrated seekers such as Teresa de A´vila gained notoriety following extraordinary visionary experiences. But the reform-minded Teresa worked within the hierarchical structures of the church. Her directions on how to run a convent even warned against assigning too much significance to dreams, and when the Inquisition examined Teresa’s activities, it dropped any charges against her. During the seventeenth century, myriad other visionaries besides Teresa de A´vila and Lucrecia de Leo´n would continue to use their dreams and visions as a way to explore and explain their world.4 Dreams and visions in fact guided many Spanish conquistadores. For centuries everywhere Spaniards went they took as their patron and guide Santiago, Saint James the Apostle. According to a variety of accounts that cannot be verified but are still widely believed, during his own lifetime Santiago went to the farthest reaches of the world—at that moment Spain—to preach the Christian message. In Zaragoza, Santiago beheld the Virgin Mary, though she lived in the Holy Land. She left a pillar and an image of herself and baby Jesus, instructing Santiago to establish a church at the site. When Santiago returned to Jerusalem he was beheaded, but a few days later his followers claimed to uncover his intact body and brought him to northwestern Spain for burial. Although the grave site had been

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forgotten for hundreds of years, a hermit later rediscovered Santiago’s tomb when angels and a beam of light led him to the spot that became Santiago de Compostela.5 Santiago would continue to favor Spaniards with his presence, first during the Reconquista and later in America. When a much larger Moorish army seemed certain to defeat the Spaniards at Clavijo in 844, Santiago came to their king in a dream. Santiago urged him to fight on, promising to aid the Catholic soldiers; the following day Santiago appeared on a large white horse and slew sixty thousand men, or so it was told. From then on Spanish soldiers would shout ‘‘Santiago’’ as they charged into battle. According to historian Marc Simmons, the saint was said to have intervened in at least thirteen well-documented American cases. Santiago’s cult and ongoing appearances continued to inspire travelers, pilgrims, soldiers, missionaries, colonists, and even indigenous Americans. When an Otomi cacique and Christian convert fought the Chichimeca in 1531, the sky darkened and everyone marveled at the red and white cross in the sky. Both sides could also see the image of Santiago and stopped fighting. They set up a cross on the spot and founded the city of Quere´taro in Mexico, where the Franciscans would establish their first apostolic college. Santiago made other appearances throughout the northern borderlands. According to Spanish records, the Acoma saw him and the Virgin Mary when the Spaniards penetrated their natural fortress and the Tarahamura credited Santiago with forming the Milky Way with pinole so they would not get lost. Like the even more famous vision in which the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to Diego, the degree to which the Santiago sightings in the New World were indigenous rather than Spanish productions is uncertain. But the point remains that the Catholic theologians who recorded these events responded when Native Americans reported dreams and visions that matched their own narratives. Even Indians could see visions—or at least Santiago.6 Franciscans played a crucial role in the colonization of America. Priests and brothers joined the earliest conquistas, overseeing the burning and destruction of indigenous records and iconography. Others provided a check on Spanish exploitation, arguing that Spaniards should not enslave Indians. By the sixteenth century the Crown concluded that Indians and Spaniards should live in two separate side-by-side republics. This did not work, especially in the larger cities and mining communities. But the religious orders did gather together indigenous communities in more remote

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regions, and the Crown expected fathers to teach and discipline the unconverted and newly converted, while legal ‘‘protectors’’ defended their rights; New Spain’s Inquisition did not have jurisdiction over these subjects. Ideally, the religious orders would turn over their authority to ‘‘secular’’ parish priests following the successful conversion of Indians. In practice, the orders resisted the secularization that often led to diminished mission landholdings and broke down Indian communities. By the 1600s, however, the Crown redoubled its secularization efforts, at which point the Franciscans looked to new missionary fields, especially in New Spain’s unconquered borderlands.7 This search for new converts coincided with a seventeenth-century spiritual revival in Spain. In the small Franciscan convent in Aragon that had once been her family’s home, a young Marı´a de A´greda had more than five hundred visionary experiences that transported her to places in North America where she preached to Indians. King Philip IV sought the famous nun’s spiritual advice, but she never did cross the ocean in her physical body. Like Mary when she appeared to Santiago in Zaragoza (an incident that Marı´a de A´greda would write about), the sister inhabited two places at once in order to bring Christ’s message to Indians. Over time, the Roman Inquisition questioned the validity of Marı´a de A´greda’s bilocations, and even Marı´a herself came to doubt them. But Spanish religious authorities, and especially the Franciscans, continued to insist on their truth. The fathers who founded Quere´taro and went to Texas faithfully read Marı´a de A´greda’s book The Mystical City of God, a supposed dictation from the Virgin Mary. They also followed Marı´a’s mystical practices, which included fasting, meditation, and self-torture, to induce visionary experiences. And they would look for evidence that Marı´a de A´greda had been to America.8 When a father in New Mexico, Alonso de Benavides, heard that a Spanish nun had been ‘‘miraculously transported . . . to preach our holy Catholic faith to those savage Indians’’ in 1629, he tried to ascertain if, where, and to whom Marı´a de A´greda had appeared. To Benavides an indigenous group known as the the Jumanos seemed the most likely candidates. Every summer they arrived from the Texas plains and pleaded with the fathers to come to their homelands. Although the Spaniards distrusted these seminomadic traders, Marı´a’s visions gave Benavides good reason to reevaluate their requests. When Benavides assembled the Jumanos at his mission and asked why they wanted priests, the group pointed to a picture of Mother Luisa, another visionary Franciscan nun, and said that ‘‘a woman in similar

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garb wanders among us . . . always preaching, but her face is not old like this, but young.’’ Benavides immediately thought of Marı´a de A´greda, and traveled to Spain to confirm his hunch. According to Benavides, Marı´a described New Mexico perfectly, and convinced him that she ‘‘miraculously’’ went ‘‘to preach to the nations of New Mexico . . . to the east.‘‘Benavides would soon publish Marı´a’s story in his Memorial of 1630. The Jumanos and Franciscans could agree on the vision because both wanted to expand their ties to each other. The Jumanos hoped access to Spanish goods and animals would allow them to maintain their supremacy as traders and offer defense against expansive Comanches. The Franciscans understood that the Jumanos could lead them to the Caddos, a powerful group of agriculturalists who controlled much of the Red River Valley in Texas.9 New apostolic colleges formed to further advance the mystical awakening that Marı´a de A´greda, Benavides, and others had begun. Novitiates and priests would divide their time between meditation, learning, and preaching, and when the fathers left the college convent they took their evangelical messages to both the converted and unconverted. In 1683 Father Antonio Llina´s de Jesus Marı´a formed the first college in Quere´taro, at the site of the miraculous trembling cross. Founding members initially came from Spain, but the college would later welcome Creole brothers. The convent soon exceeded capacity, and branched into several other friaries—including the apostolic college at the mining town of Zacatecas. Quere´taro and Zacatecas provided the main training ground for Texas missionaries, and eventually the Franciscans founded twenty-nine schools in America and Europe. Because the fathers sought to emulate the Christian apostles, many engaged in itinerant preaching on New Spain’s frontiers—saving sinners and converting groups across Mesoamerica, and beyond. To keep track of their many achievements a 1686 reform required the colleges to hire an archivist and historian, which resulted in the publication of several ‘‘cro´nicas.’’ Though other sources from the time rarely contained information about dreams and visions, these tomes combined biography and history and their pages detailed myriad ‘‘maravillas’’ (marvels) that described the fathers’ visionary experiences.10 One of these chronicles, Isidro Felix de Espinosa’s Cro´nica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide de la Nueva Espan˜a, recounted the life of Francisco Casan˜as de Jesu´s Marı´a, a Quere´taro founder who would participate in the first Texas mission—and an especially impressive visionary. As a child in Spain, Casan˜as entertained himself by building chapels out of cypress

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boughs in his parents’ garden. Recognizing Casan˜as’s qualities, the Franciscan Order allowed him to become a novice at the young age of fourteen and profess his vows at the earliest possible age of sixteen. Casan˜as thus ‘‘began to shine in the sky of religion like a new star’’ and joined a convent, where he preached ‘‘without affectation, with truth, plain reason and words.’’ When Llina´s sought friars for the apostolic college in Quere´taro, Casan˜as—only in his mid-twenties—eagerly volunteered.11

From Quere´taro to Central America Like most Quere´taro priests Casan˜as split his time between convent and road. At Quere´taro he stood out for seeking perfection by performing austere ascetic exercises, including ones that Marı´a de A´greda had developed. To emulate Christ’s suffering and welcome death, Casan˜as would stretch out on the floor at Quere´taro reciting his own last rites. Sometimes he stared at a skull for hours, looking into this ‘‘mirror’’ that reflected the ‘‘fate of all humanity.’’ He placed a pole in his cell so that a lay brother could tie him up and whip him, insisting that the torture ‘‘would give God great pleasure.’’ And Casan˜as painted the Stations of the Cross so that every day after morning prayers he could place a rough rope around his neck, wear a crown of thorns on his head, and carry a heavy crucifix to each station. Such agonizing activities often resulted in visionary experiences, as when the skull spoke harsh words to Casan˜as or when Christ on the road to Calvary appeared to him. Similar ‘‘maravillas’’ would follow Casan˜as outside the convent’s walls.12 Casan˜as evangelized in Mexico City, Veracruz, San Juan de Ulloa, Campeche, and Me´rida. He didn’t speak perfect Spanish, as indicated by a parishioner who poked fun at his Catalan accent (and shortly dropped dead). But Casan˜as nonetheless shared his enthusiasm, visionary experiences, and other miraculous events with a wide array of people. While concluding a service in the coastal town of Me´rida, Casan˜as saw a wooden Jesus come to life in his hands. The Christ figure unshackled his arms, raised a lance in one hand, and held two bunches of grapes in the other. The dark grapes, Casan˜as explained, symbolized the indigenous people (indios naturales), while the light ones represented the Spaniards (espan˜oles); both peoples had sinned against God. The lance in Christ’s other hand symbolized the punishment God had in store for them. With tears in his eyes,

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and using parables, Casan˜as entreated the congregation to beg for Christ’s intercession. At that same moment pirates sacked the neighboring town of Campeche, but inexplicably failed to loot Me´rida; God had responded to their prayers. Only Casan˜as saw the Christ figure, yet at that same moment other people throughout the region had witnessed saintly images perspiring in the churches.13 Casan˜as experienced many other miraculous visions during his travels. Returning from Campeche to Veracruz, two ship captains drew straws to see who would transport the priest because they thought he would bring them God’s favor. The captain who lost sank with his ship in a storm. Casan˜as was caught up in the same disturbance, and a sweeping wave threw him overboard, though he soon reappeared on deck. Casan˜as would later tell a brother that Saint Anthony had personally lifted him out of the seas and onto the boat. When he returned to the convent, Casan˜as’s injuries failed to heal. So he devoted nine days of prayer to Saint Anthony. One day when the clock struck noon, the sun shone especially bright, and Saint Anthony appeared, which instantly cured Casan˜as. The priest called an artist to paint what he had seen, and at the bottom wrote: ‘‘A True image of Saint Anthony of Padua.’’ From that moment, Casan˜as always carried the small linen that illustrated what he had seen. But the fathers did not call this a daydream, or even a vision—it was in their words ‘‘a True image.’’ Indeed, the fathers consistently described their own visionary experiences as true events. To counter the iconoclastic tendencies of the Protestant Reformation, Spanish theologians had argued that depictions of Jesus, Mary, and the saints transcended their inert physical being and embodied the spirit of their representations. In the same way, Spanish visions represented more than just stories or symbols; they described real encounters with Christ and the saints.14 Casan˜as, for one, allowed that even the worst lay sinners could have such true visions. On a stormy day outside Mexico City a rich merchant playing cards saw Casan˜as in a lightning bolt judging him. When Casan˜as showed up moments later, the merchant begged for an instant confession. Casan˜as initially refused because he had not conducted a proper examination of the man’s wrongdoings, but after the merchant described his vision Casan˜as accepted it as proof of his integrity. The father believed the merchant had already ‘‘discovered his sins’’ with the ‘‘eyes of his soul’’ and proceeded with the absolution. Perhaps Casan˜as favored this particular individual because of his wealth. In any case, when other people brought

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dreams and visions to the fathers’ attentions, the chroniclers favored visionary experiences that involved Christ, the saints, or the priests themselves.15 While God could bring real miracles through visionary experiences, the devil could also bring false dreams and visions—even to the fathers. While confessing a woman in Mexico City, Casan˜as listened to an endless recitation of her ‘‘monstrous’’ sins. Eventually he realized she was the devil in disguise who intended to slow down his work of saving souls, and after a confrontation she disappeared. The chronicler Espinosa used the words ‘‘espiritu maligno’’ (evil spirit) to describe this being, though it is unclear whether the devil appeared as a woman in a visionary experience, or whether the devil took over the body of an actual confessant. The friars in fact blamed the devil for many other occurrences—especially among recent converts and indigenous peoples.16 A possession episode in Quere´taro in 1691 offers a window into how Franciscans thought about such satanic encounters. Parishioner Francisca Mejı´a exhibited signs of possession when she lost her voice, fell to the ground, resisted any communion, insulted the Virgin Mary, and spat on the priests. The current father guardian, Pablo Sarmiento, thought this outrageous behavior ‘‘could not proceed from a natural cause and even less from any inner fiction of her own.’’ The devil had taken Mejı´a. Applying relics alleviated the torment, but only momentarily. At this point the father turned to exorcism, which included the administration of ‘‘holy drinks.’’ Mejı´a expelled avocado stones, river pebbles, a cow bone, and a small toad, and a snake crawled out of her ear. The medicine worked temporarily, but the devil returned within eight days. Equally troubling, two other women became similarly possessed.17 According to a father from the Carmelite Order, Manuel de Jesu´s Marı´a, the Franciscans had caused these imaginary demonic attacks. The fathers had come from Spain with little knowledge of the local population, frightening the ‘‘weak’’ but generally ‘‘good’’ souls into spending long hours at the Franciscan confessional obsessing about their sins. Manuel de Jesu´s Marı´a argued that the overzealous Franciscans confused the women so much that they invented demonic attacks. When another parishioner, Juana Reyes, expelled twenty needles in a blue bag and gave birth to a child, the Carmelite’s suspicions were confirmed. Looking back on this episode, historians might conclude that Reyes almost certainly applied folk and indigenous medicinal practices to induce a miscarriage, perhaps because, as the Carmelite suggested, the Franciscans put the fear of God into her. The

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Franciscans, however, continued to insist on Reyes’s honor and virtue. Franciscan Matheo Bonilla argued that one of the devils obtained the semen from humans and forced her to ingest it. He went so far as to say ‘‘it is as much a matter of faith to believe that the said women . . . are possessed by the devil as the most holy sacrament is present in the altar.’’ Demands for faith failed to convince the priests in the other orders, including Dominican Andre´s del Rosario, who hinted that the fathers had caused the pregnancies. After the Inquisition evaluated the case, it ordered the Franciscans to stop doing exorcisms, and charged Mejı´a, Reyes, and Father Bonilla with heresy. It did not, however, challenge the Franciscan belief that devils could make themselves visible. The fathers most closely involved in the witchcraft episodes did not go to east Texas, but they prayed, sang, and studied with those who did, and there is no doubt that the Texas missionaries also exorcised devils far away from the meddling reach of the Inquisition.18 Indeed, the friars who traveled all over New Spain confronted Satan wherever they went. Another chronicler, Juan Domingo Arricivita, wrote in great detail about the Texas missionary Antonio Margil de Jesu´s who spent over a decade evangelizing in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica where he fought many devil-inspired ‘‘conjurers,’’ ‘‘sorcerers,’’ ‘‘witches,’’ ‘‘hypocrites,’’ ‘‘impostors,’’ ‘‘diabolic ministers,’’ and ‘‘false priests’’—all under the ‘‘spell of the devil.’’ Fighting this ‘‘mortal enemy’’ required extraordinary struggles, and Margil proved a commanding opponent. His efforts began at the convent, where he and a brother would stay up most of the night reading lessons from the ‘‘Venerable Mother A´greda.’’ While lying on the floor for confession, Margil would step on his brother’s mouth during absolution, and then ‘‘for the space of three creeds.’’ They then repeated the process alternating positions over and over until morning. Hardened by such penance, Margil fought the devil in towns, homes, and forests, inspiring people to quit drinking, gambling, and dancing. Under his watch apostates returned to the church, and pagans converted to Christianity. The Franciscan chroniclers marveled at his ability to travel at incredible speed as he took confessions and delivered sermons, purifying the cities and countryside. Almost always on foot, and wearing nothing on his feet but his sandals, Margil made several trips from Quere´taro to Guatemala—over a thousand miles each way. When people asked him what route he had taken to arrive so quickly, the father replied: ‘‘I have my short cuts and God also helps me.’’ While on a journey to Costa Rica, Margil

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reappeared in Guatemala, prompting the people to proclaim that ‘‘his body must have been changed into a spirit in order to fly better.’’ When he traveled to Telica, an astounded official who left at the same time as Margil and arrived much later noted that the father seemed ‘‘to have come on an angel’s shoulders.’’ Another journey from Quere´taro to San Juan del Rı´o occurred so quickly that he ‘‘flew like a swift eagle.’’19 Margil’s biographers highlighted his ability to convert Indians who had ‘‘frequent visions and contacts with the devil.’’ Somewhere near Suchitepe´quez, Guatemala, Arricivita described an Indian priest ‘‘who was worse than a barbarian’’ as an example of what Margil faced. The Indian visionary had recounted several dreams to Margil including one in which twelve ‘‘captains of his art in Nicaragua’’ flew in the ‘‘forms of birds of prey and other animals’’ to damage the towns of Guatemala. Among these animals, he said, the cat endured a heavy beating with sticks and the toad suffered knife thrusts before returning to their homes. The visionary also claimed that a cloud whisked him away to ‘‘remote parts of the world’’—to ‘‘France and several times Spain.’’ There he saw ‘‘kings, wars, and many cities,’’ and described the incidents in ‘‘minute detail.’’ He did not, however, see the ‘‘holy pontiff’’ because he was always ‘‘covered with a radiance that looked like flames.’’ According to Arricivita, Margil converted this Indian dissembler.20 Why did the Indian visionary share his visions with a Spanish priest and did Margil believe him? All over Central America, Margil ran into what Arricivita called ‘‘New Christians’’—indigenous people who had been baptized but adopted their own variations of Catholic practices after the priests left. Some indigenous priests even styled themselves as ‘‘popes’’ and ‘‘bishops’’ and ‘‘through the work of the devil deceived the simple people with imaginary prophecies.’’ Perhaps the Indian visionary had hoped to increase his own spiritual capital after Margil’s near-certain departure. It is also possible that the Spanish priest initially encouraged the dreamer and believed in the veracity of the dreams. Whatever the case, Margil did not mention the incident in his contemporaneous letters. While Margil initially tried to work with indigenous spiritual leaders as he sought to convert and reconvert Central Americans, it did not take him long to conclude that indigenous priests should be separated from their communities in convents—or even prisons. By the time the chroniclers wrote their accounts, they expressed no doubt that the devil had inspired these dreams.21

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According to Arricivita, ‘‘Catholic theology laughs at such stories.’’ Citing Augustine, who reproved all ‘‘transformations narrated in ancient histories’’ as ‘‘fabulous,’’ ‘‘imaginary,’’ or ‘‘illusory,’’ Arricivita argued that ‘‘transmigrations or nocturnal flights are nothing but fantastic dreams, in which, because of the lowering of the mind, they think that they fly and attend their gatherings, or because of the devil, [who] lulls them to sleep, and suggests those fantastic representations, which they believe as realities of truth.’’ If ‘‘those who had flown from distant lands . . . exceed[ed] the swiftness of eagles to reach the place of their undoing,’’ Arricivita asked, why ‘‘could they not fly to avoid it and fly back to their homes?’’ He continued: ‘‘it is more probable that the devil should represent to the conjurer, in fancy only, his flights, the cities, people, and wars, which he had seen and attended rather than that by rising in a cloud he could ever see the incident of a war without being bothered.’’ The devil had thus disturbed the imagination, representing things ‘‘in a profound sleep and heavy lethargy that are conducive to fanaticism.’’ The Guatemalan’s visions were not only ‘‘unbelievable’’ but the result of a ‘‘diabolic illusion’’—a ‘‘perverted imagination, made so by the horrible impressions that the apparitions of the devil caused.’’ Thus the devils were real and the visions were false.22 From the fathers’ perspective it seemed perfectly reasonable that Marı´a de A´greda had come to America and that Margil could fly around Mesoamerica, but indigenous people could not get around as swift animals or travel to Europe on a cloud. Even before they went to Texas, Margil and the other Franciscans had been trying to take control of indigenous dreams and visions by attributing extraordinary dreams to God and indigenous ones to the devil. As Arricivita noted, shortly after saying that people could not transform themselves into animals, ‘‘alone . . . the Supreme Master of nature concedes absolute power to transform creatures when wise providence so decrees.’’23 Thus the priests defended what appear to us to be contradictions.

Texas Even though it had been fifty years since Marı´a de A´greda’s bilocations, and twenty-five years since her death, the Franciscans who went to Texas continued to look for evidence of her presence. Father Llina´s had treasured a letter that Benavides had written about Marı´a, and when he returned to

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Europe the founder of Quere´taro passed the letter on to Father Damia´n Massanet so he could continue the search. Massanet asserted that Benavides’s letter and Marı´a de A´greda’s preaching had inspired him to found a Nuevo Leo´n mission just south of Texas, and in a letter to the viceroy of New Spain the father also wrote that after Marı´a de A´greda ‘‘walked in the land of the Tejas Indians’’ she lamented that ‘‘our Lord suffers more for each soul lost to the lack of ministers.’’ It didn’t take long for Massanet to confirm Marı´a’s bilocation when he led the first group of Franciscans into east Texas in 1690.24 Massanet claimed that confirmation of the nun’s visitation proved the most noteworthy event of the entire journey. Shortly after distributing clothing among the Caddos, their caddi, or political leader, asked the priest for some blue baize to make a burial shroud for his mother. When Massanet inquired about his fondness for blue, the caddi replied that in times past they had been visited by a very beautiful woman who wore blue and that they wished to be like that woman. This had occurred before the caddi’s time, but his mother and other elders had seen her. Massanet concluded, ‘‘From this it is easily to be seen that they referred to the Madre Marı´a de Jesu´s de A´greda, who was frequently in those regions . . . her last visit having been made in 1631.’’ Massanet did not say whether he explained his interpretation to the Hasinais. As Juliana Barr has suggested, the Caddos were probably referencing their own origin accounts in which women created the world and introduced the Hasinais to agriculture. The Caddos would also tell the fathers a story about seven sisters who became the ‘‘Sanate’’ or the Pleiades. The Hasinais identified the sun, moon, stars, and other natural forces with people, and they believed that all the Hasinais would eventually come together again in a new world. Casan˜as noted that the Caddos continued to request blue cloth because they wanted to be like the sky. From a Caddo perspective, the request for a blue shroud probably modified burial practices while maintaining a connection to ancient traditions and beliefs. Indeed, archaeologists have found that the early Caddo covered some corpses with greenish-blue glauconite.25 This vision exchange provides a good example of a ‘‘creative misunderstanding’’ such as the ones Richard White famously described in The Middle Ground. The Spanish thought the Lady in Blue was Marı´a de A´greda, and perhaps the Caddos thought Marı´a de A´greda was their Lady in Blue. But in the end, it may be impossible to determine exactly what the Caddos thought about this Spanish vision. Had the Jumanos told the Caddos about

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Marı´a? Were the Caddos putting the Spaniards on? Did the Caddos think the Spanish had seen their deity? And did they initially understand that from the Spanish perspective the Spanish nun could not be an indigenous goddess? One thing is certain: the exchange of a vision accompanied an exchange of goods. The caddi obtained a cloth for spiritual purposes, one that confirmed Caddo hierarchies. The Spanish in turn gave away the cloth to further colonization and confirm Marı´a de A´greda’s appearance in Texas. Surely neither group understood the incident in the same way, but it could have greater meaning for both peoples because the common visionary experience facilitated a cultural and economic exchange.26 Lay Spaniards also wondered about Marı´a de A´greda. One night while a Caddo captain camped with the Spaniards, the soldiers sitting around the fire pointed to Massanet and asked the Caddo if he or his ancestors had ever seen a woman dressed in a robe like the father. The captain answered that he had not, but his relatives had. They too saw this as evidence that Marı´a de A´greda had been there. The Lady in Blue—in a new incarnation— would continue to live on in Texas. In nineteenth-century San Antonio, Tejanos (a mix of Spaniards, Mexicans, Africans, and indigenous Texans) still believed a woman in blue haunted the Alamo. She came out periodically to give the gift ‘‘of seeing to the heart of things.’’ Many people— Spanish and indigenous, religious and secular, past and present—could agree that a female made supernatural appearances in Texas, and no other dream or vision exchange received so much attention. But as in the case of Mesoamerica, Franciscans would continue to value their own visionary experiences over indigenous ones—at least in their written records.27 It may be that during the earliest years of contact, the fathers and the Caddos were more open to visionary exchanges than the records indicate. When Massanet and most of the Spaniards returned to Mexico, they left Casan˜as, Miguel Fontcuberta, and a few others in charge of maintaining the newly established churches. One day before leaving his mission to provide relief for the Caddos during a 1691 epidemic, Miguel Fontcuberta insisted on receiving last rites. Fontcuberta never returned, and died somewhere in the ‘‘desert’’ (or more accurately east Texas’s piney woods). When the fathers tried to retrieve the body to give him a proper burial, they could not find it. Then one day the mystery was solved: ‘‘the Man [Christ] manifested to a soul who in an intellectual vision saw a light that left the earth and rose to the sky, like a thin rod, and it was manifested to this person that in that burial was the body of a blessed one, signaling the

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Venerable Father Fray Miguel by his name.’’ Was this ‘‘intellectual vision’’ a daydream, a night dream, an induced hallucination, or a ruse? It is impossible to know—but the story certainly resembles that of the hermit who found Santiago’s grave in Spain hundreds of years earlier. The chronicles did not identify the visionary who discovered Fontcuberta’s body, merely referring to the individual as ‘‘a soul’’ and ‘‘this person.’’ Such anonymity and the fact that hardly any Spaniards lived in Texas at the time of Fontcuberta’s death suggests the intriguing possibility that a Hasinai had this vision. But if so, the Franciscans chose not to disclose this in their later writings about the vision.28 During this first year of missionary activity, Casan˜as could cut across space—much like Margil did in Central America. One day while Casan˜as was making his rounds between different Caddo towns, an angelic old man appeared to him. This figure (Christ in disguise) instructed Casan˜as to leave his mule in an oak grove, and spirited him to the distant and populous lands in the north and east; the Duzchuni or Pelones about 150 miles away and the Cainigua about 300 miles away. According to Casan˜as, five thousand ‘‘infidels’’ came to meet him, and thanks to Christ he could speak the foreign language clearly, providing the light they needed for salvation (and implying Casan˜as enjoyed powers like the apostles’). The Cainigua captain (capitan) urged Casan˜as to stay, but instead the father left the sash of his robe as evidence that he had been there and would return. Casan˜as had hoped to continue beyond, but the Cainigua warned the priest that he would be killed. This time instead of whisking him away, the angelic figure returned Casan˜as to the grove and his mule. Casan˜as had been gone from the mission for eight days, though his supposed travels should have taken much longer. Who really knows what happened in those eight days, but perhaps the Cainigua came to Casan˜as rather than the other way around. Did Casan˜as share this visionary experience with the ‘‘Tejas’’ living near the mission? It seems likely.29 Thanks to years of experience in New Spain, Spanish missionaries understood that to convert the Caddos they would have to compete with indigenous religious specialists and visionaries—and that meant promoting their own spiritual powers and visions. The early records show the fathers trying to gain control of Caddo spiritual worlds. Thus when a conna (a Caddo priest) tried to prevent Casan˜as from baptizing a woman, Casan˜as responded by ‘‘hurling an exorcism’’ at him and ‘‘the conna ran away.’’ Together this conna and another tried to harm Casan˜as with a ceremony

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in which they threw fat and tobacco into a fire. Casan˜as responded with another exorcism in front of more than thirty people. When the second conna ran away and died, Casan˜as remarked, the other connas feared him and gave him a ‘‘free path,’’ and the sick allowed themselves ‘‘to have water applied.’’ If some Caddos accepted baptism, it was because the Catholic priests convinced them they had special spiritual powers. When a Hasinai died, survivors would place goods, food, and water by the body. Caddo priests consoled the dead, talked to their god, and sang. Though Casan˜as did not believe their claims that they saw the deceased eating the food and talked to them, Casan˜as asked the Caddo priests if he could talk to God and help them get to heaven, which they agreed he could do.30 As in Mesoamerica the Franciscans did not speak highly of Hasinai visionaries who turned to their dreams and visions in multiple settings. The fathers discredited the ‘‘plague’’ or ‘‘hydra-head’’ of ‘‘medicine men’’ and ‘‘quacks’’ who drew on a mixture of ‘‘superstition,’’ ‘‘lies,’’ ‘‘trickery,’’ and ‘‘witchcraft.’’ Father Espinosa described an initiation ceremony whereby the young men who hoped to become doctors would gather together with the recognized elders and medicine men, or in Espinosa’s words, the ‘‘old quacks’’ (mata-sanos). These elders would offer drinks and tobacco to the young men, who would lose their senses, make faces, and fall to the ground and ‘‘remain senseless or pretending to be’’ for twenty-four hours. When the young men came back they related ‘‘what they dreamed or whatever their imagination suggests.’’ Participants reported their ‘‘souls’’ had been ‘‘far from them,’’ and after returning they would begin their individual ‘‘songs.’’ Espinosa complained that the ‘‘discordant music continue[d] for eight days.’’ In a February ceremony, the elders would dance with an eagle feather that flew up to the sky to speak with their god, or capitan. When an elder returned he gave the prognostication for the rest of the year. Before going to war all the captains would meet and give drinks to the most valiant warrior. After ‘‘losing’’ or ‘‘pretending to lose’’ his sense, the warrior would declare what he saw and whether they were prepared to fight. The warriors did the same thing when they went on the road. The Caddos looked up to all these visionary leaders, who according to Espinosa acted as the ‘‘oracle of all their deceptions.’’ Caddo visionaries took on the most important leadership roles as doctors, captains, and warriors, and they used dreams and visions to heal the population and lead it into the future.31 Given the fact that the Spanish fathers came with their own visionary experiences and did not value Caddo ones, what did the Hasinais think of

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the Spanish visionaries? During the 1691 epidemic, Casan˜as estimated that three thousand Hasinais and their allies died. Some of the Hasinais accused the priests of bringing on the sickness, an explanation that made perfect sense in the Caddo worldview. According to Espinosa, a conna convinced the Caddos that sicknesses ‘‘have origins in witchcraft committed by the neighboring Bidais, Ais, or Yacdaos, who are full of quacks.’’ Those other villages had ‘‘evil or witches’’ and they would ‘‘come secretly or send from their lands a disease they call aguain.’’ The cause was a sharp thing or point like an arrow shot by ‘‘one they call texino, and we call the devil, and it is fired at the sick person.’’ To remove the arrow that ‘‘they say is like a thick needle of a white color, and small’’ they ‘‘have dances, chants, and offerings.’’ Thus, to cure Bidais-caused diseases the Caddos called on Bidais medicine men who came ‘‘in the form of an owl, and they remove the invasion as if they had achieved a victory.’’ The Hasinais must have thought of the Spanish in the same way: visionaries who could cause and cure disease and misfortune; and Franciscan stories and actions that attributed visions to God or the devil would have only supported this view.32 Unlike the central Texas nations around San Antonio, the Hasinais of east Texas refused to assemble in Spanish towns. The first group of missionaries stayed for only a few years, but about twenty years later a second wave of Franciscans that included Margil reestablished the missionary presence, and three missions (Nacogdoches, Ais, and Los Adaes) would endure into the 1760s. If the Hasinai and other Caddo villages did not live in these missions, the fathers nonetheless maintained their connections to the indigenous rancherias. Though they certainly did not entirely displace the Hasinai religious specialists and spiritual doctors, they established their own foothold in Texas and continued to promote their own visionary activities. Margil told the Caddos that his intercessions made the rains come, a vision guided him to ground water on a dry bed, and he exhibited special powers over animals as when he charmed a deadly snake. Spanish Franciscans continued to act as Caddo connas—and they likely shared many more dreams and visions with the Caddos, some from the Bible, some from the stories of saints, and some from their own experiences. The Hasinais too must have communicated other visionary experiences, especially during the early days, yet the Spanish validated only one detailed Caddo-Spanish exchange in their writings—the one about Marı´a de A´greda.33 The Spanish records contain a much less friendly series of dreams and visions among the Lipan-Apaches, a group that almost certainly absorbed

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some of the Jumanos who had first seen a woman who looked like the Franciscan visionary, Mother Louisa, and initiated the search for Maria de A´greda in America. In the 1760s a Lipan-Apache chief, El Lumen, went to the San Lorenzo Texas mission with his followers. But while on a hunt he dreamed that the fathers and soldiers had left the mission with their women, children, and horses. El Lumen cut the trip short and found his family safe at the mission. Nonetheless, he and his followers abandoned San Lorenzo certain that the Spanish ‘‘were gathering them in the mission to kill them deceitfully.’’ Other Lipan-Apaches at the mission continued to see a prophet who appeared in different forms, sometimes as an old man and sometimes as a young woman. This prophet would always appear in battle, be killed, and reappear, and the prophet always had the same message: he urged the Lipan-Apaches to ‘‘never be baptized’’ and to hold ‘‘a continuous war’’ with ‘‘the Spaniards’’ and ‘‘neighboring nations’’ (which would have included the Caddo). Like the Spanish priests, the LipanApaches used a vision to decide where to go and what to do—and also to resist the missionaries. The Spanish did not record any similar threatening Caddo dreams or visions. Perhaps Caddos did not have any similar dreams, perhaps the Spanish did not record them, or perhaps the Caddos did not share them. Each indigenous nation had unique relations with the Spanish in Texas and dream exchanges reflected these unique relations.34 Our information about the Caddos during the colonial period comes filtered through European sources, and overall the European theologians were moving to make it increasingly difficult for anyone to lay claim to true visionary experiences. It is difficult to know the exact phenomenological character of the visions the Spanish Franciscans described, but they never called them dreams. Indeed, most seem to have taken place while the visionary was awake—often induced by ascetic practices or other privations. Despite their intensive searches for such visionary experiences, Franciscan fathers faced increasing skepticism from Rome, the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Mexico, the other orders, and their less evangelical brothers. When Arricivita wrote about the missionaries, he cautiously noted that his cro´nica related ‘‘some rare or admirable things, visions or events’’ that were ‘‘extraordinary or supernatural,’’ but he did not ‘‘attempt to show that there are miracles in them.’’ Arricivita did not even dare to designate Margil’s resuscitation of a boy as miraculous; instead he wrote that ‘‘in order to establish whether the stated cure had been natural or supernatural, one should consult learned men and physicians who should decide the matter

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in the diligent and learned manner with [which] the Church proceeds in ascertaining these cases.’’ Only the Vatican could determine if the fathers’ visionary abilities constituted miracles. But there is no doubt that the Franciscans thought so; shortly after Margil’s death the fathers began to collect stories so they could nominate him for beatification and sainthood. In the process, the fathers largely denigrated similar Caddo experiences, describing most of them as Satanic ‘‘dreams.’’ The Franciscans implicitly separated dreams and visions by assigning dreams to Indians and visions to the missionaries. So despite their own quests for visionary experiences they took a step toward the eventual bifurcation of dreams and reason. Ultimately Franciscan encounters with indigenous people who would not be controlled by the Catholic Church helped the fathers reject the idea that all people could have spiritual dreams.35

Indian Territory Although the Caddos did not pen their ideas about dreams and visions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they did pass on their practices and songs and continued to value the experiences they called ‘‘t’ot’aya’’ or trance. After Mexico lost its claims to Texas following the Anglo revolt and the Mexican-American War in the nineteenth century, most Hasinais moved to Indian Territory, where they endured years of displacement, poverty, and attacks on their traditional culture. But that did not stop them from dreaming, as we can see in three ethnographic studies from the reservation period. In 1890 ethnologist James Mooney investigated the Caddo variation of the Ghost Dance and showed that Caddo singers continued to create new songs based on their visions. One theme in the Ghost Dance songs involved the return of the long-forgotten eagle feather. Another involved the future gathering of all the Caddo past and present. Thus in a trance vision a woman named Nyu’taa saw ‘‘a large company approaching, led by a man who told her he was the Father and that he was coming because he wished to see all his children.’’ In another trance vision Nyu’taa ‘‘saw a spirit woman painted with blue stripes on her forehead and a crow on her chin, who told her that she was her sister, the Evening Star.’’ Was this a tie to the Lady in Blue? The blue paint, according to Mooney, referred to the sacred paint used in the Ghost Dance, ‘‘which is believed to confer

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health and power to see visions.’’ Nyu’taa turned these visionary experiences into songs. One time in the middle of singing Nyu’taa ‘‘suddenly cried out and went into a spasm of trembling and crying lasting some minutes.’’ Spanish missionaries would have certainly recognized these symptoms—and attributed them to Satan.36 Wing (also known as Tsa’Bisu or Dr. Gerrin) was a Caddo medicine doctor who shared information about dreaming with anthropologist George Dorsey in the early 1900s. According to Wing the first medicine men had received their gifts in dreams. While men hunted alone in the forest or plains ‘‘animals came to them and spoke to them in dreams and revealed their secrets to them.’’ The dreamer would go home and remain in silence for several days ‘‘thinking only of the things that had been revealed to him.’’ After this long period of contemplation, he would call his friends and the old men of the tribe to see if they ‘‘would be taught his secrets.’’ If they agreed the young man with the power would teach them ‘‘his songs and dances.’’ Wing told Dorsey that the Caddos recognized two kinds of ‘‘medicine men.’’ One kind had the ‘‘power to doctor and heal the sick.’’ The others were even more powerful because they could ‘‘bewitch people who are afar off, and thus make them lose their minds and not know what they are doing.’’ Only a few people received this power from forces such as the sun and moon or some ferocious animals. At a time when Western doctors still did not fully understand epidemiology, the Caddos continued to think dreams were powerful and that visionaries are healers.37 A few decades later, Elsie Clews Parsons interviewed the next generation of Caddo—the children and grandchildren of Nyu’taa and Wing. One of her informants—White Moon—described Wing’s deathbed dream. The doctor saw a man with thorns on his face (perhaps Jesus). The ‘‘one with thorns’’ showed Wing who had caused the recent epidemic among the Caddos—and they included ‘‘important men.’’ One of the ‘‘good men’’ in the dream would take control of the Ghost Dance and singing grounds. In White Moon’s description of the Ghost Dance, he told Parsons that one man had ‘‘the habit of climbing the pole to induce [a] trance.’’ Next a dancer would leave the circle and fall down, whereupon he would ‘‘dream of a song or in his dream will hear somebody singing, he wakes up, he remembers the song.’’ When the dancer returned from his dream he would sing his song by the pole. White Moon told Parsons that he thought the Ghost Dance ‘‘feature’’ was passing: no one urged the dancers on, they no longer used the special paint to induce dreams, and in 1921 ‘‘not a single

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trance occurred.’’ He also noted that ‘‘nowadays White people take part in the Ghost dance celebration.’’ Her other informants, however, thought that the Ghost Dance might come back, and Parsons described how the Caddos continued to seek visionary experiences in the peyote cult. But Parsons did not get as much information about Caddo spirituality as she hoped. When she asked a different informant to take her to the Caddo doctors he responded that ‘‘if we looked for the doctors the witches might be around.’’ Another said that ‘‘witches don’t like to be questioned. They might kill you. We were not allowed to ask questions about them.’’ Although Caddo people continued to privilege dreams and visions, Parsons’s research also shows that in the 1920s, the Caddos did not want to share their dreams. Perhaps they might have similarly withheld their powerful dreams from the Franciscans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.38

Conclusion When it came to dreams and visions the Franciscans and Caddos had much in common. Each group valued visionary experiences and developed a way to recognize special visionaries, whether they called them priests or connas. Both kinds of visionary specialist sought to induce visions, in the case of the Franciscans through penitential practices and prayer, in the case of Caddos through hallucinogenic substances and music. Both groups found great inspiration in their dreams and visions—and associated them with travel. Both groups also identified some dreams and visions with witches or devils. With so many similarities one might think that the Caddos and the Franciscans would have shared many more dreams and visions, and perhaps they did off the record. But the Franciscans only recorded a few exchanges, and they only validated one. Why didn’t they write about more? In some ways, Franciscans and Hasinais may have had too much in common. It wasn’t that the Franciscans did not believe in visionary experiences while the Caddos did. Instead, neither group wanted to let go of their power to interpret dreams and visions: to fly around like eagles. But there was one crucial difference between the two groups. While many people could look to visionary dreams among the Caddos, the Franciscans increasingly sought to limit access to near-miraculous experiences to the friars. Shortly after returning from Texas, Margil interviewed an apostate priestess in Mexico. Margil believed her when she said the ‘‘witches’’ of New Spain, such as

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herself, kept ‘‘in communication’’ with the ‘‘witches’’ of ‘‘Spain, Italy, France, England, the Indies, and as far away as the negroes of Guinea.’’ But he blamed her spurious interactions on the devil’s tricks.39 To better understand the exchanges of dreams and visions among the Franciscans and Caddos this essay has explored the historical context that shaped the views of the Franciscan fathers who made their way to Texas and left most of the records about this contact zone. I could not do this for the Caddos because they did not write their own story. But looking beyond the first period of contact allows us to connect the Spanish period to the reservation period and suggests that the Caddos successfully preserved many of their dream practices, especially the ceremonies that turned dreams and visions into songs—even if they incorporated Christian imagery or composed new lyrics over the years. Caddo dreamers would continue to fly and would not be colonized in the way that the Franciscans wanted.

Chapter 7

Dream-Visions and Divine Truth in Early Modern Hispanic America andrew redden

You must not give [any] credit to dreams, nor ask people to tell them to you, because dreams are [simply] vanity. —‘‘Sermon XIX, de los mandamientos’’ (1585) You should know, my friend, that in ancient times Our Lord God revealed his secrets through dreams, as he did with King Abimelech, in the vision of Jacob’s ladder, [and] with Gideon in the battle against the Midianites. —Francisco Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n

The early modern Hispanic world was one in which the boundaries between reality, imagination, and delusion frequently blurred, sometimes imperceptibly.1 The apparently active presence of spiritual entities made it harder to discern these boundaries and so, while many in Hispano-American society sought to give meaning to their dreams in order to better understand and negotiate the trials of everyday life, religious authorities legislated against dream interpretation for fear that this could cause and spread religious error. The consequences of such errors were not considered to be merely academic, rather they represented real danger to those who might be influenced by them. For example, Pedro Ciruelo—in his influential sixteenth-century treatise against superstition and sorcery—summarized this concern by writing that the vanity of dream divination lay in the fact there was never any certainty to the predictions the devil imparted to the ‘‘necromancer’’ and, most

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important, ‘‘the man becomes blinded and deceived by the devil: because he [the devil] treats him [the man] as if he were his slave. And God permits this because the man, due to his sins, deserves it.’’2 In this case, of course, Ciruelo was not condemning those who dream, rather those who actively interpret dreams in order to predict the future. Together with a broader belief that dreams might contain fundamental and revelatory truths unregulated by church authority and tradition, dream divining was considered particularly dangerous because it was that activity which implied some sort of pact between the diviner and the devil. Simply put, a dream could not be considered to reveal what was unknown unless a preternatural or supernatural power was involved; the chances of that power being of divine origin were considered relatively slim by church authorities. Thus authoritative pronouncements against dream interpretation, such as that found in ‘‘Sermon XIX’’ of the Tercero Catechismo in the epigraph, were perceived to be addressing a potentially serious problem. If we turn now to Hispanic America, Catholic religious authorities might have dismissed dreams that closely fitted autochthonous cultural paradigms as ‘‘vanities’’ or diabolical delusion, yet such rejection was never so simple with regard to those dreams that bridged cultures or that closely conformed to accepted Catholic tropes. As Francisco Nu´n˜ez informed his Mapuche friend (quoted in the epigraph) in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, scripture held that God had granted revelations by way of dreams; there was then, an approved tradition of revealed truth within dream interpretation—the question was how to understand it.3 This chapter examines a selection of case studies involving dreams, dream-visions, and dream interpretation from late sixteenth- to eighteenthcentury Hispanic America. For the purposes of this essay, the significance of these cases lies in their utility as historical sources, for the imagery in indigenous dreams and the way they were interpreted (and, significantly, the way they were reported as having been interpreted) can give us an insight into the understandings of the time and place. This is true especially for those moments when cultural meanings might be expected to have shifted as indigenous dreamscapes were affected by the intervention of priests and confessors—in particular, the Jesuits—engaged in the process of conversion of indigenous Americans to Christianity. Indeed, the process of conversion provides the frame in which the dream-visions to be discussed below were and could be analyzed. While dreams and their meaning are arguably entirely personal and therefore subjective (making it more

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difficult for historians to gauge their historical utility), it is worth considering that dream imagery and the interpretation of this imagery are always dependent on overarching cultural constructs that enable the dreamers and their immediate community to give meaning to the signs and symbols visualized.4 As Michael Brown points out in his essay ‘‘Ropes of Sand,’’ the very act of remembering and retelling a dream is a cultural process.5 When those cultural processes are themselves affected by others (such as conversion to Christianity), then one can note a range of conflicting responses. In his study of early modern Jesuit-Chinese dream-visions, for example, Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia notes that while dreams may be a universal phenomenon, they are not remembered or retold in the same way. In other words, he says, ‘‘dreams may reflect a universal mental grammar and yet utter culturally specific discourses.’’6 Herein lies the value of dreams within history, as those that have been recorded in contemporary documents and chronicles can (with all the necessary interpretative caution) provide us with additional information about the cultural interaction taking place during the period and in the region under study: their remembrance, retelling, and subsequent documentation layered the dreams with imagery and cultural meanings understood by the dreamer, listeners, and writers.

Illicit Dreaming, Illicit Interpretations—A Paradox The point of departure for this study of dream-visions in early modern Hispanic America will be the apparent paradox suggested by the epigraphs: on the one hand, many Europeans asserted that dreams should not be considered sources of truth while, on the other, they accepted that there was a long tradition of divine truths having been revealed in dreams. Thus there was a condemnation of the (indigenous) practice of remembering and interpreting dreams (primarily for the purpose of divination) in an officially approved collection of sermons published in 1585, even while dream interpretation by individuals (including Catholic missionaries) continued to be used to understand the surrounding world and make sense of competing spiritual demands. The case studies analyzed in this essay draw out this process of intellectual negotiation and compromise as the individual dreamers, and those who listened to and recorded their dreams, attempted to reconcile these seemingly opposing perspectives.

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According to Michael Brown, such use of dream interpretation ‘‘in stratified societies . . . become[s] a subversive force associated with social protest and messianic movements.’’7 This proposition can certainly be supported, when applied to Hispanic society during the early modern period, by referring to numerous case studies in which the Inquisition prosecuted individuals and groups of visionaries.8 Similarly, Bruce Mannheim corroborates this understanding of dreams as being potentially subversive with specific reference to the early modern Hispano-Andean world in his essay ‘‘A Semiotic of Andean Dreams.’’9 A section of his analysis draws from a brief guide to Andean dream signs found in Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s early seventeenth-century manuscript, the Primer nueva coro´nica y buen gobierno, and Mannheim notes that the majority of signs have been interpreted negatively, as doom laden or representative of ill fortune, especially in comparison to the same signs understood from a modern-day Andean perspective.10 A key reference point for Mannheim (and, presumably, also Guaman Poma de Ayala) is the abovementioned 1585 Tercero Catechismo.11 The catechism and collection of sermons came out of the Third Council of Lima, held in 1583, and were written in what were considered to be the three principal languages of the Andes at the time—Spanish, Quechua, and Aymara—in order to facilitate the dissemination throughout the region of a Catholicism that more closely conformed to the Tridentine Profession of Faith, the conciliar reforms, and the Tridentine Catechism.12 Mannheim translates the Quechua proscription of dream interpretation as follows: ‘‘Don’t be keeping dreams: ‘I dreamt this or that, why did I dream it?’ Don’t ask: dreams are just worthless and not to be kept.’’13 Frank Salomon refines the translation by suggesting that the first phrase, ‘‘Ama moscoyta yupaychanquichicchu,’’ can be rendered more literally as ‘‘don’t make dreams matters of account’’ or ‘‘of value,’’ which in fact brings the Quechua version much closer to the Spanish, ‘‘No aveis de dar credito a los suen˜os’’ (you mustn’t give [any] credit to dreams).14 Tacit recognition of this official censure of dream interpretation appears very clearly in the Andean noble Don Cristo´bal Choque Casa’s dream sequence described in the Huarochirı´ Manuscript of the first decade of seventeenth-century Peru.15 The title of the sequence reads: ‘‘Although a Dream Is Not Valid, We Shall Speak About That Demon’s Frightful Deeds and Also About the Way in Which Don Cristo´bal Defeated Him.’’16 The

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paradox here is self-evident; the anonymous author(s) knew about the prohibition on dream interpretation but disregarded it with the certainty of those who knew that the dream serves a legitimate pedagogical or discursive purpose. The dream was documented in the context of a conflict between pro-Christian and pro-Andean religious factions within the community of Huarochirı´. The Christians, including Cristo´bal Choque Casa, aided the priest Francisco de Avila in his attempt to extirpate Andean religious practices from the region and almost certainly collaborated in the composition of the manuscript. The dream sequence then was a case in which a supposedly pious (pro-Christian) individual defeated a demon in the guise of an indigenous deity or huaca, and not to publicize this would have been counterproductive—prohibition of dream interpretation notwithstanding.17 The problem for the protagonists lay in the need to prioritize the demonization of the local huaca cult over the use of dream interpretation to understand the present and divine the future. The choice of which to more severely criticize lay in the relative harm that both practices were perceived to cause. Both were considered category errors, in that power and meaning were attributed to entities that Catholicism believed had none. Both, therefore, were believed idolatrous in a generic sense, yet the former was much more serious, involving direct worship or veneration of an entity that was not (the Hispano-Catholic) God whereas the latter was more often merely considered superstitious and thereby only indirectly linked to idolatrous practices. The strategy of those who compiled the Huarochirı´ Manuscript was to use dream interpretation to demonstrate the weakness of the local deity when faced with the power of the Christian faith. Chapter 20 of the manuscript thus describes a confrontation between Don Cristo´bal and the huaca Llocllay Huancupa while awake. Chapter 21, meanwhile, continues the antagonism by recounting a second confrontation that took place in the form of a dream sequence. In both cases, however, the confrontations were much less clear-cut than perhaps the pro-Christian faction would have liked. Despite the chapter titles describing how Don Cristo´bal defeated the huaca ‘‘demon’’ Llocllay Huancupa, and despite the final affirmation that ‘‘from that exact time on, right up to the present, he defeated various huacas in his dreams the same way,’’ both struggles, but especially that of the dream, tell the reader as much (perhaps more) about a conflict of conscience within Don Cristo´bal’s own mind than about any resounding victory of Tridentine Catholicism over traditional Andean religion.18 Salomon

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draws our attention to the repetitive nature of the conflict, that it ‘‘sounds like a circular process, repeated indefinitely,’’ which ‘‘gives an impression different from one of victory and conversion.’’19 Furthermore, he points out a detail that suggests Don Cristo´bal’s dreamed presence at the huaca shrine was less than innocent. He found himself within the compound of the shrine carrying a silver coin just as he was challenged by a member of the pro-Christian community standing outside.20 The implication, of course, is that in the dream sequence Don Cristo´bal appeared in the compound coin-in-hand ready to leave it as an offering to the huaca.21 In effect, it would appear that Don Cristo´bal was confronted time and again with crises of conscience due to his neglect of traditional indigenous religious practices.22 It is worthwhile bearing in mind, however, that whereas from a modern perspective we would understand these nuances as reflecting interior crises provoked by the ‘‘absolute demand of conversion’’—which in Salomon’s words ‘‘is what makes [them] nightmarish’’—from a contemporary Hispano-Andean perspective, such dream conflict also affirmed the early modern Catholic belief system. With specific regard to dreams, it had long been a part of the medieval Catholic tradition to believe that in sleep the devil could enter human bodies and move the humors in order to provoke visions and dreams that seemed real enough to cause confusion, doubt, and even delusion.23 For the pro-Christian faction of the Huarochirı´ community it would have been entirely plausible that the ‘‘demon’’ Llocllay Huancupa was invading the consciousness of Don Cristo´bal, thereby undermining his resolve to continue his rejection of worship in the manner of his ancestors. By the same token, it would have been equally plausible that such manifestations of demonic huaca power could be defeated by invocation of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints. In the waking visionary attack described in chapter 20 of the Huarochirı´ Manuscript, an extremely frightened Cristo´bal managed to cause Llocllay to retreat by such means.24 In the dream sequence, Cristo´bal confronted Llocllay with a defiant challenge that he could not ‘‘defeat my Lord Jesus Christ in whom I believe.’’25 The actual victory, however, was less certain. After this challenge someone (or some entity) threw an object at him or to him (either in anger or so that he might defend himself)—the protagonist is unclear on all these points—with which he was able to retreat through the door of the house. Don Cristo´bal escaped but ultimately he was the one who had to flee, making his claims of victory difficult to support.

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The difference between the two sequences (and the respective victories), then, can be understood by considering that in the first conflict Cristo´bal was attacked while awake. He had nowhere to escape to and could achieve victory only by beating off the attack through Christian invocations and prayers. In the second conflict, Don Cristobal found himself in a dream sequence that he believed was constructed by the demon Llocllay. This was Llocllay’s territory and Cristo´bal found himself in a relatively powerless situation, a factor that added to the nightmarish quality of the dream. Cristo´bal’s victory therefore lay in the mere fact that he was able to escape from the nightmare created by the demon-huaca Llocllay. In terms of indigenous Andean dream narratives, then, this escape was an important setback for the huaca and his faction and, despite the recognized official taboo, it was important to publicize this throughout the parish community. In fact, Bruce Mannheim argues from evidence based on Guaman Poma de Ayala’s text and contemporary anthropological fieldwork that Andean dream interpretation is and was based more clearly on semiotics in which symbolic images represent others quite unrelated.26 If this is the case, then Don Cristo´bal’s dream and others discussed below seem to fall much more within the European narrative paradigm, as, while there are symbolic images that can be interpreted in different ways, in the remembering, retelling, and documenting of the dreams, they have been overlaid with reasonably coherent narrative structures. With regard to Don Cristo´bal, here then was an Andean whose own dream interpretation was profoundly affected by conversion and the crisis of conscience that this caused. A further point to bear in mind when considering how Don Cristo´bal’s crises of conscience may well have reflected and affirmed early modern Catholicism (as opposed to undermining it) is that while stories of radical and definitive conversion were more spectacular and made for more edifying reading when included in the missionary reports sent to provincial authorities and even back to Rome, the more common understanding of conversion was that it was an ongoing process, that life itself was a continuing struggle to turn to God and avoid the snares and temptations of the devil. In the words of Ignatius Loyola: ‘‘This is the history. Here it will be to consider how Christ calls and desires all persons to come under his standard, and how Lucifer in opposition calls them under his.’’27 This movement toward Christ after hearing his call was ongoing. It was a long journey in which the path was strewn with obstacles and pitfalls made all the more treacherous by the devil’s propensity to ‘‘prowl around’’; ‘‘where

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he finds us most in need in regard to our eternal salvation, there he attacks and tries to take us.’’28

Dreams and Honest Desires Conversion, then, was more accurately considered a life process that involved hearing and following God’s call while refusing to listen to the seductive call of the devil, but this process could be interspersed with catalytic moments of visionary lucidity. This combination of process and visionary moment is reflected in the dream narrative apparently recounted to Francisco Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n by his Mapuche friend (later named Ignacio) during his captivity beyond the Spanish-Mapuche frontier in southern Chile.29 The twenty-one-year-old, Jesuit-educated Francisco had been captured during a battle in which the Spanish forces were soundly defeated, and had narrowly avoided being sacrificed because of the intervention of his new Mapuche master, a prominent cacique named Maulica´n.30 The traumatized Francisco was then sent south to spend his days in captivity with caciques who were friendly to Maulica´n and who could be trusted not to harm him. During this time he was befriended by numerous Mapuche families and became particular friends (as one might expect) with youths of a similar age. They shared their lives intimately: they ate and drank together, worked and rested together, even slept together. Most importantly, they shared their knowledge and their thoughts.31 Francisco, while in captivity, found a great deal of solace in teaching his Mapuche friends what he knew of the Catholic faith, about which—according to his memoirs—they seemed naturally curious, and he dug deep into his Jesuit schooling and applied his knowledge of Patristic and Scholastic theology in order to provide answers to their questions.32 He recounted that these youths were keen to learn the most important prayers and receive catechesis, even to the point of chiding him if he was slow to teach them: ‘‘On lying down on our bed, the lads noted my neglect in not having taught them to pray and I replied that I didn’t know if they would like to learn or if they would become annoyed if I continued to talk about it and, while they didn’t ask, how was I to know that they wanted me to teach them? ‘Oh shut up!’ they replied happily, ‘and see how we’ll bother you on a daily basis.’ ’’33 One of these youths mentioned in the chronicle became

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Francisco’s intimate friend and stood out for his devotion, perceptive questions, and keenness to learn.34 One winter’s night, shortly after midnight, the boy (later christened Ignacio by Francisco, again indicating Jesuit influence) woke Francisco in order to tell him what he had just dreamed.35 He told him that while he was sound asleep he had begun to pray ‘‘Upchi acimi Marı´a’’—the Hail Mary—which Francisco had translated into the Mapuche language and taught to him, when a large ‘‘black [figure]’’ approached him and tried to gag him.36 Ignacio described how he was truly afraid and unable to speak or cry out, when suddenly the black apparition was replaced by a beautiful white child, blonder than the sun, whose graceful face and hair blinded him when he looked at him. The radiant child began to play with the water of a crystal clear spring, scooping it up with a silver plate and emptying it out little by little. Other children arrived to play with him, whom Ignacio described as ‘‘neither as white, nor as graceful,’’ seeming to him to be ‘‘little Indians like me.’’37 The beautiful boy—and at this point Francisco added a rhetorical disclaimer distancing himself from the narrative, ‘‘I tell this just as he recounted’’—then climbed a tree that was growing from the spring. At the heart of the green branches was a lady whose face was similar to the boy’s and, at the top of the tree, many more seemingly winged children were flying around. The radiant boy settled in the skirts of the lady and began to sprinkle the children below with the water from the spring. The children ran underneath the trickle of water one by one and as they passed underneath and the water struck them, their heads turned snow-white, just like ‘‘the high pastures after a morning frost.’’38 Ignacio, on seeing the fun they were having, joined them and also passed underneath the tree but this time, disappointingly for him, he felt no water fall. It was not until he turned his face upward that water cascaded down and on lowering his head again ‘‘they bathed it completely.’’39 After a short time, he lifted his face again but the dream-vision disappeared and he woke up eager to tell his Spanish friend and teacher of the dream he had just experienced. According to his account, Francisco’s response was thoughtful and considered, referring first to scriptural precedent, then the tradition of the Catholic Church as it applied to their particular circumstances.40 As we saw in the opening quotation, scripture and, in particular, the Old Testament confirmed to Francisco that God had on numerous occasions revealed his will in dreams. But in his explanation to Ignacio, he appeared to discard almost immediately any possibility that the dream was directly inspired by

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God. ‘‘In ancient times our Lord God revealed his secrets through dreams,’’ he said, but then continued by echoing the statement found in the 1585 trilingual sermonario: ‘‘and although today we cannot give [any] credit to what we dream because they are inventions of the understanding and fantasies.’’41 And if this were insufficient, he added the weight of classical authority, arguing, ‘‘or as Cicero said, [these dreams or fantasies] are thoughts or words from the day’s discourse that continue in the memory.’’42 The narrative thus teases the reader who may well have reached his or her own conclusions about the dream and the way it would have been interpreted even before Francisco provided such a surprisingly cautious rebuff to the notion that it might have been a divinely inspired dream-vision. From within the Hispano-Catholic worldview, the meaning and imagery of the dream narrative would have seemed clear: the radiant figures would without a doubt have been recognized as the Christ child and the Virgin Mary, the winged children as angels, and the water as the water of baptism. More speculative interpretation, especially given the reference to the morning frost, might lead us to suggest that the particular Marian devotion was that of la Virgen de las Nieves (the Virgin of the Snow), a common devotion among Spaniards on the southern Chilean frontier given her purported intervention to save one of the early Spanish cities from being sacked by Mapuche warriors and a number of other miracles attributed to her in which she was supposed to have saved people from disaster.43 At the same time, the Virgin’s seat in the tree brings to mind images of the Tree of Jesse (commonly represented in early modern Hispanic iconography and always associated with the Virgin Mary), although the chances of Ignacio having seen such a painting are negligible, for the boy’s only contact with the Hispanic world so far beyond the Mapuche frontier was through the captive and destitute Francisco. It is perhaps more plausible to surmise that the tree in Ignacio’s dream might have been a pehue´n or monkey-puzzle tree, a sacred protector to the Mapuche and one whose kernels provided sustenance even during the long winter months when food was scarce.44 It would have made sense, given the Virgin’s usual guise as mother and protector, for her to have appeared in such a sacred tree. Francisco, meanwhile, could have understood and explained the dream to Ignacio in one of two ways. The first, that this was a representation of the divine will that Ignacio be baptized, was discarded, as we have seen. The only route left to Francisco would be to interpret the dream as a consequence of natural causes, as he seemed to be suggesting with his reference

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to Cicero. But there was, in fact, a middle ground open to him, and this was to propose that it could still be possible for ‘‘honest desires’’ to be represented in dreams.45 And so he built on this proposition, suggesting that, while awake, Ignacio must have wanted to become Christian and to ‘‘come to know God and his greatness.’’ That much was demonstrated by his sincere learning of the prayers Francisco taught him. Ignacio agreed, affirming his extreme desire to become Christian and ‘‘know your God,’’ and Francisco was then able to interpret the dream according to normative Hispano-Catholic symbols:46 So this is your dream . . .: with your head bathed with water that I will pour over you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, you [will] turn white and radiant, just like the heads of the children who appeared to you in your dream. And that lady whom you saw seated in the tree was the mother of that beautiful child, who is our Savior. Because you praised his Holy Mother with the Ave-Marı´a, he caused that black [figure], who was the devil, to flee. [The devil] wanted to gag you because he is our common enemy and is always trying to upset our good intentions. And . . . the beautiful boy who is Christ our Lord, son of the living God, confronted the horrible and ugly black [figure], who is the devil, and gave you strength with his visit so that you do not turn away from your desires which are leading you to knowledge of our holy Catholic faith.47 It seems, then, that Francisco’s initial caution and insistence on a natural explanation for the dream was, in effect, interwoven with an interpretation that involved preternatural interference and supernatural intervention, albeit carefully inexplicit. Initially, the dream itself was naturally provoked by a fervent desire to become Christian and be baptized. Yet following the reasoning that diurnal desires appear as nocturnal dream sequences, the almost immediate appearance of the devil in the sequence could only be understood as preternatural interference, as the demon sought to suffocate the boy’s desire for Christianity and to speak the words of praise to the Virgin Mary. This was entirely consistent with medieval notions of demonic ability to move the humors in the body and cause images to appear—a natural process—but it was, nonetheless, preternatural interference that caused a good dream based on honest desires to turn into a nightmare, and

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the boy’s resulting fear at the figure’s invasive presence was a natural human response to this preternatural apparition.48 Using Francisco’s logic, what then followed can still be understood as natural and good human desires suppressing this wicked preternatural invasion but, given his subsequent explanation, that ‘‘the beautiful boy, who is Christ our Lord and son of the living God confronted the horrible and ugly black [figure] and gave . . . strength with his visit,’’ it is perhaps more plausible that even the cautious Francisco believed that divine power had indeed intervened to protect Ignacio and prevent him (and his Christian desires) from being suffocated by a demonic hand.

Dream-Visions and the Influence of Christian Discourse If individuals like the Jesuit-educated Francisco were cautiously interweaving natural, preternatural, and supernatural influences into their dream interpretation, there in fact existed a contemporary genre of Jesuitmediated dreams that barely acknowledged this idea that dreams and their interpretation were a potentially ‘‘subversive force.’’ Despite indigenous and Hispanic awareness of conciliar censure of dream interpretation (as we have seen), dreams were reported and approved by Jesuits as their imagery and interpretation appeared to affirm the universal truth of Catholicism.49 One such example was recorded in 1632 by Jesuit missionaries writing to the Jesuit provincial of Peru as he collated information for the ‘‘annual’’ (or in this case biannual) letter to Rome, and tells the tale of Bartolome´ Martı´n, a ten-year-old noble indigenous boy from San Pedro de Quilcai, not far from the city of Lima of the viceroyalty of Peru.50 One afternoon, he was startled by a vision of his mother, who had died seven years previously. She called to him, saying, ‘‘Bartolo, Bartolo my son, come with me to heaven.’’ That night she appeared to him again, with a more forceful invitation, saying that this was what Christ had ordered. By the next morning the boy had almost completely lost the power of speech and could utter only a few badly formed words. The priest was called together with others from the community who promptly judged him to be delirious but Bartolome´ resisted all attempts to treat him. After three days speech returned to him and he told the incredulous gathering that he had come directly from heaven but that he was not allowed to tell them anything more for another

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ten days. This emphatic statement resulted in the priest and those gathered around the bed judging for a second time that he was crazy. Once the ten days were complete, on the feast day of Santiago, he rose from his bed and began to tell the story of his visionary journey.51 Following his mother’s footsteps he saw two paths, one smooth and easy, the other burning and strewn with thorns. Bartolome´ (naturally) wanted to travel the easy path but his mother stopped him, cautioned him against being deceived and guided him along the more difficult route to heaven. Heaven, as the boy apparently described it, was represented to him as a beautiful palace in which he saw choirs of virgins crowned with flowers, together with an orchestra of angels who together sang praises to God. He approached Christ’s throne, a bench of purest gold, on which Christ was seated together with Saint Joseph and his mother, Mary. Within this tableau of saints and angels were also mentioned the patriarchs, founders of a number of religious orders (including Saint Francis, Saint Dominic, and Saint Ignatius Loyola), and two of Bartolo’s older brothers who had died young. Placing this narrative within the context of dream interpretation in the colonial period, we can quickly conclude that it is only really at the beginning of the narrative, where the boy is judged to be crazy, that the dream fits within the contemporary paradigm of dreams and dream interpretation as being something to which one should not give credit. In fact, this dream sequence, as it is narrated here, primarily does the opposite: through a collaboration of narrative voices, the dream imagery is interpreted, upheld, and lauded as an affirmation of divine Providence working in the world. The Jesuit narrator of the indigenous boy’s story was, however, quite aware of potential criticism of undue influence on the dream narrative, especially as the case moved into such uncertain territory as that of visions and supernatural representations. As a result, he attempted to distance himself from the story by using simple rhetorical devices such as a statement that the boy recounted the dream ‘‘in his own words’’ and also, significantly, by pointing out that the dream was, ‘‘in the end, the same as what often appears in other similar imaginary visions.’’52 With this cursory comment the Jesuit narrator seems to give lip service to the necessary pragmatic skepticism: first, the vision was to be considered a product of the imagination; second, it was as formulaic as all the others and, as such, to be treated with caution. Having briefly deferred to conciliar requirements, the narrator was then free to argue the case that, as he ultimately summarised, ‘‘God . . . wishes

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to show his goodness through the humble and the young.’’53 At the same time, the dream sequence also contains a number of details that remove it from the realm of a generic baroque iconography, suggested or even invented by perhaps intensive (albeit possibly infrequent) catechesis, and place it in the boy’s own consciousness. The strong presence of Bartolo’s family in the heavenly dream provides the narrative with a very personal connection between the boy and the celestial court. It was Bartolo’s longdeceased mother who provided him with access to heaven, literally steering him along the straight and narrow in the dream, as she was unable to do while he was awake. Similarly, the presence of his brothers in the dream tableau continued this already strong familial link, indicating an underlying belief that his brothers—having died young and in a state of innocence— had gone straight to heaven as angelitos. These ‘‘little angels’’ provided families throughout the Hispanic world with a direct and personal link to heaven, permitting the families to petition God through their dead children and siblings.54 This familial link to the deities through the dead, while seen through particularly Hispanic imagery, sat particularly well in a socioreligious context that also drew on pre-Columbian indigenous traditions, as it was through propitiating their dead ancestors that continued life in Andean communities was believed possible. Indeed, a particular target of extirpators and Jesuit missionaries in this period were the mummified remains of community ancestors, and the veneration of these ancestral figures.55 Yet what these extirpators failed to appreciate, even as they denigrated these mummies as decaying, transient forms, was that it was precisely the permanence of death that indicated the divine nature of the ancestors.56 In this context, even though there is little remaining in the narrative that indicates the survival of pre-Columbian religious practices within the community of Quilcai, Bartolome´’s interaction with his dead relatives within the dream sequence links him to the divine both through the Hispano-Catholic tradition—recorded so graphically by the Jesuit narrator—and a more indigenous ancestral tradition that went unnoticed (or unmentioned) by the writer. As we might expect, the reported dream-vision more appropriately contained a number of iconic Catholic symbols. In particular, the two roads, or the paths of virtue and vice, were a common motif for sermons, and were often represented in frescos decorating the walls of Hispano-American churches (following a medieval European iconic tradition).57 Perhaps as a result of the ubiquity of these images and motifs in preaching, there are a

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number of similar dream sequences recounted to confessors (especially Jesuits) throughout the Americas that have found their way into letters and chronicles of the period.58 As a comparative example, an earlier annual letter—this time from the Province of Mexico—was sent to Rome in 1597, in which the Jesuit narrator described a mission to an unnamed town seven leagues from Mexico City populated by Otomı´ and Mexica Indians.59 There the missionary encountered an individual who was so sick that all present thought he had died already. The Jesuit continued to hear the confessions of other sick people until, two hours later, the apparently dead man awoke shouting for a priest. The Jesuit hurried to hear his confession and found him in a sweat and considerable shock. The man confessed that while he was in his trance he had come out of his body and been taken down a wide path or trail down which many people were traveling. A short while down this path he came to a rise followed by a sudden drop, over which many people were falling into a cave of horrific fire, such that it seemed to him like a lime kiln.60 From the cave he heard loud cries together with the noise of chains and other voices over the din that threatened the captives with the imminent payment of their ‘‘dishonesties, deceits and abuses that they had committed on the poor.’’ This indigenous soul—for arguably that is what he had become by this stage—trembled with fear until ‘‘a person of good semblance’’ took his arm and led him away along a narrow path that went behind the hill until he reached a flowery meadow containing a great door of light. The ‘‘poor Indian’’ happily moved to go through the door but his companion and guide prevented him saying that it was not yet time because he had to return to confess.61 Perhaps more than in Bartolome´’s dream-vision, we can look beneath the layers of traditional medieval Catholic imagery—such as the wide road to hell’s mouth and the narrow winding uphill climb to heaven’s gate and, indeed, the angelic guide who led him from the hell mouth to heaven’s gate before sending him back to the world—in order to see vestiges of the indigenous Mexican cosmovision.62 The flowery meadow containing the door of light, for example, so at home among traditional Christian imagery that portrays the gateway to the Garden of Eden or paradise, also reflects Nahua beliefs about ‘‘various indigenous afterworlds and places of origin’’ depicted by evocations of ‘‘lush tropical paradises’’ and gardens that were ‘‘shimmering places filed with divine fire.’’63 In the early sixteenth century, Christian notions of Edenic paradise were deliberately associated with these

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beliefs by friars keen to utilize what they perceived as parallel religious beliefs into which they could translate and better explain Christian concepts. According to Louise Burkhart, however, what they failed to appreciate was that ‘‘this garden imagery, this aesthetic of paradise, was not simply a mode of describing a place where one would want one’s soul to spend eternity. The sacred garden was also a transformational aspect of the here and now, a sacred aspect of reality that one called into being by manipulating this garden imagery in ritual contexts.’’64 The trajectory of convergence in ideas and concepts about heaven and paradisiacal gardens over time is unmistakable, however, and it is interesting to speculate how far along this trajectory the ‘‘poor Indian’’ had traveled.65 Had the dream-vision transformed the sick man’s reality from a moribund world into a flowery paradise in the traditional Nahua sense? Perhaps, as we can never know for sure exactly how he recounted the vision to the Jesuit confessor and to what extent the priest reinterpreted it in his own mind and in the retelling. The dream is so heavy with Catholic imagery, however, that it would be reasonable to assume that the urgent preaching of the missionaries to the sick had been interiorized at least to some extent. This is true especially if we place the dream within an analytical context similar to that used by Francisco Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n mentioned above: the day’s discourses and honest desires can resurface in dreams, through which Providence can be seen to work. It is worth noting for example that the indigenous soul apparently wished to go through the door of light—a Christian desire—rather than remain in the flowery garden.

Conclusion: Jesuit-Indigenous Dream-Visions and Divine Truth That early modern Hispanic American dream-visions manifested a mixture of interiorization of Christian discourse, desire, and Providence can be demonstrated further by comparing apparently divine commissions given to both the sick Indian and Bartolome´ Martı´n. The indigenous soul from the Mexican town was sent back not only because he needed to confess; he was also given a number of commissions by his mysterious guide. The first was to advise a ‘‘certain old hechicera, who was causing much harm in the town, that she would very soon die and would pay for her wickedness in

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that place of torment.’’66 The second commission was to an indigenous noble who ‘‘lived a very distracted life and dressed as a woman when he became drunk.’’ The soul-messenger was instructed to tell him that ‘‘if he did not change his ways he would end up in the same place.’’67 Both commissions, according to the Jesuit narrator, were carried out faithfully and to apparently successful ends. The old indigenous religious practitioner initially refused to confess for a further three days ‘‘under great risk of dying’’ but finally her horror of the place of torture envisioned by the sick Indian drove her to call for the Jesuit priest and, according to the source, she managed to finish her confession before she expired. The priest was apparently delighted at the fact that ‘‘this soul in such need had been healed.’’ The transvestite cacique underwent a general confession and began to ‘‘put his life in order.’’68 The sick Indian, meanwhile, his divine messages delivered, lived for a further three days, then died ‘‘like a saint.’’69 Bartolome´ Martı´n was also given a ‘‘divine commission.’’ After a ceremony in which the boy was ordered to kiss the feet and hands of Christ and the other saints, Jesus spoke to Bartolome´ and ordered him to return to his community to tell them all to fear God and keep his law; that there was no more than one true God and that idols were demons, and hechicerı´as were tricks of the devil.70 He was also instructed to take with him four named companions of his own age from his community and, after getting permission from their parents, they were to journey to Lima to the house of the Jesuits, where they would ‘‘learn the mysteries of the faith.’’71 The commission itself can similarly be understood in a number of ways. The first part simultaneously acted as a divine affirmation of the catechesis that the boy and his community had received from the Jesuits and also as an order to reinforce that teaching: indigenous gods were devils and traditional healing methods (that involved invocation) were idolatrous and diabolical tricks—in the context of the time and place this was a divine censure received in a dream by an indigenous boy and not merely words spoken by a missionary. It was a vision of power that was understood to come from within the community and not from outside. Significantly, the second part of the divine order extended the boy’s mission from one that focused internally on his own community (to give up its idolatrous practices) to what amounted to a vocational pilgrimage to the Jesuit college in Lima. Of course, just as with the sick Mexican Indian, the subtext of Bartolome´’s vision suggests a tremendous Jesuit influence on his imagination. As

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we have seen, the imagery of the vision incorporated much classical Christian rhetoric and visual allegory. At the same time, Christ’s doctrinal commandments to the boy repeated the central pedagogical themes of the viceroyalty’s anti-idolatry campaigns, championed, at first, by the Jesuits.72 What should also be noted is that the boy was the son of indigenous nobles, his companions were named in the vision, and he was directed to the Jesuit college in Lima, conveniently the location of a Jesuit school for the sons of Indian nobles, founded in 1619. Crucially, the boy’s vision, which was so rich in Christian rhetorical symbols, gave divine sanction and even impetus to a Jesuit and vice-regal pedagogical policy and successfully overrode any potential resistance on the part of Bartolome´’s parents or the community’s elders. As with all similar cases, we are faced with the potential difficulty of separating what might well have been considered a divinely inspired vision in the boy’s mind and in the minds of those who subsequently examined him from a vision merely inspired by sermons, catechesis, and paintings and, possibly, also even a conscientious anxiety about the obligation to leave behind his community and travel to Lima for education in the Jesuit school. Yet for the missionaries and congregations of the time, such separation was not in fact necessary. The Jesuits as a group certainly did not hold back in their conviction that they were doing God’s work and saving souls, and employed as many rhetorical devices as they could in order to impress their message on the minds of their spiritual charges.73 It did not matter, then, whether the causes of the dream were natural or supernatural if the dream strengthened the Christian faith—whether natural or supernatural, it was still part of God’s plan, however small. By way of a conclusion, then, far from being censurable as vain and fleeting products of a fickle imagination, after interpretation within the context of the Catholic symbolic worldview, dreams like these were frequently taken as evidence of divine Providence moving within indigenous worlds and bringing the work of missionaries such as the Jesuits to fruition. At the same time, rather than being understood as the result of indigenous consciences having been traumatized by competing religious obligations, these dreams (as recounted) were taken as divine affirmation of Catholic truth. As we have seen, this can be argued with all the dreams mentioned above. Even where the outcome of dreams was more ambiguous, such as that of Don Cristo´bal Choque Casa in Huarochirı´, particular dreams might be deliberately retold to strengthen the position of Christianity vis-a`-vis

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indigenous cosmovisions if they were interpreted in ways that could be perceived to further the Christian mission. As part of his justification for approving and lauding Bartolome´ Martı´n’s dream, for example, the Jesuit narrator’s final point was that the dream ‘‘will neither contravene the faith nor good customs.’’74 If we return then to the original paradigm that dream interpretation was considered subversive, a qualifying statement might be useful. Dreams, even within stratified societies such as that of early modern Hispanic America, could legitimately be interpreted and spoken about if their symbols and imagery validated and was indeed validated by the overarching cultural worldview. Or, from the perspective of the Jesuit missionaries and many other Hispano-American Catholics, it was entirely justifiable to interpret and speak about dreams if they affirmed the ‘‘universal truth.’’ These were the dreams that helped demonstrate that divine Providence was moving in the world. These were the dreams that enabled questions such as that asked by the Mapuche boy Ignacio after he had recounted his dream to the Spanish youth Francisco: ‘‘This is my dream, Captain. What do you think? Is it not a good one?’’75

Chapter 8

French Jesuits and Indian Dreams in Seventeenth-Century New France leslie tuttle

On the evening of August 5, 1671, thousands of stylish Parisians gathered before the stage at the Colle`ge de Clermont in Paris for the prestigious Jesuit school’s annual theater performance. That year, the main event was a five-act tragedy about the Old Testament king Belshazzar and divine prophecies of his downfall. Many in the audience had probably come, however, less to view the Latin tragedy than to see the elaborate ballet intervals danced by students between the acts. It was these ballet interludes for which the school was particularly renowned. The offering for 1671 was Le Ballet des songes [The dream ballet].1 The Jesuits used their theater as an opportunity to entertain, but also sought to instruct their audiences on contemporary spiritual topics. Le Ballet des songes fit the bill by providing orthodox Catholic answers to a perennial question: where do dreams come from, and what—if anything—do they mean? Guided by the program, the audience followed a complex argument about the visions they saw while sleeping. The first two ballet interludes deployed characters from mythology and concepts from premodern European medicine to explain how human physiology generated dreams. Jesuit students danced to illustrate how an individual’s humoral character—was he or she melancholic? choleric?—combined with the residue of daytime experience and a half-digested dinner to create images in the soul. The second part of the danced argument affirmed that however much dreams might feel meaningful to the dreamer, it was a mark of foolishness to believe in dreams. The ballet dramatized this cautionary message with

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comic dances ridiculing popular traditions of dream interpretation. The audience was supposed to laugh as peasants searched vainly for the treasures whose hiding places had been revealed in dreams, and chuckle as cripples toppled over after placing their faith in dreams of miraculous healing. Finally, however, the concluding interval entitled ‘‘true dreams’’ alluded to figures from the Old Testament whose dreams had been divinely granted and prophetic. As the written program reminded viewers, the ‘‘empire of truth’’—a reference to the timeless omnipotence of God—could make meaning even from material as unpromising, chaotic, and incoherent as dreams.2 As the ballet concluded, then, the final scenes dancing in the audience’s head held open the possibility that dreams might after all be a channel for communication of insights directly from the divine realm. Tellingly, what the ballet did not offer was a method for discerning which dreams were true and which were false. The 1671 Ballet des songes captured the ambivalent attitude toward dreams typical of Catholic theology and spirituality in mid-seventeenthcentury France. Its preoccupation with the problem of dreams would have been familiar to another Jesuit audience, the reading audience of the Jesuit Relations, mission reports published between 1632 and 1673 that traced Jesuit evangelization across the Atlantic.3 In forty years of annual accounts penned on the margins of France’s nascent colonial empire, hardly a year went by without Jesuit missionaries lamenting the Amerindian proclivity to look to dreams as an authoritative source of spiritual guidance and practical knowledge. Readers of the Relations were, in fact, regularly immersed in stories in which dreaming figured prominently. Missionaries wrote often of the ways that New France’s native peoples looked to their dreams to know where to hunt, what remedies would cure their illnesses, and how to avoid the threats posed by enemies or an uncertain future. Dreams, they noted, could suggest political strategies, such as alliances to pursue. A man telling his dream during council meetings could expect his opinion to be heard. In their dreams, men and women traveled to otherwise unseen worlds; sometimes, in dreams, spirits or the dead interacted with the living.4 Indeed, after surveying the diverse uses his Huron hosts made of their dreams, Jean de Bre´beuf concluded in 1636 that ‘‘the dream does everything and is, in truth, the principal God of the Hurons.’’5 A generation later, in 1669, missionary Franc¸ois Le Mercier echoed the same theme while working among the Onondaga Iroquois, writing that dreams ‘‘seem to constitute this country’s sole Divinity, to which they defer in all things’’ and ‘‘regard

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as the thing that makes them live.’’6 Although the 1671 Ballet des songes did not represent Amerindians among its cast of credulous dreamers, the identification of New France’s indigenous population with belief in dreams became common knowledge among literate French men and women in the late seventeenth century. A 1690 article in the Mercure Galant, the era’s most popular French periodical, asserted confidently that ‘‘the people of that country [i.e., natives in New France] are completely persuaded that everything they dream must happen.’’7 The Jesuit Relations were the texts directly responsible for constructing this understanding of Amerindians, an idea built and reinforced by the missionaries’ insistent and recurrent writing about the dream beliefs, practices of dream sharing, and even sometimes content of dreams experienced by the Montagnais, Huron, and, later, Iroquois men and women they encountered. Seventeenth-century Jesuit accounts of the authority of dreams among Amerindians continue to exercise a great deal of influence on modern understanding of the culture of Eastern Woodland peoples in the contact era. This is understandable; these groups had no written language, and left us no contemporary written records, so the Relations are a precious and utterly irreplaceable historical source. Especially in the wake of Anthony F. C. Wallace’s groundbreaking 1958 article ‘‘Dreams and the Wishes of the Soul: A Type of Psychoanalytic Theory Among the Seventeenth Century Iroquois,’’ scholars have reexamined the Relations’ attention to dreaming, looking beyond the Jesuits’ often dismissive assessment of Indian ‘‘credulity’’ to ask how dreaming and the practices related to it helped structure Amerindian cultures, binding communities together and reaffirming indigenous values and ways of knowing.8 One recent account has even suggested that the dream was ‘‘the primary source of a priori knowledge in precontact times,’’ offering Amerindians authoritative knowledge about things not directly witnessed that was analogous to the authority held by scripture among European Christians.9 For a historian coming to the Jesuit Relations from the vantage point of the seventeenth-century French metropole, however, the missionaries’ fascination with dreaming—the observers’ intense concern with the dream culture of Amerindians—appears every bit as interesting and demanding of deeper reflection as does the role of dreaming among the indigenous cultures of New France. As the staging of the Ballet des songes suggested, neither the Jesuits nor their audience had fully abandoned the notion that God might use the vehicle of a dream to unfold his miraculous plans. Nevertheless, as

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clerics devoted to promoting orthodox Catholicism, Jesuits feared that individual men and women—both European Christians and Amerindian potential converts—might easily be led astray by the vivid and emotionally resonant images they saw while sleeping. Dreams were problematic, demanding careful scrutiny. The insights they offered could not simply be dismissed, but neither could they be uncritically accepted. Reading the Jesuit Relations as an extension of an ongoing European debate about dreams can offer new insights about the evolution of dream beliefs in Europe as well as about the religious encounter in the Americas. As they struggled to make sense of their experiences among the peoples of New France, the Jesuit missionaries naturally drew on European understandings of what dreams were. The ideas about dreams they brought with them across the Atlantic shaped their interactions with Amerindians. And, then, what and how they wrote about dream practices in New France in turn played a role in shaping how the Jesuits’ French readers thought about dreaming. This exchange of dream theories is important because Jesuit missionaries were pondering Amerindian dream practices during a particularly significant historical evolution in Europe, an era historians associate with the consummation of Catholic Reformation in France and the growing influence of the scientific revolution. It is important to remember that Jesuit missionaries like Paul Le Jeune and Jean de Bre´beuf were writing about Amerindian dream theories at precisely the same time that philosopher and mathematician Rene´ Descartes—himself a product of a Jesuit education— mentioned dreams in relation to a fundamental epistemological problem of his age. Surely we should not rely on hearsay or legend in determining what is true, Descartes argued, but can we rely on our own experiences? How can any of us be sure that the things we think we see while awake are not merely an illusion produced by an ‘‘evil demon’’ trying to fool us, given that the things we see in dreams seem so real? In the end, Descartes uneasily resolved this problem by relying on the existence of a God whose goodness effectively ensures the existence of truth and its availability to rational human beings.10 In their own way, Jesuit missionaries were also engaging such epistemological and metaphysical questions about perception, truth, and boundaries between the natural and supernatural worlds. Indeed, these dilemmas help explain why dreams emerge as such a powerful and recurrent theme in the Jesuit Relations. In order to pursue this argument, the first part of this essay examines dream theories current in seventeenth-century France: what attitudes

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toward dreaming would a Jesuit likely have held? It then reexamines what and how French Jesuit missionaries wrote about the dream practices of the Amerindians with whom they interacted, specifically in the early phases of the mission from 1632 to 1646.

Jesuits and the Dream Culture of Seventeenth-Century France The men who became Jesuit missionaries to New France were, for the most part, recruited from France’s urban elites, and their Jesuit training entailed a rigorous humanistic education. They were heirs to the learned dream culture of the West, a centuries-long debate over where dreams come from, how to discern meaningful from meaningless dreams, and who is licensed to do so. The roots of this rich tradition stretched back to classical antiquity.11 Juxtaposed with the learned practices for interpreting dreams that were transmitted in manuscripts subsisted a host of European folk practices surrounding dreams transmitted orally. The missionaries don’t tell us about the dream beliefs they may have learned from their grandmothers, their wet nurses, or the servants who worked in their homes, but we do know a whole host of such beliefs existed.12 Jean-Baptiste Thiers catalogued a fraction of them in his monumental Treatise on Superstitions published in 1679. Thiers discussed dreams as a means of divination, a way to know things otherwise hidden by time or distance. In this vein, he noted the notion of some French men and women that to dream that one was guarding sheep foretold pain, or that a dream of losing one’s hair signaled that friends had died.13 Thiers, a parish priest, catalogued these beliefs not to document them for posterity—although historians are grateful that he did so—but rather to encourage fellow clerics to identify their persistence and transmission among their flock. The goal was to uproot them; paying heed to dreams was a tenacious superstition, and superstitions ‘‘ruin the faith and the cult of the Lord.’’14 The quest to discourage practices deemed superstitious became a preoccupation of Reformation religious leaders eager to distinguish between admissible and illicit responses to life’s uncertainties. Indeed, the historian Stuart Clark has identified superstition as a ‘‘key concept in early modern culture,’’ and a site of intense intellectual and cultural reeducation effort, both in the Catholic and Protestant traditions, over a period of several centuries.15

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The shifting and often elusive meaning of ‘‘superstition’’ is critical to understanding why dream sharing and interpretation could become so worrisome to Reformation-era clerics or Jesuit missionaries. In the postEnlightenment world, to call something superstitious denotes irrationality and credulity. Nowadays, we label practices that attribute causality erroneously ‘‘superstitious’’: rubbing a rabbit’s foot, or avoiding walking under ladders, for example. During the late Middle Ages, however, superstition had a darker meaning. For writers like Thiers who were the heirs to this development, superstitious practices were problematic not because they were obviously fruitless, but because they might yield something at the cost of one’s soul. By participating in such practices, one dabbled with demonic forces or beings wielding powers that God had not granted to humans, and did so in order to know things God had not meant them to know. How else could dreams provide knowledge of things unseen, as they sometimes seemed to do? The quest for knowledge humans were not intended to have, was, after all, the first sin. Late medieval theology linked dream interpretation with other ‘‘superstitious’’ divinatory practices, categorizing them as a form of idolatry, and therefore as an offense against the first (and most important) commandment that ‘‘thou shalt have no other God before me.’’16 The association of dream interpretation with idolatry is essential to understanding why Jesuit missionaries continually referred to Amerindian dreams as agents rather than phenomena, in formulations such as missionary Jean de Bre´beuf’s complaint that dreaming constituted ‘‘the principal God of the Huron.’’ Throughout the era of reform, theologians warned against the grave spiritual dangers that attended curiosity about one’s dreams and what they might mean. Until the mid-seventeenth century, however, only a few radical skeptics went so far as to deny wholesale that dreams could be the bearers of messages and warnings. Beyond the authoritative biblical examples, Catholic men and women continued to read the stories of saints who were called or illuminated by God as they slept. Other, less obviously supernatural forms of insight might also come from dreams. European physicians, for example, continued to monitor their patients’ dreams for signs of the body’s hidden imbalances, and men and women of all social stations continued to trade stories about the uncanny foreknowledge that came from dreams.17 These traditional uses of dreams—parallel in many respects to the uses Amerindians supposedly made of their dreams—continued well into the seventeenth century (and beyond) even as religious leaders tried to

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wean men and women from them through threats of eternal damnation and, as in the Ballet des songes, of appearing foolish and vulgar in this world. Complicating the clerics’ quest, however, methods for reading the significance of dreams became more accessible during this era. Printed editions of the traditional keys to dream interpretation, in Greek or Latin, rolled continually off European presses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. More importantly, perhaps, the wisdom contained in these authoritative classical sources was translated into the vernacular, making it available to an ever-expanding literate population. This included, in particular, elite women, who were rarely asked to master Latin during the course of their education. By the mid-seventeenth century as the Jesuit Relations were appearing annually, manuals of dream interpretation were often to be found within books of pastimes clearly aimed at a genteel feminine readership. Consider Marc Vulson de la Colombie`re’s 1655 Le Palais des curieux [The palace for seekers after knowledge], a book that included a key to dream interpretation ‘‘based on the ancients.’’18 In his preface, Vulson proposed dream interpretation as a parlor game intended for the amusement of social elites, a practice that made no claims to generate true insight. Addressing himself to ‘‘Mademoiselle,’’ Vulson explicitly contrasted the purpose of his book—‘‘diversion’’ in genteel company—with the ‘‘pious books you have so often in your hands.’’ Yet historians acknowledge considerable uncertainty about how these dream guides were actually used by readers. As Lise Andries has observed, the methods applied for interpreting dreams did not change a great deal when the dream guides were ostensibly repurposed for leisure pursuits. It is possible that the ostensibly playful intent suggested by mid-seventeenth-century authors like Vulson was primarily a means to sidestep persistent disapproval of men and women’s ‘‘superstitious’’ interest in understanding their dreams.19 Indeed, without more direct evidence, it is impossible to know whether readers of texts like Vulson’s believed in the interpretations his guide offered. What is clear is that the expansion of literacy and printing rendered learned traditions of dream interpretation more accessible to seventeenth-century elites than had been the case in the past. It is also pertinent that this was the group from whom the Jesuits recruited their personnel, financial support for their mission, and readership for the Relations. All in all, then, the seventeenthcentury Jesuit missionaries to Canada were recruited from, and writing to, a French Catholic elite that had not yet clearly or decisively abandoned the notion that dreams could be meaningful. This elite was, however,

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frequently reminded that it was spiritually dangerous to look for meaning in dreams, and that it was, potentially, a sign of vulgarity to take dreams seriously. If these background considerations help us understand how Jesuits might have formed ideas about their spiritual duties toward their flock regarding dreams, we gain a different sort of perspective by thinking about the role of dreams in the missionaries’ own spiritual lives. The primary place to look for evidence of this role is in the spiritual techniques laid out by Ignatius of Loyola in the Spiritual Exercises. The exercises were a program of retreat and meditation undertaken by all Jesuits as part of their novitiate, and then repeated annually throughout their lives. They were also taught (in abbreviated form) to pious laypeople and Jesuit schoolboys. Jesuit missionaries ‘‘refreshed’’ themselves by performing the exercises from time to time, even deep in the forests of New France.20 The Spiritual Exercises are an experience, so a description of the text left by Loyola must be supplemented by the reader’s imagination of what the experience might have been like. The four ‘‘weeks’’ of activities of which the exercises are composed, undertaken with the guidance of a director, refer to stages of spiritual reflection rather than to a strict time frame. First, exercitants were advised to isolate themselves, and abandon their worldly routines. After time spent pondering the individual’s interior moral condition and the enormity of his or her sins, the exercitant undertook purposeful, guided meditation on the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ. The exercises amounted almost to internal moviemaking. For example, during the third ‘‘week’’ the exercitant, in the morning, imagines himself present at the Last Supper, recreating in his mind’s eye the features of the room where the event took place, conjuring the faces of each disciple, listening to those disciples’ conversation, and watching their actions in order to ‘‘draw some [spiritual] profit from’’ this contemplation.21 The programmed activities engaged the imagination and senses, and thereby, Ignatius hoped, the emotions. Developed from Loyola’s own mystic experiences, the exercises were intended to transform individuals and to develop self-knowledge; a critical part of achieving this, Ignatius and his successors believed, involved learning to recognize the subtle movements of the divine acting within.22 To better practice this attention, exercitants learned the Jesuit ‘‘rules for discernment of spirits,’’ techniques that enabled them to weigh whether ‘‘motions of the soul’’—a term that embraced both ideas and emotions that

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came to one’s awareness—arose from divine or evil origin. The rules for discernment offer a Jesuit theory of the mind and how it works. Loyola and his Jesuit followers conceived the individual soul as porous, a battleground where the force of God continually vied with what they called ‘‘the enemy’’ or ‘‘the bad angels.’’23 ‘‘Motions of the soul’’ that brought ‘‘consolation’’— ‘‘inner peace, spiritual joy, hope, faith, love, tears, and elevation of Mind’’—were ‘‘gifts of the Holy Spirit’’; while those that caused ‘‘desolation’’—turmoil, sadness, ‘‘dryness versus tears,’’ a wandering mind, or ‘‘base love’’—were, on the contrary, signs that one’s mind was, in some sense, in the grips of ‘‘the evil spirit.’’24 What do the activities of the Spiritual Exercises and the rules for discernment of spirits have to do with dreams? Let us first pause to note that the exercises—a rite of passage for all Jesuits—was based on an individual’s ‘‘inner sight’’ of events that were not actually happening in the material world of the present. These imagined scenes were credited as a means to engage with the divine and know God’s will. We might guess that the exercises, a focused period of isolation and meditation, aimed at conjuring vivid sensory impressions of the events and emotions surrounding Christ’s passion, could have induced dreams in exercitants. These practices bear some resemblance to the techniques of dream incubation attested in many of the world cultures.25 Yet despite what may appear to be similarity between such experiences and dreams, it is indeed striking to note how infrequently dreams are mentioned in the key texts of Ignatian spirituality from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Loyola’s text of the Exercises does not mention dreaming, nor do the many guides for Jesuits who directed their fellows and laypeople in undertaking them. Similarly, Ignatius of Loyola’s own autobiography and spiritual diaries are devoid of experiences that are named ‘‘dreams.’’ In the autobiography, the saint was careful to note that the vision that set him on his spiritual path came to him while he was awake, and that his own spiritual experiences led him to conclude that visions at nighttime— although they often brought him ‘‘consolation’’—were more likely to deceive than daytime experiences. As a result, the saint decided not to pray late into the night, electing to get more sleep.26 Through the period in which he filled pages in his spiritual journal with writing about mystic union, nearly counting the copious tears he cried when moved by the divine acting within him, his nights earn little mention.27 Similarly, the saint’s letters to followers cautioned that fatigue and insomnia were prime moments for

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assaults of ‘‘the enemy.’’ He counseled spiritual aspirants to rest and take care of their bodies, for robust physical health helped fortify the fragile inner spaces against attack. When asked about ‘‘the evil thoughts and the weaknesses which the bad angels, the flesh, and the world bring before my mind’’—the closest reference one finds in his letters to the unprogrammed, sometimes fearful images that embodied souls might see during sleep— Loyola counseled ignoring them.28 We see something of a paradox here. Ignatian spirituality cultivated vivid, internal visioning and relied on the profound emotional reactions this sight might elicit, and yet it was silent about dreaming, the quasi-universal human experience of such sight. The most convincing explanation for this silence spirals back to the controversy over dreams during the Catholic Reformation era. During Loyola’s lifetime, the Inquisition targeted the so-called Alumbrado or Illuminist spirituality that encourages the pious to open their minds to passive union with and illumination by the divine. The notion that the passive—or sleeping—soul might enjoy direct communication with God inspired visionaries, like Lucrecia de Leo´n.29 In the wake of Protestant challenges to Catholic theology, however, some Catholic thinkers worried that ‘‘passive’’ spiritual techniques were akin to an argument for predestination, because they suggested that the only valuable spiritual experiences were those that God initiated, and that, by extension, human rituals were of little value for salvation. At a more pragmatic level, clerics worried that in chasing illumination through visions or dreams, Catholics might turn away from the Eucharist and other sacraments. The technique of passive spirituality grew popular within certain female religious orders and even gained lay adherents in the seventeenth century, another cause for concern for spiritual directors, including the Jesuits: Many clerics feared that passive souls—especially when they inhabited the weakened and sensual bodies of women and ‘‘savages’’— were especially likely to be manipulated by evil spirits.30 Jesuit attitudes to dreaming were clearly shaped by this specific European historical context, a point that seems especially important when we recall that Loyola and his followers were obliged more than once to answer questions about their spiritual practices before inquisitors.31 France had no formal Inquisition, but controversies over spiritual techniques flared there nevertheless, later than in Spain. It happened during the seventeenth century, indeed just as the Jesuit mission in the St. Lawrence was getting off the ground.32 Jesuits had abundant reason for caution about dreams. Certainly, the Bible and examples of many saints proved that God had the authority to

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commune with the soul while the body slept, but even so holy an example as Ignatius of Loyola reaffirmed how easily one might mistake the machinations of ‘‘the enemy’’ for the consolations of the divine. The Jesuits’ prudent approach counseled extreme caution regarding visions that came during nighttime. This caution—which was neither an outright rejection nor acceptance of dreams—shaped responses to Amerindian dreams in the pages of the Jesuit Relations.

Reading Dream Accounts in the Jesuit Relations For forty years between 1632 and 1673, annual accounts of Jesuit missionary activity in New France rolled off the presses of the printer Sebastien Cramoisy in Paris. Jesuit institutions throughout the world regularly communicated with superiors and fellows via letters from the field, but the printing of the letters from New France transformed an internal report into selfconscious writing for a wide audience, a group that included Jesuit schoolboys, religious women, and devout or merely interested readers in France. Writers of the mission accounts clearly thought about—even openly acknowledged—their efforts to reach this readership. In the 1660s, Franc¸ois Le Mercier expressed his writerly goals in the following way: ‘‘I hope that there will be found here material to satisfy the curiosity of those who take pleasure in learning what happens in foreign nations, and at the same time material to edify the piety and animate the zeal of apostolic men.’’33 This dual goal of satisfying curiosity about the non-Christian ‘‘other’’ and awakening pious reflection in Catholic readers best captures the complex strategy French Jesuits pursued through the Relations. Whatever principle of selection Jesuit authors applied in their quest for material to interest and edify their readers, the dreams of native Americans constitute a recurrent theme in the Relations. The attentive reader will find more than one hundred distinct discussions of dream theories and practices dating from the first fifteen years of the mission alone.34 These passages are of several types. They include ethnographic descriptions of the dream beliefs and practices of Montagnais and Huron peoples composed by Paul Le Jeune and Jean de Bre´beuf, passages that have proven especially influential in ethnohistorians’ accounts of the role of dreaming in Amerindian cultures.35 In 1634, for example, Le Jeune commented on the ‘‘great faith’’ Montagnais had in their dreams, ‘‘imagining that what they have seen in

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their sleep must happen, and that they must execute whatever they have thus imagined.’’36 Bre´beuf soon wrote at length about the ‘‘great credit’’ dreams enjoyed among the Huron. In a justifiably famous minitreatise on dreaming, he analyzed the significant role dreams played in Huron origin myths, healing practices, feasts, games, and seasonal festivals. Significantly, Bre´beuf attempted to puzzle out the Hurons’ own rules of dream discernment, noting that not all dreams or dreamers commanded the same authority.37 Yet when one examines the entire corpus of dream talk in the Relations, it is clear that the majority of the material hardly fits the conventions of ethnographic description, a genre that is marked by analytical intent, objectivity, and detachment of the observer.38 In fact, dreams emerge in the Jesuit narrative in a wide range of other contexts. In the remainder of this essay, I will suggest that the majority of the dream material performs, in particular, two important narrative functions in the Jesuit accounts. These functions unite the Jesuits’ treatment of Amerindian dreams with their attitudes to dreams on the other side of the Atlantic. They are marked by the same ambivalence, the same concerns about foolishness or inadvertently being tricked by demons, that were at work more broadly within Jesuit writing regarding dreams. In the first function, which we might call the ‘‘dreams are only dreams’’ scenario, talk of dreams and dream practices occurs in passages that intended to contrast Christian and Amerindian notions of truth. Here, discussion of dreams served to delineate a world of things ‘‘as they really are’’ from the faulty logic and inadequate grasp of reality and causality exemplified by Amerindians’ reliance on their dreams as a source of knowledge. Consider Paul Le Jeune’s account of his exchange with the Montagnais shaman Carigonan, with whom the missionary traveled during a cold and hungry winter of 1634, a story so rich it bears quoting at length: On the eve of Epiphany my host told me that he had had a dream which caused him much anxiety. ‘‘I have seen in my sleep,’’ said he, ‘‘that we were reduced to the last extremity of hunger; and that he who thou hast told us has made all, assured me that thou wouldst fall into such a stupor, that, not being able to put one foot before the other, thou wouldst die alone abandoned in the midst of the woods; I fear that my dream will be only too true, for we are now in as great need as ever for lack of snow.’’ I had an idea that this

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dreamer might play some bad trick on me and abandon me, to prove himself a Prophet. For this reason I made use of his weapons, opposing altare contra altare, dream against dream. ‘‘As for me,’’ I replied, ‘‘I have dreamed just the opposite; for in my sleep I saw two Moose, one of which was already killed and the other still living.’’ ‘‘Good,’’ said the Sorcerer, ‘‘that’s very nice; have hope, thou tellest us good news.’’ In truth, I had had this dream some days before. ‘‘Well, then,’’ I said to my host, ‘‘which of our two dreams will be found to be true? Thou sayest we shall die of starvation, and I say we shall not.’’ He began to laugh. Then I told him that dreams were nothing but lies, that I placed no dependence upon them; that my hope was in him who has made all.39 Le Jeune’s account is hardly detached or objective; rather, it stages a scene in which the missionary is a key heroic character, engaged in a debate with Carigonan for which the reader has a front-row seat. Note that the missionary’s account is suffused by hostility and antagonism. Although Le Jeune’s life is threatened (would Carigonan abandon him to die, in obedience to the dream, or perhaps in order to make the dream come true?), the Jesuit triumphs while exposing the foolishness of relying on dreams. Philosophical duels of this sort appear several times. Jean de Bre´beuf wrote that he was ‘‘often in conflict’’ with the stubborn defenders of superstitions like belief in dreams among his Huron hosts, and adopted the tactic of ‘‘show[ing] them that they are wrong, and mak[ing] them contradict themselves, so that they frankly admit their ignorance, and the others ridicule them.’’40 In 1637, when a Montagnais revealed a dream that the majority of his people would never accept Christianity, Le Jeune explained how the missionaries ‘‘tried to show them that dreams were only dreams—that is, deceit and falsehood,’’ adding that they had warned their Montagnais hosts ‘‘if thou dreamest that no one will be converted, we will dream that you all will be converted; which of the two will tell the truth?’’41 Metropolitan readers had little basis on which to judge whether these were faithful renderings of actual conversations; in them, however, Jesuit writers sought to delineate two opposing philosophies on dreams and to expose the prodream side as ignorant, rendering their Amerindian characters much like the confounded peasants and tumbling cripples of the Ballet des songes.

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While the Relations adopted the position that ‘‘dreams are only dreams,’’ they nevertheless identified dreams as a real source of peril for the missionaries. The Amerindian ‘‘faith in’’ dreams as commandments meant that ‘‘if they dream that they have to kill us, they will surely do it if they can.’’42 The threat posed by Amerindians’ murderous dreams about Jesuits are frequently mentioned in the early Relations.43 It bears mentioning that none of these dream threats came to fruition. Although a Montagnais dreamer accurately predicted the death of ‘‘some’’ Frenchmen—two men who encountered an Iroquois raiding party were killed in 1633—there is no evidence that Jesuit missionaries who were eventually killed in New France were targeted as the result of an Indian dream.44 Nevertheless, dream-induced threats seem to have offered Jesuit writers tantalizing rhetorical opportunities. They were, first, means to assert once again the epistemological superiority of Christianity. The claim that ‘‘sometimes a word, or a dream, or a fancy or even the smallest sense of inconvenience is enough to cause [the Huron] to ill treat, or set ashore, or I dare say, murder one’’ underscored that Huron beliefs were arbitrary and changeable.45 When harnessed to statements like Le Jeune’s observation that ‘‘we may die in God in dying for a dream,’’ the threat of death on the basis of a dream served to underscore the real vulnerabilities of a small group of Europeans in an alien culture. But on a different level, it also spoke of the missionaries’ willingness to sacrifice themselves for the Christian cause, a willingness that called for the identification and devotion of metropolitan readers. In spite of its frequency as a theme, the Relations report from very early on that the Jesuit tactic of logical argument and ridicule was not a successful tactic for convincing potential converts to abandon traditional dream beliefs. In fact, the missionaries report Amerindians citing potent arguments to defend their belief in dreams. When Le Jeune tried to convince Manitougache (also known as Joseph La Nasse) in 1633 that it was foolish to pay heed to dreams, the Montagnais ‘‘replied to me that all nations had something especially their own; that, if our dreams were not true, theirs were; and that they would die if they did not execute them.’’46 The very next year, when Le Jeune again ‘‘ma[de] sport’’ of belief in dreams, the Montagnais asked what better source of knowledge he had to offer. Le Jeune’s report of the conversation has him responding, ‘‘I believe in him who has made all things, and who can do all things.’’ This affirmation of faith made the missionary the target for ridicule. ‘‘Thou hast no sense, how

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canst thou believe in him, if thou hast not seen him?’’ his Montagnais hosts ask.47 The ‘‘dreams are only dreams’’ theme, then, worked rhetorically on two levels, regardless of whether it ‘‘worked’’ as a conversion strategy in the earliest years of the mission. First, it reinforced a Christian epistemological claim about ‘‘the world as it really is’’ versus the arbitrary, and potentially demon-inspired, Amerindian view. At the same time, it spoke subtly of the paradox of faith, the necessity of exchanging that which is seen for that which is invisible. Even when their conversion strategies might fail in the face of Amerindian intransigence or violence, then, Jesuit writers could transmit to their metropolitan readership a lesson about the faith. In the years following, dream talk acquired a second important rhetorical function in the Jesuit Relations: it permitted Jesuit authors to chronicle the process whereby individual Amerindians converted to Christianity. For these men imbued with Catholic Reformation sensibilities, true conversion was no external matter of baptism or the rote recitation of prayers. It required an interior and largely invisible set of events—in that sense, a change that occurred in the same ‘‘place’’ as a dream, the inner space that Jesuits envisioned as a battleground between God and evil spirits. As a result, the dreams of specific individuals, and what these men or women did or did not do in response, offered Jesuit authors a compelling way to probe and to narrate the interior transformations of their catechumens. At the outset of the mission, for example, few things had more powerfully signaled the right disposition than a commitment to ‘‘attach no importance to dreams.’’48 French readers followed the story of the Montagnais leader Makheabichtichiou, who seeing that belief in dreams was forbidden, promised, ‘‘I will believe in them no more’’; and that of the Huron man who in 1638 demonstrated his progress toward conversion not only by his ‘‘great delight in praying to God’’ but also by ‘‘ridicul[ing] his dreams.’’49 In contrast, the proud Montagnais shaman Pigarouich identified ‘‘belief in our dreams’’ as one of five customs he vowed never to give up (the others were love for women, eat-all feasts, the desire to kill Iroquois, and recourse to sorcerers). Not long afterward, however, even Pigarouich was privately discussing the possibility of giving up these practices of which the Jesuits expressed such disapproval. He confessed to Le Jeune that after dreaming of the Jesuits’ ‘‘house’’ (church) years before, he had been healed, asking, ‘‘Is that not a good thing?’’ Pigarouich’s willingness to follow his own dream insight and embrace what now seemed the superior power of

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Christianity earned him no praise, however. Le Jeune, ever cautious of approving dream-inspired changes in behavior, wrote that he ‘‘took pains to show him the vanity of their dreams.’’50 A potential convert’s commitment to avoid the sin of following or believing in dreams sometimes extended to an overscrupulous intention to avoid noticing dreams, or indeed to avoid dreaming altogether. The Jesuits recorded stories of catechumens who, when roused by a dream, spent the remainder of the night in a prayer vigil to avoid the occasion for sin. They wrote of others who, on waking from a dream, offered the following prayer of contrition, which echoes the advice of Loyola: ‘‘My God, I have dreamed; but since you do not wish us to depend upon our dreams, I shall not trouble myself about them.’’51 Others, the missionaries reported, made the avoidance of dream sharing or even dreaming itself a shared discipline, such as the potential convert whose already-baptized wife woke him when he sang during his sleep, ‘‘afraid that he might sing some superstitious song.’’52 Paying no heed to dreams was an important step in conversion in part because the Relations suggested that catechumens and recent converts often experienced troubling dreams. Missionaries wrote repeatedly of individuals in the throes of conversion who were assailed by doubts, temptation, and horrors as they slept. One young Huron girl, Franc¸ois Le Mercier wrote in 1637, dreamed on the eve of her baptism that accepting the sacrament would literally cause her death, and for a time was so frightened that she utterly refused to go through with the ceremony. The missionaries, applying Jesuit rules of spiritual discernment, managed to convince her that ‘‘the devil was the author of this dream.’’53 Indeed, the missionaries often cited such frightful dreams as evidence that Indian souls were in thrall to demons, who angrily defended their territory in the face of Jesuit efforts to expel them and extend the dominion of salvation.54 The ostensible drive to murder French people that came in dreams was sometimes attributed the same demonic territorial defense. Occasionally, however, stories of dreaming also served to signal a successful conversion, providing French readers evidence of a deep inner transformation. In such cases—less numerous than those of troubling dreams—the anxiety and impure thoughts that troubled sleeping converts were replaced by heroic Christian virtues of chastity and courage. Missionary Je´roˆme Lalemant reported in the Relation of 1642 about a young Huron man, Tsondatsaa, baptized Charles, who testified to unbelieving neighbors

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about his refusal to follow dreams. One night, Charles reported, he dreamed that his entire people were ridiculing him, enticing him to return to the old ways, and even threatening him. The Huron way, the Jesuits suggested, would have been to do what the dream suggested. But ‘‘I refused all their presents, I laughed at their threats, and felt more courageous than ever I was when fighting in battle against my [waking] enemies,’’ Charles asserted.55 Modern readers will speculate about whether a real-life Charles’s interpretation of his dream might have reflected the convert’s effort to reconcile Huron and Christian cultures by exploiting notions of heroism that were common to both. Within the confines of the Jesuit-authored narrative about Charles in the Relations, however, Charles’s dream rather precisely dramatized the Jesuit notion of the soul as a site of constant battle between good and evil forces. Moreover, the account carefully specified the circumstances that excused Charles’s decision to talk to others about his dreams. Rather than participating in the forbidden practice of dream sharing and interpretation, Lalemant’s Charles tells his dream only in order to signal his resistance to it. His story also attests to catechumens’ developing powers of discernment; Charles’s progress is marked in his ability to identify and reject evil even in the passive state of slumber. As the account of Tsondatsaa/Charles points out, Jesuit authors did not universally reject dreams and their significance. Indeed, as we have seen, to deny the possibility that God communicated in dreams was to venture outside the limits of seventeenth-century Catholic orthodoxy. Nevertheless, when reports of holy or inspired dreams did appear in the Jesuit Relations, Jesuit authors typically framed these stories with extreme caution. Sometimes they revealed their discomfort by hesitating to apply the word ‘‘dream’’ to visionary episodes that clearly arrived when the seer was lying down with his or her eyes closed. Instead, authors sometimes reported that someone had ‘‘seen in their sleep’’ or experienced a ‘‘vision, or a dream.’’56 Participating in the exchange of dreams, or being responsible for making them ‘‘come true’’ was a position that missionaries avoided whenever possible and felt a need to justify in the Relations. In 1638, Franc¸ois Le Mercier told the story of a sick old woman, who summoned Jean de Bre´beuf to tell him of a ‘‘beautiful dream’’ of a young French man baptizing her whole village, which gave her ‘‘great delight.’’ Bre´beuf did not immediately baptize the woman, as the dream suggested, choosing rather to ‘‘instruct her as to the nature of dreams’’ and communicate the tenets of the faith. Only after

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she demonstrated knowledge and again ardently sought baptism did Bre´beuf grant her request for the sacrament. The text further refutes that the´ baptism was a result of the woman’s dream by noting that the missionary performed the sacrament only because he felt ‘‘strongly inspired’’ to do so.57 Jesuit authors preferred to tell conversion stories in which Amerindians turned away from dreams; deviations from the rule, like this one, necessitated some form of explanation and excuse. The two functions of dream stories in the early Jesuit Relations—to illustrate that ‘‘dreams are only dreams’’ and to narrate inner dramas of conversion—worked together as a logical pair insofar as dreams were associated with ‘‘savage’’ identity and proved false. In the ideal scenario, as we have seen, potential converts realized via ridicule that their dreams were meaningless, or via fear that they were demonically inspired. They then rejected the falsehood and temptation of dreams to join the Christian fold. The effort on the part of Jesuit authors to fit the dream stories of New France into this pattern, the pattern that best conformed to Catholic Reformation theology and the prudent approach of Jesuit spirituality, helps to explain the privileged place that dreams occupy in the Jesuit Relations. It also illuminates one way that Jesuit authors clearly distorted the historical record as part of their quest to promote the spiritual interests of their readers. This distortion was to overstate the supposed contrast between the dream beliefs of Amerindian peoples and those of French men and women. As we have seen, the uses that Montagnais and Huron people made of dreams—healing, finding things, spiritual insight or prophecy—were not altogether different from those that French men and women confessed on the other side of the Atlantic. Why else have schoolboys dance to warn a Paris audience not to believe in their dreams? It was, in part at least, to convince imperiled European souls to turn away from such dangerous practices that Jesuit missionaries wrote so extensively about dreams in New France. Yet by telling stories of the dreamers of New France, Jesuit authors were reinforcing associations between belief in dreams on the one hand and ignorance and savagery on the other. These associations, as Mary Baine Campbell has argued, have powerfully shaped modern Western attitudes to dreaming.58 Moreover, the missionaries’ overstated account of a culture in which dreams were supposedly all-powerful still influences scholarly understanding of Amerindian cultures.

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A closer look at the Jesuit Relations makes it clear that in seventeenthcentury New France, just as in the metropole, dreams failed to fall neatly into categories. The supposedly superior European epistemological position regarding dream knowledge dissolved into a demand to believe, counterintuitively, in things unseen rather than seen. Dreams, for all their falsehood, were sometimes true, and true dreams could come to Amerindian Christians as well as Europeans. As Bre´beuf put it, ‘‘There is nothing which does not serve for salvation when God pleases, not even dreams.’’59 Difficult acts of discernment were required, and Jesuit authors sometimes indicated their own uncertainty. For people on both sides of the Atlantic in the midseventeenth century, dreams remained a potent source of power and mystery.

Chapter 9

‘‘My Spirit Found a Unity with This Holy Man’’ A Nun’s Visions and the Negotiation of Pain and Power in Seventeenth-Century New France emma anderson

On the 25th of September, 1662, after communion, I thought that I saw before me Father Bre´beuf, all brilliant with light, wearing a crown shining with glory, and in the place of his heart a dove as white as snow, which showed the gentleness and meekness which this servant of God has demonstrated during his life. This dove had written on each of the great feathers of his wings the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and the eight beatitudes. In one hand he carried a palm, and in the other he pointed at the said dove. He was wearing a long alb and he had a stole of golden embroidery and gleaming white pearls, and seemed to me to be all surrounded by rays of light.1 It was in these imposing terms that Catherine de Saint-Augustin, a young Hospitalie`re nun in 1662 Que´bec, first envisioned Jean de Bre´beuf, the deceased Jesuit missionary who was to be, for the last six years of her life, her spiritual mentor and celestial director from beyond the grave. Though Catherine, as a newly professed sixteen-year-old, arrived in Canada from Normandy almost exactly seven months before Bre´beuf’s gruesome slaying by Iroquois invaders in March 1649, the two never met in the flesh. This otherworldly vision inaugurated a mystical relationship that would, in the last years of Catherine’s life, bring together preoccupations that had long dominated her spirituality and imbue them with a new, galvanizing meaning

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and purpose. Her spiritual relationship with Bre´beuf, whom she saw as a martyr of Christ and the celestial protector of Canada, would lead Catherine increasingly to perceive and present herself as his spiritual heir, and imaginatively to recast in feminized terms what had been, in this colonial context, the masculine path of martyrdom. At Bre´beuf’s behest, Catherine would sculpt for herself a secret role as a voluntary victim for Canada, sinlessly suffering at the hands of demons to deflect God’s righteous anger away from her beloved adopted country, and to redeem it from its sin and apostasy. Catherine’s determination to share with Bre´beuf his task of protecting and preserving Canada’s religious integrity had several important effects. Her visionary presentation of the deceased Jesuit missionary as a powerful thaumaturgical figure passionately engaged in the spiritual defense of the beleaguered colony helped to establish Bre´beuf’s enduring cult in New France and beyond.2 But even as she shaped his post-mortem image, Catherine’s association with Bre´beuf gave her entrance to otherwise inaccessible masculine corridors of power during her lifetime, and positioned her for veneration alongside her martyred mentor after her own death. Catherine’s double life as a model seventeenth-century nursing sister who nightly traversed the veil separating the living and the dead, leaving terrestrial for celestial realms, allowed her at once to exemplify and thwart the gendered religious expectations of her time. Her transposition of martyrdom into terms more befitting her life as a cloistered Hospitalie`re nun entailed the substitution of demonic for aboriginal tormentors, underlining the already widely perceived equivalence between demons and native peoples in the early modern colonial imagination. Studying the highly charged visionary encounter between Jean de Bre´beuf and Catherine de Saint-Augustin has the potential to reveal much about midseventeenth-century Catholic mysticism in both its universal and local dimensions. The importance, for Catherine, of the communion of saints and her experiential affirmation of the reality of invisible, cosmic worlds, both angelic and demonic, reveals the continuing power of traditional paradigms in the inner lives of Catholics amidst the conceptual chaos of Protestant challenge and Trentian rebuttals. Catherine’s pronounced emphasis upon the necessity of reparative suffering illustrates the continuing relevance, in French mysticism, of the ideas of Jean Eudes and Louis Lalemant. But Catherine’s stress on endurance also reflects the realities of life in mid-seventeenthcentury Canada, where endemic violence and chronic uncertainty prompted missionaries—male and female—to view themselves as living martyrs.

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Without a doubt, the emotional glue that most closely bound Catherine to her celestial mentor, Jean de Bre´beuf, was what she perceived as their shared experience of suffering on Canadian soil—suffering that Catherine saw as having a range of profound meanings and benefits. In accepting the role of an innocent victim expiating the sins of Canada, Catherine found a satisfying explanation of her increasingly disturbing spiritual experiences, which included demonic infiltration. The generosity of Catherine’s selfdonation through the twin avenues of practical service and mystical selfoblation has likewise formed the basis of her veneration immediately following her death and in our own time.3 To understand Catherine’s growing perception, in the years before her death, that she shared a mission of voluntary suffering with her deceased Jesuit mentor on behalf of what was both a geographical and an imaginative entity—Canada—it is necessary to return to her early spiritual formation in Normandy. There, she was first exposed to conceptions of spiritual self-sacrifice, and to the increasingly strident rhetorical presentation of Canada as a ‘‘via dolorosa’’ in the colonial writings of the Jesuits. Born in May 1632, Catherine Symon de Longpre´ was the third of four children in what was, even by the standards of the time, an exceptionally pious family. Sent at the age of two to live with her grandmother, Rene´e Jourdan, the little girl was exposed from an early age to the practical realities of what would become her future vocation as a Hospitalie`re nun— nursing the sick and providing for the poor—as her grandmother’s household in Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte served as a makeshift hospital and relief center.4 The seeds of Catherine’s service to the suffering and of her desire to emulate invalids’ edification of others, then, were planted early. Encouraged by her grandmother to voice her precocious religious questions to a visiting Jesuit, tiny Catherine allegedly asked the priest ‘‘how to know if one is doing God’s will.’’5 The Jesuit replied by gesturing to one of her grandmother’s patients, stating that by accepting his physical afflictions with a good grace, the man was atoning for his own sins and those of his infamously errant mother. When Catherine indignantly remarked that this seemed unfair, Father Malherbe gently rebuked her, saying, ‘‘My little one, Our Lord had done nothing wrong and yet he suffered very much. You asked me what it is to do God’s will—well, it pleases God when we endure all and pray fervently for our neighbor.’’6 Having received her first communion at the age of eight, postulant Catherine entered the Hospitalie`re convent in Bayeux at twelve, hot on

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the heels of her older sister, Franc¸oise.7 Yet her new religious life, with its strenuous duties of caring for the ill, was an almost seamless continuation of the devout rhythms of her grandmother’s household. Founded by Catherine’s relative,8 its atmosphere was made even homier by the presence of several members of her immediate family. In 1647, after the death of her husband, Catherine’s grandmother herself took the veil, thus continuing, under institutional auspices, the vocation of care for the sick and poor she had begun as a private citizen. The very seamlessness and gentleness of her transition into religious life may well have left Catherine searching for a more definitive, dramatic statement of her desire to sacrifice all for Christ. For as she entered the Bayeux convent, Catherine was heard defiantly to remark to the novice mistress: ‘‘I am firmly determined in the idea that assuredly I will be a religious. . . . [D]o to me all that you will, you will not deny me the habit, and I will not leave this place except to go to Canada.’’9 Even before she settled into her formal religious training, Catherine had apparently conceived a strong desire to live out her vocation in the Hospitalie`re’s sister institution—the Hoˆtel-Dieu of Que´bec. Catherine’s youthful fascination with Canada was likely nourished by the yearly accounts of missionary activity sent by the Jesuits, in the form of their published Relations, which narrated the spiritual and temporal events that had occurred in the colony during the previous year.10 Replete with proto-ethnographic descriptions of the beliefs and practices of aboriginal people and dramatic accounts of conversions and miracles, and darkly haloed by the omnipresent threat of violence, the Relations enjoyed a wide reading audience within and even outside pious circles in France, because its accessible yet erudite style gave glimpses into a distant, fascinating, and frightening world. The Canada of which Catherine read in the mid- to late 1640s was a very particular rhetorical creation of the Jesuits, one that intimately reflected their dramatically changing perceptions of the success of their erstwhile mission. Early Catholic missionaries to New France presented it as a new Eden, blithely forecasting native inhabitants’ quick embrace of the faith. Repeated failures to realize these wildly optimistic predictions prompted the emergence of a new, grimmer Jesuit conception of Canada, which stressed the more austere pleasures of its forbidding meteorology and geography as a means of self-purification. Jesuit attention turned from the salvation of others to the missionaries’ own spiritual development as

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Canada’s forbidding landscape came to be seen as a new hermetic desert, the ultimate locale—with its mosquitoes and brutal cold—for selfabnegation. By the mid-1640s, when Catherine’s attention was piqued by the Relations, Jesuit rhetoric was shifting yet again as increasing native opposition to Christian missionization11 and escalating intra-aboriginal conflict turned Jesuit tropes of martyrdom from a rhetorical conceit into the real expectation of encountering violence at the hands of native peoples—a fear from which Catherine herself, even in her stronghold of Que´bec, would not be immune.12 Catherine’s own religious destiny, then, was profoundly linked with the evolving rhetorical self-presentation of the Jesuit order. The Relations shaped her understanding of Canada as a dangerous school of sanctity on the outer limits of the known world. Given Catherine’s preoccupation with suffering, service, and self-perfection, and her youthful ambition to fulfill family prophecies by becoming a ‘‘great saint,’’ she would have found Canada’s association with the privation that breeds spiritual purification irresistible.13 Choosing Canada allowed Catherine to demonstrate her willingness to abandon her natal country and her intertwined biological and religious ‘‘families.’’ The young nun’s sense of being led irresistibly westward, then, represented the projection of her own spiritual preoccupations onto Canada’s real and rhetorical landscape. Catherine’s determination to go to Canada sparked a serious crisis within her family and religious community when her adolescent wishes, now framed more formally in her blood-signed vow ‘‘to live and to die in Canada, should God open the way for her’’ came into alignment with the desperate desire of the Que´bec institution for new recruits.14 Her parents’ opposition matched Catherine’s own adamance. Her father, Jacques Symon de Longpre´, even resorted to legal action to try to prevent her voyage to Canada, motivating the personal intervention of the queen regent, Anne of Austria, on Catherine’s behalf.15 To royal interference was added saintly intervention. According to hagiographic lore, her parents’ intransigence was finally overcome by the same publication that had originally fostered their daughter’s holy ardor: the Jesuit Relations. Frustrated by his youngest daughter’s wilfulness, her father happened to pick up the recently published Relation of 1647, which recounted the ‘‘double martyrdom’’ of Jesuit missionary Isaac Jogues. By sun and candlelight, Longpre´ read of Jogues’s initial capture and torture by the Iroquois in 1642 and his dramatic escape to France, where his disfigured and missing fingers earned him the tears of a

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queen—Catherine’s own royal savior—and the commendation of a pope.16 But, ill at ease with his new-found celebrity, Jogues returned to Canada and accepted an assignment to Iroquoia, despite his all-too-accurate presentiments of doom. Jogues’s 1646 slaying by his former captors was presented, in the pages thoughtfully fingered by Monsieur de Longpre´, as a heroic martyrdom in defense of the Catholic faith. Shamed by his stalwart resistance to his daughter’s vocation, Catherine’s father ceased his opposition.17 In winning this showdown with her parents at the age of fifteen, Catherine displayed the audacity, willfulness, and certainty of purpose that would prove to be key components of her character. Catherine’s 1648 departure was not as easily accepted by her religious ‘‘family.’’ Indeed, the Hospitalie`res of Bayeux never ceased to agitate for her return. It was the young nun’s unexpected temptation to acquiesce that proved one of the most grueling of the many ‘‘crosses’’ she was to bear in her adoptive homeland. Yet in her letters home, Catherine never failed to articulate her love for Canada, or to communicate her strong sense of a mysterious spiritual destiny uniquely available to her there: It is not that I believe that I would not be happy if I were to return to France, or that I would not be content there, or that God would not give me occasions to suffer and to become a great saint, if I follow the graces that He would there give me, but when I reflect that He has called me to this place, I believe that He meant me to have something in particular in this country, given that He has given me here all of this satisfaction and contentment, where there is nothing else other than God. And this I can assure you . . . there is no need to search for anything other than God alone, for in Him we find everything that is most wonderful and agreeable.18 Such sentiments, frequently expressed in Catherine’s calm, confident, and cheerful letters home, existed in the strongest possible contrast to her agonized confessions to her Canadian spiritual director of her strong temptation to return home.19 Filial duty to reassure her worried elders and the desire to justify her own rash decision, likely influenced Catherine’s epistolary self-presentation. Despite her stress upon the spiritual connection binding together the convent in Bayeux with her home ‘‘here at the end of the world,’’20 there can be no doubt that the rude conditions and isolation

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of Que´bec would have presented a real culture shock for Catherine.21 Catherine’s strong temptation to leave Canada would be resolved only in her mystical relationship with Jean de Bre´beuf during the last years of her short life. Catherine’s second thoughts about coming to Canada were certainly well justified. During her twenty years in the colony, two distinct waves of upheaval and violence would sweep over the fragile French colonial enclaves. Just months after Catherine’s August 1648 arrival, New France would face its most devastating setback to date as long-simmering tensions between the Iroquois and the Wendat [also called Huron], intensified by colonial pressures, would erupt into open warfare.22 During Catherine’s first spring in Canada, the more southerly Iroquois would sweep the Wendat from their traditional homelands, in the process leaving the Jesuits’ missions in charred ruins and a handful of their black-robed number dead.23 As this conflict unfolded in a more westerly war theater, danger to well-protected Que´bec was more psychological than physical. But given the unpredictability of the situation, the threat seemed very real. Writing to Bayeux in 1651, Catherine candidly remarked: ‘‘we are in no hurry to finish the rest of our buildings, because of the uncertainty in which we find ourselves regarding whether or not we will long remain here.’’24 The ominous sense of insecurity that pervaded the colony would have done little to reinforce her crumbling sense of religious vocation in a country whose harsh realities were proving to exceed even their most dramatic rhetorical presentation. Not until the summer of 1650, when winter had finally relinquished its icy grip on the rivers of New France, would Catherine finally meet the man who would have such a profound impact upon her future spiritual direction—acting as a sort of spiritual matchmaker in her visionary liaison with Jean de Bre´beuf. Paul Ragueneau, the erstwhile superior of the now defunct ‘‘Huron’’ mission, was the putative leader of a desperate, ragged, and gaunt band of Wendat and Jesuits who straggled into the city at the end of July. Ragueneau had presided, in the preceding years, over an unfolding nightmare: enduring increasingly strident Wendat opposition to the Jesuits’ presence and watching, horror-struck, as the Jesuits’ more southerly missions fell, domino-like, to the Iroquois. In the early spring of 1649, while the snow was yet thick on the ground, Ragueneau watched the smoke rise from Bre´beuf’s torture-fire, and touched the mangled, eyeless remains of

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the man who had long been his own superior. As the Jesuits’ regional director, Ragueneau had had to make agonizing decisions. It was he who had opted to remain in Huronia despite strong intimations of an impending crisis. It was he who decided to burn their headquarters, Sainte-Marie, the work of a decade, and he who ordered the evacuation to the dubious refuge of Christian Island. It was he who ordered the disinterment and boiling of Bre´beuf’s bones, which had rested in the grave a scant month, so that his holy relics could accompany the survivors on their ill-fated escape. With inadequate provisions and shelter, Jesuit and Wendat would together endure, during the winter of 1649–50, a period of almost unbelievable privation and hardship.25 Vanquished as a nation and swept from their traditional lands, Wendat survivors fell to starvation and exposure like buds exposed to a killing frost.26 Ragueneau witnessed the suffering and death of men, women, and children whom he saw as being under his spiritual care and personal protection. Returning to Que´bec in the spring of 1650 and assuming the direction of Catherine de Saint-Augustin’s spiritual life, Ragueneau was a man haunted by the tragic events of his recent past. But Ragueneau was deeply committed to articulating for the Society of Jesus, his church, and his colony what he believed to be the profoundly religious meaning of this horror-filled episode. In his new role as superior of the entire Canadian mission, Ragueneau would rewrite the recent past as an epic of courage and, unbelievably, hope for the future. How did he propose to effect such a transfiguration? Through the alchemical logic of martyrdom and the yet deeper Christian narrative that inspires it: a logic which has the power to render defeat into spiritual victory and death into unfading glory. In the early 1650s, Ragueneau reframed recent events so as to inspire the morale and commitment of a deeply shaken colony and fulfill a deeply personal debt of honor to his fallen colleagues. In the same period in which he assumed spiritual direction of the then eighteen-year-old nun, Ragueneau was writing a series of moving, highly influential accounts of the deaths of Bre´beuf and his brethren that interpreted them as martyrdoms in the canonical sense, a move that brought comfort and a sense of pride to a society wavering in its sense of religious purpose.27 For, he asked, was not the blood of martyrs the seed of Christians? In Ragueneau’s rhetoric, the deaths of his colleagues and even the sacrifice of the infant Wendat Church itself were the sacred harbingers of a future flood of conversions inspired by these seminal events. As the colony faced its greatest challenge to date, Ragueneau’s adoption of the language of martyrdom represented his

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answer to the most commonly and nervously whispered question of the early 1650s—whether, after the fall of Wendake, the French colonial enterprise was still viable. As the object of his spiritual care, Catherine de Saint-Augustin presented for Paul Ragueneau a microcosm of the challenge he faced in the colony at large. His direction of the young nun thus mirrored his outreach to Que´bec’s jumpy, disillusioned religious elite. To address Catherine’s most pressing spiritual problem—her strong temptation to return to France—Ragueneau needed to articulate attractive, compelling reasons for her to remain. He appealed not only to Catherine’s strong sense of spiritual duty but also to her long-standing ambition, dangling before her the seductive possibility that the dangerous circumstances she faced might be the very crucible in which a saint could be forged. Ragueneau invited Catherine to connect her experiences with the unfolding narrative of sacrifice and redemption in the New World that his own writings were attempting to construct. He encouraged her to perceive her original decision to come to Canada, and her ongoing—if embattled—commitment to remain, as a heroic sacrifice that echoed the martyrs’ more physical, fatal surrender of their lives for Christ. As their relationship deepened, Ragueneau soon perceived that he had in Catherine a creative and powerful ally in the formation and dissemination of a colonial cult of the fallen figures he so wished to honor, particularly Jean de Bre´beuf.28 In carefully outlining arguments that the Jesuits who had fallen across New France in the 1640s were true martyrs of the Catholic faith, and meticulously assembling and preparing the evidence necessary for their beatification, Ragueneau’s chosen role in the promotion of the martyrs’ cult was historical, legalistic, and forensic. His efforts were international in scope, being addressed to Paris and Rome, to the elites whom Rageneau believed had the power formally to recognize the sanctity of his fallen friends. Catherine’s contributions, however, were in quite another realm, one ideally suited to her role as a nursing sister working with the diseased and dislocated. Whereas Ragueneau fought for the martyrs’ cause with his pen, Catherine’s chosen weapon was their relics.29 While he stressed the past, backing his claims of Bre´beuf’s sanctity with concrete incidents from his blameless life and heroic death, Catherine, through her ritual use of the martyr’s bones, emphasized the deceased missionary’s continuing presence and his ongoing commitment to ‘‘his’’ colony. By mixing his pulverized

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bone in the soups and beverages she presented to those in her care, Catherine was able to obtain spectacular cures and conversions that were popularly attributed to Bre´beuf’s power and sanctity.30 Confessor and penitent thus established themselves, in the 1650s, as the twin promoters of Bre´beuf’s cult to erudite European and popular colonial audiences respectively. Yet until 1662, Catherine ‘‘knew’’ Bre´beuf only indirectly—through her ritual manipulation of his powerful relics and through Ragueneau’s mediating memories. But with her spiritual director’s unexpected departure for France, everything would change. Paul Ragueneau’s 1662 overseas voyage was born of desperation. For two years, concern about the imminent attack and sack of Que´bec had been so intense as to prompt the nightly evacuation of both of its cloistered female orders, the Hospitalie`res and the Ursulines, who were brought to the less exposed Jesuit residence.31 The days of the colony seemed numbered. A lull in the conflict in the mid-1650s had prompted ambitious Jesuit efforts to convert Iroquois nations to Catholicism. But these fruitless overtures— efforts in which Ragueneau had been a key player—were long over. Concerned that colonists’ strong fears of invasion were once again undermining their sense of religious mission and shaken by the Jesuits’ second great evangelical failure in a decade, Ragueneau left to argue for greater Gallic military involvement in Canada’s defense. Though he anticipated a speedy return to his beloved colony, once in France Ragueneau was reassigned domestically. He would never see Catherine, or Canada, again. Yet having planted within his penitent the seeds of a strong devotion to Bre´beuf, Ragueneau now observed from afar as, in his absence, they flourished and bore mystical fruit. If Catherine and Ragueneau were together recasting the Passion in North America, with Bre´beuf in the lead, then she herself enters this drama not as the Magdalene, the spiritual intimate of Christ, but rather as Paul, the outsider who, never having met Jesus, became indelibly linked to him through visionary experiences. Catherine began to commune with the martyr only six weeks after Ragueneau’s departure.32 Her dramatic visions of the deceased saint allowed her to assume the lead in the popularization of Bre´beuf’s cult and to communicate on his behalf with the colony’s largely male religious elite. Despite the grandeur of Catherine’s foundational 1662 vision of Bre´beuf in glory, with his crown, his palm, and his dove, and her own previous

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collaboration with the deceased Jesuit through the thaumaturgical manipulation of his bones, their mystical relationship began in an atmosphere charged with suspicion. Bre´beuf did not triumphantly emerge from Catherine’s religious imagination like Athena from the head of Zeus, but began his career as her celestial spiritual director as a surprisingly marginal figure within her already crowded visionary universe. For Catherine had long been a seer. Even as a child she had allegedly been favored with communication from saints, the Virgin, and Christ himself. Bre´beuf’s apparitions were important to Catherine not because they were unusual, but rather because of their power to resolve long-standing problems in her spiritual life and to bequeath to her a powerful new identity and direction. Since 1660, Catherine had harbored within her body a host of demons who brought with them malignant physical, psychological, and spiritual effects, not the least of which was their ability temporarily to delude her with false celestial manifestations.33 Indeed, just before she began to commune with Bre´beuf, Catherine had experienced a series of visions which she would subsequently condemn as false apparitions inspired by Satan, circumstances which left her initially distrustful when Bre´beuf made his first and most visually magnificent appearance.34 At the beginning of their relationship, Catherine evaded Bre´beuf, replying only indirectly to his impassioned pleas for her assistance in saving Canada. But as she began to experience the effects of his forceful intervention in her long-standing spiritual conflict, Catherine started to appreciate that the martyr was calling her to a shared mission uniquely suited to her talents and predispositions. Four discrete shifts in Catherine’s visionary encounters with Bre´beuf— internalization, possession, mutuality, and role fluidity—fostered her growing engagement with him and enabled her to articulate more clearly their emergent joint venture: to protect their beloved adopted country through spiritual mediation and voluntary suffering. Over time, Bre´beuf’s frequent appearances to Catherine made him less an external presence than an intimate part of Catherine’s own inner life: an aspect of her own best self, a sort of spiritual superego, a key player in her repetitive internal drama of stormy spiritual ambivalence, temptation, despair, and ultimately, triumph. As Bre´beuf became a fixture of Catherine’s inner world, he lost his visual distinctiveness and was more often ‘‘sensed’’ or ‘‘felt’’ than ‘‘seen.’’35 From her initial preoccupation with the visual details of Bre´beuf’s attire and expression, which definitively marked

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him as a martyr of Christ, she gradually came to prefer more intuitive, internal language: In making my thanksgiving after holy communion, I sensed that Father Bre´beuf was present, and wanted me to listen to something . . . my resistance notwithstanding, my spirit found again a unity with the presence of this holy man. . . . I sensed the presence of this good Father in a manner which was very intimate, even though there was in it nothing visible or exterior.36 In the evocative analogy of her Mother Superior, written after her death, Catherine came to sense Bre´beuf’s presence ‘‘as a blind man, when near the fire, is sure that the fire warms him, and that he is not far from it.’’37 Bre´beuf’s purported presence seems to have functioned as something of an interpretive overlay upon Catherine’s own actions or perceptions as, having described what she thought or did, she would habitually add: ‘‘it seemed to me that Father Bre´beuf was making this known to me’’ or ‘‘it seemed to me that Father Bre´beuf had made me do this.’’38 But to describe Bre´beuf as an increasingly internalized part of Catherine’s spiritual life, or an external name affixed, through modesty or psychological dissociation, to her own best tendencies, would be to miss a critical aspect of their relationship as Catherine herself experienced it. Internalized or not, Bre´beuf had lost nothing of his autonomy, independence, or potency. Catherine’s relationship with the deceased Jesuit was as replete with fierce struggles for dominance as it was with harmonious unanimity, particularly in its early phases. She frequently mentions her sharp resentment of Bre´beuf compelling her to act contrary to her will: At the time of the prayer and of the mass, Father Bre´beuf made me pray to God . . . in ways which he suggested to me word for word, and did not give me the liberty to resist him or to disobey him, such that my obedience was very constrained and forced. He had me start with [an] act of adoration, which I repeated, despite myself, several times, that God would be glorified by all of his creatures. . . . Finally, when he allowed me to complain, I said: ‘‘Monsieur! I will not say, like Job, that you torment me admirably, but I resent the heaviness of your hand, and its cruelty.’’ . . . The same Father Bre´beuf made me repeat many other acts, [and] finally, for the conclusion, himself

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said to God for me those things that it wasn’t possible for me myself to say, and I said that I also wanted them, and agreed with all my heart, but then, it wasn’t possible for me to say a word to the contrary.39 Discerning just who Catherine means when she says ‘‘I’’ in such sentences is difficult. For, during her six-year mystical association with Bre´beuf, Catherine also experienced demonic interference, if not outright possession.40 In her writing, Catherine often used the first person pronoun to express completely contradictory perspectives, even on the same event or idea, thus disclosing the extent to which she experienced her will and identity as fractured and effaced, not simply by the demonic presence within her, but also by Bre´beuf’s. In fact, some of Catherine’s most gripping descriptions of her painful servitude allude not to her almost routine torture by internal demons, but rather to being forced by Bre´beuf to observe the sacraments despite her demons’ fierce resistance: I have an extreme horror of approaching the Holy Sacrament. In truth, I would rather be in the hands of the Iroquois, and enter into their fires [i.e., be tortured], than to receive Our Lord, as the pain at that point is beyond what I can express. And this is the principal cause of my pain, to see myself obligated despite myself to suffer union which Our Lord condescends to make with me, in giving himself to me. When I am feeling a very great hatred towards him [Christ], I cannot suffer this union as anything less than a type of martyrdom.41 Catherine’s audacious inversion of treasured Catholic concepts, in particular her conflation of communion with martyrdom illustrates how, in her writing, Satan sometimes seized the quill. Ragueneau’s attempt, as her biographer, to present her bizarre and perilous spiritual situation in the most flattering and heroic light possible contrasts sharply with her own observation of her internal realities, which are far less rose-tinted.42 He presents the innermost citadel of Catherine’s soul as unvanquished by her demonic besiegers, granting her a valiant, if diminished selfhood. But Catherine frankly, if grimly, acknowledged that the demonic blasphemies and impurities of her hellish guests represented her own thoughts and feelings.43

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The internalized figure of Bre´beuf thus became, in Catherine’s inner drama, the holy counterpoint of her entrenched demonic infiltration. Bre´beuf ‘‘counter-possessed’’ Catherine, forcing her religious observance against her own compromised will, keeping her on the spiritual straight and narrow, preventing her from falling wholly into despair, and preserving the secrecy of her tumultuous inner life in the crowded convent.44 Ultimately, then, Catherine credited a male, invasive force for her own ability to continue to perform her feminine role as a Hospitalie`re nun even as she fended off demonic infiltration. Though Catherine evidently took great comfort in Bre´beuf’s internal presence, she paid a heavy psychological price for his intervention in the form of a prevalent sense of dissociation from her own most virtuous actions. Catherine seems to have perceived herself as wholly enslaved to Bre´beuf’s powerful, holy, and often persecuting will, which she either detested or adored depending upon the waxing or waning strength of her resident evils. Yet she also emphasized a reciprocal sense of Bre´beuf’s needy dependency upon her. Her initial vision of the saint in glory presented him as an unambiguously imposing and magnificent figure—until he spoke. Then his wistful desperation presented a bizarre contrast with the power connoted by the symbols of his martyrdom, his rich attire, and his celestial surroundings. Urgently appealing to Catherine for her help, Bre´beuf bemoaned the spiritual backsliding of the country for which he had given his blood: ‘‘ ‘Who will have pity on me? Who will comfort me? . . . What great pain it gives me to see the country for which I have worked so hard, and where I have shed my blood, become a land of abomination and impiety,’ and he addressed himself to me in particular, saying: ‘Sister of Saint Augustine! Do you have any compassion for me? Would you please help me?’ ’’45 It is in Bre´beuf’s impassioned helplessness that we see Catherine’s unique contribution to the construction of his post-mortem character. This is something completely new. As presented by Ragueneau, Bre´beuf was a figure to be venerated for his power and emulated in his sanctity. Any poignancy surrounding him comes from the tragic circumstances of his untimely death, and not, as Catherine would have it, from his current saintly impotence, peering down at Canada like a mournful bird from his magnificent perch in indifferent celestial realms.46 But in a sense, Catherine had to stress Bre´beuf’s heavenly helplessness and desperate need for a terrestrial ally in the reform of Canada, because this is the only way that her own emergent role became possible.

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Catherine’s presentation of Bre´beuf as a celestial figure of despairing magnificence, though seemingly incongruous, in fact drew upon centuries of similar, female visionary encounters with Christ, visions in which awe and pity commingled to pique renewed religious fervor in those that experienced them. In Ragueneau’s absence, Catherine’s visions of Bre´beuf gradually came to reflect the psychologically compelling contradiction of powerful powerlessness that was at the heart of her personal Christology. Through the medium of her visions, Catherine was able to craft dramatic encounters in which the roles played by Bre´beuf, herself, and Christ became, over the years, increasingly congruent and mutually reinforcing. In casting Jean de Bre´beuf as a North American Christ, Catherine was following centuries of precedent that stressed the congruency of martyrs’ deaths with the original slaying of the God-man they so revered. As Catherine remarked ‘‘I was moved to thank our Lord Jesus Christ for all of the graces he had given to Father Bre´beuf, but most of all for having made him [Bre´beuf] comparable to Himself by his suffering.’’47 In her visions, the deceased Jesuit’s palpable anxiety regarding the spiritual state of Canada, whose present sinfulness rebuked his recent sanctification of its soil with his blood, bore marked similarities to Christ’s traditional rebuke of sinners, whose negligence of their religious duties mocked his own salvific death. Bre´beuf’s reaching out to Catherine for assistance in completing his mission markedly resembled Christ’s ongoing mystical intervention into salvation history through the agency of His saints. In Catherine’s religious imagination, both Christ, on the universal stage, and Bre´beuf, in the local arena, were anxious onlookers of the spiritual lives of their followers, eager to see whether their self-offering would be honored or spurned. The increasingly apocalyptic tenor of Catherine’s visions in the early 1660s only heightened the similarity of these two celestial male figures, each of whom, in their anger and sadness, demanded immediate spiritual reformation and threatened imminent retribution. The fluidity of identity that existed in Catherine’s mind between Christ and Bre´beuf can also be seen in her analogous presentation of the negative reactions of her internal demons to the ritual objects that connoted or incarnated the holy men’s ongoing spiritual presence in the world. As we have seen, one of Catherine’s most painful trials while infested with her demons was the reception of the Eucharist. But her response to Bre´beuf’s relics was markedly similar: ‘‘at the beginning of holy Mass, in going to take the relic of Father Bre´beuf, and carry it to my mouth to kiss it, my

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arm wouldn’t move and I couldn’t make it approach my mouth no matter how hard I tried. . . . They [the demons] have a great hatred and an extraordinary rage against this holy Martyr.’’48 The inability of the demons to share her body with the Real Presence was similar to their fear and hatred of touching, through her lips, the deceased Jesuit’s holy bones. Moreover, Catherine associated Bre´beuf very strongly with the Eucharist. Not only did she receive the sacrament from his invisible hands, but Bre´beuf habitually utilized the presence of the Host to intimidate her demonic tormentors.49 The fluidity of identity that characterized Catherine’s perception and presentation of these two male figures also blurred the lines between her and Bre´beuf. Even as Catherine cast the deceased Jesuit as a new Christ, she stressed the parallels between Bre´beuf’s story and her own, such that she began to perceive herself as his terrestrial heir and surrogate.50 Catherine stressed her emergent role as a vicarious victim for Canada’s sins and Bre´beuf’s own fate, despite the obvious dissimilarities between the two scenarios. Bre´beuf’s 1649 martyrdom was, of course, graphically physical. In the final hours of his life the captured missionary endured a variety of painful torments that left his body a charred, heartless, and blinded wreck. Analogizing Bre´beuf’s violent, ‘‘masculine’’ death at the hands of his flesh-andblood antagonists to her own circumstances as a living, cloistered nun, then, required all of Catherine’s rhetorical finesse. Fortunately, the transposition of male, physical torment into vicarious female agony has a venerable history within Catholicism. The seven dolors of the Virgin, for example, stressed her sharing of her son’s agony as she witnessed his torment.51 In comparing Bre´beuf’s horrifying end to her own ongoing spiritual suffering, Catherine took full advantage of this Catholic association between femininity and vicarious anguish. Catherine had to address the different durations of their respective agonies by creatively elasticizing the temporal parameters of ‘‘martyrdom.’’ Though, as Elaine Scarry has remarked, the experience of pain is infamous for its ability to elongate time, Bre´beuf’s intense torments were nevertheless finite, lasting about three hours.52 The whole of his passion, from initial capture to death, transpired well within the confines of a single day. By contrast, Catherine’s living spiritual ‘‘martyrdom’’ lasted for years, allowing her to suggest that what her torments might have lacked in physical intensity they more than made up for in duration.53

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Transposing the identity of the purported persecutors in their respective martyrdom scenarios was simple. In a sense, it had already been solved by Catherine’s long-standing demonic infiltration. The reality of Catherine’s claustration—as well as the failure of the much-feared Iroquois invasion to materialize—necessitated that her torment take place at the hands of an insubstantial foe who could magically materialize, undeterred by the convent’s strong log walls. The facility with which the transposition of the tormentor from ‘‘Iroquois’’ to ‘‘demon’’ was effected is revealing of the prevalent colonial tendency strongly to associate aboriginal peoples with darkness and disorder. Catherine’s effective substitution of one for the other would, in its turn, contribute to lingering tendencies to demonize native peoples.54 If Bre´beuf was Christlike, and she was like Bre´beuf, Catherine reasoned, then ergo, she also resembled Christ. Under the spiritual direction of Bre´beuf, during the last six years of her life, Catherine’s Christological visions also intensified. Increasingly, Christ appeared as an irate judge, demanding her reparation, and as suffering redeemer, inviting her imitation. On New Year’s Day 1663 Catherine saw Christ with a vial of divine wrath in his hand, preparing to spill it over Canada in chastisement for its many sins. His arm held back by a phalanx of saints, Bre´beuf amongst them, the enraged heavenly King was—for the moment—restrained.55 Catherine’s prophetic warnings of Christ’s anger with the infant colony was dramatically fulfilled by a violent earthquake that occurred some six weeks later, an event she was widely credited with having predicted.56 Her apocalyptic visions of an angry, judging Christ terrified Catherine, breaking rather than facilitating her rapport with the frightening apparition.57 But Christ’s suffering had the opposite effect, inspiring Catherine’s pity and imitative self-immolation. In one vision, Catherine saw Christ receive his wounds, and marveled that his side wound was so deep that she could perceive his beating heart.58 Seeing Christ flagellated moved Catherine to score her own back so deeply that ‘‘I thought that I would be utterly overcome by the heaviness of the blows raining down upon me.’’59 The parallels with Catherine’s visionary relationship with Bre´beuf are undeniable. In both cases, Catherine’s communion with these male figures is thwarted by their grandeur or their anger, and galvanized by their suffering or helplessness. Arguably, Bre´beuf truly entered Catherine’s inner, imaginative world only when she began to sympathize with his helpless

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sadness regarding his adopted country’s religious laxness. Like her engagement with Bre´beuf, Catherine’s Christological visions appear to have clarified her perception of her own long-standing spiritual problems and struggles. In a letter to her French relatives, written in the early 1660s, Catherine crystallized her self-identification with the suffering Christ under the tutelage of Bre´beuf by explaining her Canadian vocation in striking new terms, writing that ‘‘she was attached to the cross of Canada by three nails which she could not ever detach herself from. The first nail being the will of God, the second, the salvation of souls, and the third, her vocation in this country, and the vow which she had made to die here. . . . [S]he added that even if all of the other religious wanted to go back to France, if she was permitted, she would prefer to remain here alone to consume her life in the service of the poor savages and the sick of this country.’’60 With this striking image of her crucified self, Catherine was finally able fully to articulate the full spiritual meaning of the vow—to live and to die in Canada— that she had impulsively undertaken as a fifteen-year-old in France. Catherine’s strenuous mystical life, coupled with her physically demanding work as a nurse, compromised her already fragile health. On April 20, 1668, she took to her bed, consumed with fever. Eighteen days later she was gone, never to reach her thirty-seventh birthday. Always precocious, always impatient, always eager, she had gone into glory, leaving her older sisters, sisters of both the flesh and the vow, to mourn her premature passing. Catherine’s death provoked an outpouring of grief and nostalgia on both sides of the Atlantic.61 Having long vied with one another over her loyalties, Bayeux and Que´bec now joined together in mourning Catherine. Both those who had known her as the pert Norman adolescent, enthralled with the notion of Canada, and those who had labored beside her within the walls of the Hoˆtel-Dieu de Que´bec, staunching blood and soothing fever dreams, testified to her compassion, competence, and selfless work as a hospital nun. These sterling virtues, coupled with her apparently irresistible charm of character and appearance,62 won her the effusive respect and affection of her female peers, many of whom judged her to be a saint purely on this basis.63 But Catherine’s death also drew back the curtain on a hitherto hidden part of her life. For the first time, her Mother Superior and female peers learned of Catherine’s desperate struggles with invading demons and her intense mystical partnership with Bre´beuf. While the visionary was alive,

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the secret of Catherine’s spiritual adventures had been restricted to a handpicked circle of the colony’s religious elite. Within this small group, the young nun’s status as Bre´beuf’s terrestrial mouthpiece had given her considerable power, allowing her to summon and dismiss bishops in his name. Among others, Catherine would imperiously command the authoritarian Bishop Franc¸ois Laval, demanding that he participate with her in a special novena culminating on the anniversary of Bre´beuf’s death.64 Adored by her female peers for her humble service to the injured and ill, Catherine enjoyed unparalleled prestige and power in the eyes of those who knew of her communication with the heavenly beyond and her secret suffering on behalf of the sins of the colony.65 But Catherine did more than hitch her own spiritual wagon to Bre´beuf’s star. Indeed, she helped his star rise by transposing his cult into a whole new temporal key. Unlike Ragueneau, Catherine was unencumbered by vivid memories of the living Bre´beuf, a freedom that allowed her to focus less on the martyr’s past accomplishments than on what he could do for his colony both now and in the future. Her charismatic manipulation of his relics in a spate of celebrated healings, conversions, and exorcisms helped to create a popular sense of Bre´beuf’s heavenly intervention on behalf of Canada. Catherine’s mystical association with Bre´beuf, who was himself canonized in 1930, would prove a crucial factor in her own elevation to the altars with her beatification in 1989. Both external and internal, self and other, punisher and victim, Bre´beuf’s flexible persona allowed Catherine to assume a number of identitybuilding roles in relationship to him that crystallized in her a more coherent sense of self and inspired her to articulate a compelling spiritual agenda for herself and her colony. By communing with Bre´beuf to the extent that their identities seemed almost to merge, and by constructing her spiritual destiny as a continuation and a fulfillment of his, Catherine was able to resolve her long-standing doubts about her own identity and mission, and to make sense of the disturbing spiritual symptoms to which she seemed particularly prone. As the spiritual inheritor of Bre´beuf’s unfinished legacy, she spiritualized and feminized martyrdom to make it consonant with her own experiences as a living, cloistered nun. As a Christlike victim of Christ’s own righteous anger with the sinful colony, Catherine was inspired by Bre´beuf to redeem, through her suffering, the sins of others: ‘‘I desired, then, to be the object and the cause of his [Christ’s] wrath, and I offered myself to be the Victim of his Divine Justice. It seemed that Father Bre´beuf wanted this

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of me, and since he wanted this I offered myself.’’66 Though similar in their broad outlines to those of other female mystics of her time, notably Margaret Mary Alacoque, Catherine’s visions were unique in the way that they simultaneously obliterated and emphasized gendered differences and transposed the universal and the local. Catherine effectively rewrote the Christ story in duplicate, first by relating it to a local martyr, Bre´beuf, and then by usurping it, through a series of imaginative transpositions, for herself. In so doing, she helped to make Canada, by virtue of its very geographic marginality, spiritually central to the seventeenth-century Atlantic world.

PART III The Eighteenth Century Prophecy and Revival

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Chapter 1 0

The Unbounded Self Dreaming and Identity in the British Enlightenment phyllis mack

John Rutty (1697–1775) was an Irish physician and Quaker elder whose diary was unique in being published as written, at his own insistence, without being censored by the Quaker leadership. The diary contains an extraordinarily detailed, day-by-day account of Rutty’s struggle to overcome his most serious ingrained weaknesses: a tendency to anger, an equal tendency to overeat, and—most distressing by far—an inordinate love of science. Rutty agonized over his digestion because it interfered with his concentration in meetings for worship (‘‘Ate too much today. To eat and drink to live is the point! Animal, be humbled!’’). He berated himself for hitting a servant and for being obsequious toward his superiors (‘‘A shocking view of myself: fierce to inferiors, viciously complaisant to superiors or equals, for the base views of profit of false honour’’). Chiefly, he worried that his motives for doing science were corrupt. There was too much interest in the intellectual pleasure of experiment, and too little in the ultimate purpose of science as an act of reverence toward God (‘‘At a meeting: Lord give more love, and less ardour for knowledge!’’).1 In 1776, a year after his death, there appeared another autobiographical work, an account of a dream (he called it ‘‘a dream, vision, or ecstasy’’) that Rutty had experienced twenty-two years earlier and that had empowered him to change his life.2 Being very ill after a dangerous fever, ‘‘I perceived that something extraordinary was about to agitate my mind. Conscious of my own weakness, and fearful of being deceived, I determined to minute down in writing everything that should happen, together with

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the exact time to be noted by my watch, which I placed on the table before me for this purpose, in order that whatsoever should occur might be rigorously examined, after the exercise impending should be finished.’’3 During a sleep that lasted for two hours and forty minutes, Rutty dreamed that he was in heaven, where God had enlightened his understanding. ‘‘They seem to have been rather certain sensations,’’ he wrote, ‘‘[rather] than argumentative propositions offered to the mind; this much however is certain, that by virtue of those impressions my heart was captivated with the love of God to a greater degree than ever in my life before.’’4 He felt himself to have undergone ‘‘an instantaneous change from a morose and perverse to a sweet state, and a certain superior and uncommon power supporting me.’’ This was succeeded by a state of acute depression and loss of faith, followed by the recognition that God’s nature is a mystery: ‘‘the wind bloweth where it listeth, and we hear the sound thereof, but knoweth not where it cometh.’’5 The account culminated in a short address to the medical community in which Rutty defended the spiritual veracity of the dream by pointing to his own subsequent change of personality: ‘‘My peace and joy flows as a river, a joy equal to which I never felt before, so solid, so steady, so rational.’’6 The diary reveals that this last affirmation was a product of wishful thinking, for Rutty actually struggled until his death to recapture the sense of fullness that he had experienced during his single epiphany. Yet the dream did change and sweeten Rutty’s life. It allowed him to practice science, seek spiritual friendship, and observe the duties of a Quaker elder with at least an intermittent feeling of confidence and equanimity. On April 6, 1775, about two months before Rutty’s death, the Methodist leader John Wesley wrote in his journal, ‘‘I visited that venerable man, Dr. John Rutty, just tottering over the grave, but still clear in his understanding, full of faith and love, and patiently waiting till his change should come.’’7 While its language is wholly untypical of eighteenth-century religious writing, Rutty’s account foregrounds two elements that characterize many texts of the period: a vagueness about the nature and origin of dreams or visions and a focus on the emotions generated by the dream rather than the dream’s specific message. The dream’s opacity made him depressed and confused, but the feeling of sweetness and the improvement in his temperament over many years reinforced both his own will to selfimprovement and his belief that he lived and acted under the direction of a divine power. For the rest of his life, Rutty observed the anniversary of

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his dream as the single moment when he had experienced an intimation of his own self-transcendence. It seems obvious why dreams were important, and important in this particular way, to people who viewed themselves not only as religious seekers but as participants in the cultures of sensibility and the Enlightenment. Dreaming was not the only form of supernatural experience in eighteenthcentury religious culture, but it was the most credible means of experiencing a connection to the divine or inward change of heart in a culture where ‘‘enthusiasm’’ was a term of derision, and where to be modern was to be, at best, skeptical and at worst, contemptuous of the outer reaches of spiritual practice. Unlike the increasingly suspect phenomena of convulsions, ecstatic prayer, or political prophecy, dreaming was an internal experience whose physical and verbal manifestations were virtually nonexistent but whose emotional impact was extraordinarily intense. This intensity was partly the result of the different sleep pattern that existed in preindustrial Europe, when people generally experienced a first and second sleep with an intervening period of conscious or semiconscious wakefulness. This interval heightened the immediacy of dreams just experienced and the thoughts and visions (or perhaps these were also dreams) that followed them.8 Dreams were a universal source of fascination even though there was no general consensus about their nature. In popular and learned discourse, dreams were defined as predictive or prophetic, signs of artistic inspiration and also of indigestion. The physician William Buchan thought bad dreams were caused by heavy meals too close to bedtime, while the mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg imagined angels, demons, and sirens entering the dreamer and fighting for her or his attention.9 The physician Erasmus Darwin thought dreams had something to do with glands, while the surgeon John Hunter claimed that dreams are independent of the mind-body connection, which is how we can distinguish between sensation and thought, ‘‘without which all would be a dream.’’10 The famous painting by Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, was displayed in the 1780s, when the common understanding of ‘‘nightmare’’ as a creature who sat on a sleeper’s chest was evolving into the kind of ‘‘fiendish dream’’ that would torment the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.11 Popular street literature attributed dreams to demonic possession or a witch’s spell, and dreams could also be ‘‘caught’’ like a contagious disease. This combustion of opinions and theories gained momentum in the later decades of the century, as the discourse on dreams intersected with broader discussions of consciousness and perception, and as the revolution in France inspired a

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wave of apocalyptic dreams and visions in the 1790s. In short, one might well be an agnostic or a skeptic about the occult meaning or supernatural origin of dreams, but no one would deny that dreams mattered. They mattered especially because, as people became less interested in decoding specific dream images and more preoccupied by theories of physiology or psychology, an entirely new set of questions emerged about the relationship of dreaming to character and human agency. It is this relationship that I want to explore in the dream analysis of Calvinists, Quakers, and Methodists. Not only did their dreams constitute a religious experience in themselves; their hyperreality and the indeterminacy of their meaning and origin provided a rich and flexible language with which to think about religious ideas in the context of an individual’s life.12 But dream interpretation was a cultural as well as an individual project, and the ideas of will and moral responsibility discussed in dream theory played out differently within different religious groups. For Arminian Methodists and Quakers, whose theology was based on the concepts of free will and human perfectibility, the liminality of dreams was a source of creativity rather than anxiety. Far from rendering the dream less reliable as a source of inspiration and education, the perception of an image or message that seemed to come from both inside and outside the self exactly mirrored the fusion of agency and self-transcendence that was the central principle of their psychology and the goal of their religious discipline.13 They were thus inspired to create a virtual dream culture, sharing their dreams with others and using even their nightmares as spurs to self-improvement. For Calvinists, whose theology emphasized predestination, divine Providence, and a denial of free will, dreams reinforced the individual’s feeling of passivity, either positively, as in the dreams of the abolitionist minister John Newton, or negatively, as in the nightmares that tortured the poet William Cowper. In the long run, dream analysis generated new self-perceptions and anxieties that suggest a rethinking of the bounded, individualized self that historians and literary critics have perceived in late eighteenth-century culture.14 The outer boundaries of the self may have become more clearly demarcated and less subject to external influences (both human and divine), but the unconscious self in the depths of the individual’s psyche had become an even more unfathomable mystery. For readers of the Spectator, a popular magazine published in the early eighteenth century, the burgeoning study of dreams brought very good

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news. According to the Spectator’s coeditor, Joseph Addison, dreams are generated from within the dreamer but independently of the conscious self; they thus offer proof of one of the preconditions of immortality, the capacity of the soul to exist and act independently of the body: ‘‘Dreams . . . are an Instance of that Agility and Perfection which is natural to the Faculties of the Mind, when they are disengaged from the Body. The Soul is clogged and retarded in her Operations, when she acts in Conjunction with a Companion that is so heavy and unwieldy in its Motions. But in Dreams it is wonderful to observe with what a Sprightliness and Alacrity she exerts her self.’’15 More succinctly, in a poem by John Newton, author of the hymn ‘‘Amazing Grace’’: One thing, at least, and ’tis enough, We learn from this surprising fact; Our dreams afford sufficient proof, The Soul, without the flesh, can act.16 Matters became more complicated when it was suggested that, if dreams originate from inside the dreamer rather than from the activities of spirits, they must reflect the dreamer’s own nature. If this is so, are we then to blame for our nightmares, or for dreams of sin or criminality? In modern parlance, must we own even our bad dreams? Daniel Defoe, a Calvinist and a Puritan, was a firm believer in the reality of apparitions and encounters with the devil, and his rendition of dream experiences emphasized the susceptibility of the unconscious self to the wiles of Satan and the dreamer’s responsibility for acts over which he has no control. Defoe recounted the story of a man who dreamed of robbing an unprotected child, and who felt as guilty as if he had actually done the deed: ‘‘I robb’d it . . . in my Imagination, and deserve as much to be hang’d for it, as if I had actively committed the horrid Fact at noon-day.’’17 Defoe’s dream theory reflects the moral conundrum at the heart of Calvinist spirituality, the coexistence of powerlessness and responsibility that followed on the Calvinist doctrines of Providence, predestination, and the denial of free will. God has designated certain people as the Elect, and it is his activity, or Providence, that allows them to progress toward perfection. Yet even though we are ignorant of God’s motivation and are not the authors of our own spiritual destinies, we are still responsible for our moral acts. This is what literary critic Susan L. Manning calls the ‘‘dark theological

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horror of Calvin . . . [where] all notions of authority and responsibility come to seem radically ambiguous, and certainly unattainable.’’18 It is surely no accident that several of the most complex and influential theories relating to character and agency, including dream theory, were developed in Calvinist Scotland. The article on dreams in the new and influential Encyclopaedia Britannica, probably written by the Scottish scientist and writer William Smellie, was an attempt to bring this ‘‘dark theological horror’’ under rational control by asserting that the activity of our unconscious selves is a reflection of our true character: ‘‘it is generally agreed, that the imaginary transactions of the dreamer bear always some relation to his particular character in the world, his habits of action, and the circumstances of his life. . . . A person whose habits of life are virtuous, does not in his dreams plunge into a series of crimes; nor are the vicious reformed when they pass into this imaginary world.’’19 In his Philosophy of Natural History, Smellie pushed the argument even further, arguing that the unconscious behavior of our dream selves is actually more revelatory of our true nature than the deluded fancies of our waking life: That vice which is most frequently and most luxuriously indulged in our dreams, may safely be esteemed our predominant passion. Though motives of interest, decency, and the opinions of our friends, may have restrained us from actual gratification, and created a delusive belief that we are no longer subject to its sollicitations [sic]; yet, if the imaginary gratification constitutes an agreeable dream . . . we may freely conclude . . . that those motives which deter from actual indulgence are not the genuine motives which virtue inspires. . . . We should reflect that, during sleep, the mind is more ingenuous, less inclined to palliate its real motives, less influenced by public opinion, and, in general, more open and candid, than when the senses are awake.20 The implication is clear: though we may lie, our dreams tell the truth, and we are therefore responsible for the acts and emotions of our dream life even though consciousness, will, and agency are absent. Dreams of Providence and passivity had vastly different coloration and emotional significance as they were applied in individual cases. For John Newton (1725–1807), former slave trader, Anglican evangelical minister, and

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strict Calvinist, dreams and visions induced a feeling of elation and heightened energy, a sense that in every thought and action, he was directed and buoyed up by a benign Providence.21 In his autobiography, An Authentic Narrative of Some Remarkable and Interesting Particulars in the Life of ***** (1764), an account of his sinful past and glorious redemption written in the form of personal letters, he recounted an important cautionary dream that occurred when he was in danger of becoming entirely alienated from God. In the dream, he received a ring that promised good fortune, but then threw it into the sea, goaded by a devilish figure who chided him for being weak and unreasonable in trusting to the powers of a ring: ‘‘My tempter, with an air of insult, informed me, that all the mercy God had in reserve for me was comprised in that ring, which I had willfully thrown away. . . . Suddenly . . .[a person] came to me . . . and retrieved the ring . . . but he refused to return it, and spoke . . . ‘If you should be intrusted with this ring again, you would very soon bring yourself into the same distress; you are not able to keep it; but I will preserve it for you, and whenever it is needful, will produce it in your behalf.’ ’’ Newton apparently forgot the dream for several years, until he found himself in a life-or-death situation similar to the one in the dream: ‘‘A time came, when I found myself in circumstances very nearly resembling those suggested by this extraordinary dream, when I stood helpless and hopeless upon the brink of an awful eternity: . . . However . . . I found the benefit; I obtained mercy. The Lord answered for me in the day of my distress; and . . . he who restored the ring, (or what was signified by it), vouchsafes to keep it. O what an unspeakable comfort is this, that I am not in mine own keeping!’’22 The dream taught Newton what trust in God really means: Providence determines all, personal agency is wholly absent, and this is ultimately for our own good. In his newly awakened state, Newton saw the most trivial and random acts as having a divine meaning and purpose, specifically directed toward his own spiritual progress: ‘‘The wise and good providence of God watches over his people from the earliest moment of their life, over-rules and guards them through all their wanderings in a state of ignorance, leads them in a way that they know not, till at length his providence and grace concur in those events and impressions which bring them to the knowledge of him and themselves.’’23 After an extended conversion experience, Newton became an abolitionist, hymn writer (most notably, of course, of ‘‘Amazing Grace’’), and minister in the market town of Olney, in Buckinghamshire. There he welcomed a new resident, the gentleman poet William Cowper (1731–1800), who had

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retired from London life because of his fragile mental health. Newton and Cowper shared a commitment to strict Calvinism, but in their perception and experience of divine sovereignty and their own passivity, they were poles apart. Newton’s sense of being both directed and energized by Providence opened the way to a life of activism as God’s agent in the world. Cowper saw himself as a passive victim, a hunted animal, God’s castaway, excluded even from hell for the crime of failing to commit suicide as an act of submission. Man disavows, and Deity disowns me Hell might afford my miseries a shelter; Therefore hell keeps her everhungry mouths all Bolted against me.24 In 1787 Cowper’s cousin Lady Hesketh wrote to him about a friend, the bluestocking Elizabeth Carter, who published an account of a dream in the popular journal, The Rambler. She described a nightmare succeeded by a dream of a beautiful woman who called herself ‘‘Religion’’ and chided those who dwell on melancholy thoughts: ‘‘Return then with me from continual misery to moderate enjoyment, and grateful alacrity. Return from the contracted views of solitude to the proper duties of a relative and dependent being. Religion is not confined to cells and closets, nor restrained to sullen retirement. These are the gloomy doctrines of superstition.’’25 Cowper, whose own dreams were relentlessly hideous, replied dismissively and with extreme bitterness: I have a mind . . . as free from superstition as any man living, neither do I give heed to dreams in general as predictive, though particular dreams I believe to be so. . . . As to my own peculiar experience in the dreaming way I have only this to observe. I have not believed that I shall perish because in dreams I have been told it, but because I have had hardly any but terrible dreams for 13 years, . . . They have either tinged my mind with melancholy or filled it with terrour, and the effect has been unavoidable. If we swallow arsenic we must be poison’d, and he who dreams as I have done, must be troubled. So much for dreams.26 Cowper asserted that the ‘‘texture’’ of his dreams implied an external, malevolent cause, but ultimately the cause was immaterial. He said this

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again in a letter to his friend William Hayley, writing in a tone of emotional exhaustion that, regardless of his dreams’ origins, whether constitutional or imaginary or spiritual, he remained a hunted man: ‘‘The terrours that I have spoken of would appear ridiculous to most, but to you they will not, for you are a reasonable creature, and know well that to whatever cause it be owing (whether to constitution or to God’s express appointment) that I am hunted by spiritual hounds in the night-season, I cannot help it. You will pity me and wish it were otherwise, and though you may think there is much of the Imaginary in it, will not deem it for that reason an evil the less to be lamented.’’27 Cowper’s apparent indifference to the question of provenance and his insistence that he was not superstitious may have stemmed from the fact that these two letters were written to a skeptic and a denizen of the Enlightenment. Writing to Samuel Teedon, a local schoolmaster who had become a kind of personal dream therapist, he expressed the full force of his terror of ‘‘the Enemy’’: On the night of Tuesday the 13th, I enter’d on the practise recommended by you . . . praying to be deliver’d from all perils and terrours. That night my sleep was frequently broken, but not much disturb’d. . . . Friday Novr. 16.—I have had a terrible night—such a one as I believe I may say God knows no man ever had. Dream’d that in a state of the most insupportable misery I look’d through the window of a strange room being all alone, and saw preparations making for my execution. That it was but four days distant, and that then I was destined to suffer everlasting martyrdom in the fire, my body being prepared for the purpose. . . . Rose overwhelm’d with infinite despair, and came down to the study execrating the day when I was born with inexpressible bitterness. And while I write this, I repeat those execrations, in my very soul persuaded that I shall perish miserably and as no man ever did. Every thing is, and for 20 years has been, lawful to the Enemy against me.28 In his Authentic Narrative, John Newton likened his own spiritual sojourn to that of heroic biblical figures: Jacob, Joseph, Samson, David, Jonah, and the people of Israel—powerless outcasts, but still God’s Chosen People.29 William Cowper also imagined his outcast status as a condition of biblical proportions, but his comparisons were to the mad Saul and, most tellingly, to Job: ‘‘The night has become so habitually a season of dread to me, that

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I never lie down on my bed with comfort, and am in this respect a greater sufferer than Job, who, concerning his hours of rest, could hope at least, though he was disappointed. I cannot even hope on that subject, after twenty years’ experience that in my case to go to sleep is to throw myself into the mouth of my enemy.’’30 In the writings of John Newton and William Cowper, their decoding of a dream’s specific symbolism was far less important than the emotions they experienced on waking. Newton’s ‘‘unspeakable comfort’’ and Cowper’s ‘‘inexpressible bitterness’’ were in themselves evidence of their dreams’ authenticity and their own spiritual health or sickness. The emotions generated by dreams were just as important in Quaker and Methodist communities, where salvation was known and measured, not by miracles or ecstatic visionary experience, but by feelings. What distinguished these two groups from Calvinists was not a difference in feeling tone or emotional receptivity, but a different conception of human agency. The central principle of Quaker theology was the doctrine of the Inner Light, the existence of a spark of divinity in the soul of every human being. That Inner Light is the essence of both individual conscience and universal truth, and the source of each person’s capacity for moral activity and spiritual restoration. Preaching during the chaos of the Civil War period, the earliest Quakers expressed these principles by adopting the language of angry Old Testament prophets, chastising the moral laziness of their neighbors, attacking corrupt institutions, and following their own individual ‘‘leadings’’ to speak or act. By the mid-eighteenth century, Quakerism had evolved from a movement of radical visionaries into a community of respectable citizens. Their new mode of worship was called ‘‘quietism,’’ a form of collective meditation while waiting for the Light to become manifest in preaching, a condition they attained less often as Friends became more successful in the worlds of business and trade. Methodism was a renewal movement within the Anglican Church that began in the 1730s and burgeoned in a heightened emotional atmosphere of revival meetings and outdoor preaching. Like Quakers, Arminian Methodists believed in free will and the possibility of universal salvation. They also shared a theology that combined complete passivity with a high degree of personal agency. No one can achieve anything—either human virtue or religious salvation—without Christ. Once converted, however, the believer’s effort to achieve perfection or sanctification was dependent on a surrender of personal will, coupled with an iron determination to conquer sin.

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Many of the hymns written by Charles Wesley convey this fusion of weakness and self-abasement with self-confidence or agency: Yield to me now—for I am weak, But confident in self-despair! Speak to my heart, in blessings speak, Be conquered by my instant prayer.31 Quakers of the second and third generations aimed to achieve a condition of inward calm and outward poise or equanimity, while Methodists, moved by theories of sensibility as well as by revivalist preaching, were more demonstrative and occasionally (their critics said) more hysterical. Both groups hoped that their religious practice—including dream practice— would imbue them not only with new moral resolution but also with the emotions of compassion and contentment, or ‘‘sweetness.’’ Of course individuals often looked for ‘‘proofs’’ that their dreams were supernatural messages, reading backward in time for dream predictions that later came true, or seeing a face that resembled one seen in a dream.32 But proofs of supernatural origin were far less important than the emotional momentum generated by the dream, the increased capacity both to submit to God (and to Methodist and Quaker discipline) and to change one’s consciousness and behavior; indeed, the change itself was the proof that the dream was truly sent by God. As the Methodist leader John Wesley emphasized over and over again, the point was not to achieve a religious epiphany but to effect an entire and permanent change of heart and life: ‘‘What I have to say touching visions or dreams is this: I know several persons in whom this great change [the new birth] was wrought, in a dream. . . . And that such a change was then wrought appears (not from their shedding tears only, or falling into fits, or crying out; these are not the fruits . . . whereby I judge, but) from the whole tenor of their life, till then many ways wicked; from that time holy, just, and good.’’33 Wesley’s receptivity to dreams and visions obviously encouraged similar interests in the Methodist community at large. Less obvious but more important is that fact that Wesley, who tried to control so many aspects of his followers’ spiritual lives, did not try to control their interpretations of individual dreams, or indeed of any potentially supernatural experience. This laissez-faire approach to dream interpretation was different from that of eighteenth-century Quaker leaders,

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who, as pillars of an entrenched institution, established a virtual dream police that censored or edited the diaries and dreams of the rank and file.34 For both Quakers and Methodists, their most intense moments of anxiety occurred during the period of prayer and introspection that climaxed in the conversion experience and in the moments of self-doubt and loss of faith that, for most individuals, recurred intermittently throughout life.35 These anxieties reached a higher pitch in what I would call ‘‘conversion nightmares,’’ dreams that convinced the religious seeker that he or she was fallen and in need of God’s mercy.36 Unlike the ‘‘lovely,’’ ‘‘adorable’’ Jesus of Methodist hymns or the figure of God as Wisdom in Quaker writings, the God imagined in Methodist and Quaker nightmares is a judge, someone to whom the worshipper is in debt, someone he or she has betrayed, someone who wants to hunt the dreamer down. Thus the Quaker Abiah Darby, who let an impulsive early marriage deflect her from her vocation to preach, dreamed of being chased by huge men on horses who threw stones at her. In another dream, fearful of God’s ‘‘dreadful resentment,’’ she tried to hide, but saw him staring at her through the parlor window, then through another window, with a look of amazement and horror on his face.37 Francis Stamper, in a dream that recalls those of William Cowper, thought that God was a mighty king who sent spies to search out rebellion and execute his death warrant, but in mercy only smashed his bones.38 Often the dreamer was attacked by wild animals. James Rogers had to walk through a field full of snakes to reach the physician who would cure him, while Sarah Ryan dreamed that she was weeding a garden where the new green plants turned into snakes that wrapped themselves around her legs.39 Because seventeenth-century Quakers had believed themselves to be already living in the millennium, their yearning for fluidity, a dissolution of boundaries among individuals and between the individual and God, was less problematic than it was for eighteenth-century religious seekers. The early Quakers’ desire for merging was expressed in language of an almost liquified eroticism and infantilism: ‘‘My love . . . flows forth unto thee. . . . Thy love towards me is answered with the same love which flows from me to thee again, which love runs out freely unto thee. . . . In the bowels of love I do thee greet, where we lie down in the arms of love embracing each the other.’’40 In contrast, eighteenth-century Quaker nightmares convey an anxiety about the loss of identity that was the condition of one’s acceptance of the atonement. These dreams expressed a terror of melting or drowning, which the dreamer often interpreted as sinking beneath his own sins or as

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the death of the old self. Mary Fletcher followed a little star down a rough path to a pond of black water like mud: ‘‘I looked on it with dread, saying it will take me over the head.’’41 It is hardly surprising that people who believed that they had to annihilate their own corrupt natures would dream of drowning or of being chased or devoured by animals. And since most animal dreams were recorded by men, it is also plausible to see the animals as related to their ‘‘besetting sins’’ of lust, blasphemy, and anger. Indeed one has to work hard not to read John Bennet’s dream of a long, thick snake sliding along his leg as phallic, especially since at least two of his other dreams were overtly sexual.42 What does surprise the modern reader is that dreams about the sinner’s despair and subsequent justification—the conviction of the power of Christ’s sacrifice to save souls—could give the individual such a great capacity for self-analysis and concrete change; indeed, dreams could inspire whole communities as they were written down and copied into dream books, told and retold in personal correspondence and at meetings. To see how individuals accomplished this, it’s useful to look more closely at the way passivity and agency, and ideas about inside and outside, functioned in Quaker and Methodist psychology. For the justified sinner, the fruit of her or his exercises in self-analysis and self-discipline was the realization that the self had more than one component, and that there existed a core self (often referred to as the soul) where the individual’s emotional integrity resided. If the individual was disgusted by her or his own acts and impulses, it must mean that those impulses did not really belong to this core self; rather, they were ideas put inside the person or suggested by Satan that could be confronted, conquered, and expelled. The sins still belonged to the individual, but they were also alien to that person’s innermost being. She or he might have been corrupted by Satan’s evil influence, but there was a part that Satan didn’t get. William Black distinguished between his soul and his heart: ‘‘O, what a depth of wickedness I found still in my heart? what a den of thieves, a cage of unclean birds, a nest of corruption. . . . Yet . . . they had not the dominion over me. The moment they were discovered, my soul rose in indignation against them, fled to the atoning blood, and looked to heaven for deliverance. I hated, I abhorred them as the spawn of hell.’’43 As individuals tried to analyze their own perceptions of the source and significance of their feelings, dreams helped them to think concretely and dramatically about the complexities of the self. In a culture where witchcraft

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and visions were widely ridiculed as crude and childish superstition, the fantastic figures of the dream universe allowed them to understand their bad selves as monsters and their good selves as spiritual warriors, triumphing over Satan—their bad selves—aided by divine power. A striking example of this process of splitting—externalizing a part of the self in order to defeat it—is an account of a dream by the adolescent Hester Roe, recorded many years after the event. Troubled by both her mother’s strictness and her own propensity to anger, Hester dreamed that she was attacked by a child sent by Satan to torment her. Hester calmly scolded the child: ‘‘I thought it was enraged and tried other methods to perplex me—& wished greatly to provoke me to anger—but I calmly told it—I have strength to overcome you & if you persist to trouble—I must & will deprive you of power. . . . It seemed determined to hurt me & in self defense I shaked & beat it, . . . but . . . it flew at me with tenfold fury, so that now I must kill or be killed—I then threw it on the ground took up an axe & cut off its head—but all this without a single emotion of anger.’’44 In reflecting on the dream, Hester praised God for sustaining her and assuring her, ‘‘I will give thee a Mouth of Wisdom, which all thy adversaries shall not be able to gainsay or resist.’’ Because of their long tradition of political and social activism, the Quakers’ use of dreams as a form of social criticism was far more developed than it was for contemporary Methodists. The minister Samuel Fothergill dreamed of traveling to the Last Judgment, where he saw individuals he knew personally bound in shackles of iron because of their attachment to wealth.45 John Woolman’s vocation as a crusader for the abolition of slavery was given new life by a dream or vision he had while ill with pleurisy. Immediately after the vision he wrote modestly, ‘‘My mind was livingly opened to behold the church, and strong engagements were begotten in me for the everlasting well-being of my fellow-creatures.’’46 But in his recounting and editing of the episode for the wider community two years later, he described even the saliva that allowed him to speak as activated by divine power: ‘‘In the morning . . . my tongue was often so dry that I could not speak till I had moved it about and gathered some moisture, and as I lay still for a time, at length I felt divine power prepare my mouth that I could speak, and then I said: ‘I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me, and the life I now live in the flesh is by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’ ’’47 A

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century earlier, Woolman’s or Fothergill’s dream would almost certainly have been interpreted as a prophetic summons, but the internalization of Quaker worship and Quakers’ new middle-class status made public prophecy both psychologically and socially impossible for all but a very few. A respectable minister like Samuel Fothergill would not stand in the town square and harangue the crowd as a prophet. Instead, sensing the receptivity of his audience as he preached to them in an inn, he introduced his dream of the Last Judgment and its implications for sinners, in a tone that was a model of understatement and civility: ‘‘I find an innocent freedom to relate [my] dream to this present audience, hoping it will prove interesting to the minds of some present.’’48 But despite the restrained rhetoric, the supernatural element of Fothergill’s experience remained. Indeed, the Quaker who traveled in sleep to heavenly places, observed the fates of individuals and nations, and reported his visions publicly to the religious community can plausibly be described, not as a minister or political prophet, but as a kind of shaman. Scholars of the history of dream interpretation mark a shift from the belief that dreams emanate from outside the self to the belief that they emanate from within, as the result of either physiological changes or the activity of the subconscious. Dream interpretation thus became modern when it became characterized by the preeminence of the subject rather than that of the spirit world. Eighteenth-century religious dreamers knew themselves to be at a transition point between these two interpretive poles, a fact that emerges most clearly when we compare their published writings with their private letters and diaries. The Irish physician John Rutty composed an account of his dream as a man of the Enlightenment addressing other scientists. As such, he was careful to present himself as an agnostic on the question of supernatural origins, despite his obvious desire to proclaim the spiritual significance of the event: ‘‘It is recommended to their consideration, whether . . . the instantaneous change of temper from a morose and perverse to a sweet state above observed . . . do not exceed the ordinary power of nature . . . and if they allow this . . . consider how far the answer of the prayer . . . may not imply a supernatural interposition.’’49 Rutty’s account of the same dream in his private diary, published for readers within his own religious community, was composed in a wholly different voice: ‘‘Now and not until now, even in this evening of the day, as at the eleventh

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hour, even in my fifty-sixth year, did God first favor me with this new irradiation of gospel light.’’50 The Scottish writer and editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica William Smellie wrote confidently of the relationship between dreaming and divine Providence and skeptically about dreams as spiritual messages or prognostications. But in his personal memoir, he revealed his interest in dreams as vehicles of communication between the living and the dead, making a pact with a friend that the first one to die would reappear within a year. (The friend appeared in a dream.)51 Mary Shackleton Leadbeater, an Irish Quaker writer, criticized dreams as superstition in her book Annals of Ballitore, a study of local folkways: ‘‘All the learning and piety in our village could not conquer the superstition of the age. A neighbour died of a malignant fever; he had a thrice repeated dream before he took ill, in which a voice called to him three times, ‘Prepare!’ It seems as if intimations of no common import have been occasionally thus conveyed, and that some attention is due to them; but, as all good things are subject to abuse, superstition has made of dreams an instrument of torture to weak and susceptible minds; and, alas! Superstition was one of the sins of Ballitore.’’52 In her private journal, she revealed a far more complex attitude toward her own dreams. Far from attributing dreams to superstition or to physical conditions like a stomachache, she said she got a stomachache because she ignored the message of a cautionary dream against eating sugar, the product of a plantation slave economy: ‘‘I dreamed I ate something which I did not know whether it was sweetened with honey or sugar, but when I had swallowed it I said, ‘I believe I have eat what I should not have eat.’ Next day at Brother’s we had a plum-pudding, which was made of minced-meat. . . . Now tho’ I remembered my dream I ate of it, foolishly. . . . I repented when I had done, and my stomach was sick in the evening.’’53 Whatever the provenance and message of her dreams—and Mary Leadbeater was an agnostic on the question of provenance—she seemed to see them chiefly as revelatory of her own emotional states: ‘‘I dreamed my dear [dead] father was with me. I rejoiced to see him, and strove to manifest every way I could yet great as the disappointment was when awakened, I wondered I did not feel more pain.’’ And again, about three weeks later, ‘‘Awoke very early from a dismal dream of murder and my heart was very sore with its own wound.’’54 She also vacillated about trusting dreams as predictions of the future. Sitting up all night during her husband’s illness, she wanted to experience a reassuring dream, but was reluctant to give credence to the dream when it came: ‘‘One night in the

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height of William’s illness I wished to dream something which might signify his recovery if he were to live, I dreamed that coming from H Haughton’s home I saw our house surrounded with a flood, but as I dreamed saw the entrance quite clear. Yet I did not depend on those encouragements.’’ She was equally ambivalent about giving credence to medicine, knowing that God was the one true healer, ‘‘and though I wished to have all possible medical help, I think I may honestly say I did not place my dependence on them.’’55 If some eighteenth-century dreamers still slept in the clutches of demons or the embrace of guardian angels, the different values of eighteenth-century Calvinists, Quakers, and Methodists shaped their perception of those dreams and the use they made of them while awake. In Quaker communities, the internalization of religious experience from public prophecy to dreaming was accompanied by changes in their experience of personal agency and public authority. The dreamer who woke up and changed her diet or her habits was exhibiting a different kind of selfconsciousness and capacity for action than the seventeenth-century visionary who saw herself as a vessel of God. The dreamer who visited heaven and hell, returned to the ‘‘real’’ world, and told his dream to the community can be said to have had something resembling a shamanic experience that became his own story to recount, embroider, and interpret. The earlier prophet may have enjoyed a wider sphere of public activity, but he spoke in a voice that was avowedly not his own. Indeed, the most significant aspect of Quaker and Methodist dreaming was not soul travel or the godlike capacity of the dreamer that became a feature of nineteenth-century spiritualism and romanticism, but the power of dreams to generate individual reflexivity and to assist the religious seeker in shaping his or her own autobiography. Unlike the Freudian model of dreaming as the activity of a fragmented identity, in which a submerged part of the self erupts through the barriers erected by the waking consciousness, religious dreamers believed in the possibility of integrating and transforming their own infantile and unconscious desires, moral and immoral impulses, and intellectual ambitions; for them, the unconscious was both a part of the individual’s deepest self and a place where God enters. Through dreaming and dream interpretation (along with prayer, service, and selfdiscipline), individuals tried to create a coherent narrative of a self that could withstand both the temptations of Satan and their own ungovernable urges. Those few individuals who felt themselves to be truly sanctified

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claimed that even their unconscious dreams were pure and lovely. So the virtuous Sarah Lawrence dreamed of gazing at a portrait of a beautiful woman and slowly realizing that she was looking into a mirror.56 The dream narratives of the minister John Newton and the poet William Cowper were less obviously the result of group dynamics, but they too were cultural constructs, referring to literary traditions of autobiography as well as religious doctrine. A respected poet and scholar with a wide circle of solicitous and admiring friends, Cowper shaped his persona as an outcast within the parameters of a specific religious worldview, dramatizing the implacable hostility of God and his own Job-like suffering in an idiosyncratic but recognizable expression of Calvinist teachings. He can thus be said to have carried the implications of Calvinist theology and dream theory to their logical—if untenable—conclusion. While Methodists saw dreadful dreams as an initial stage in the worshipper’s struggle to step outside himself and reshape his own character, Calvinists had a more totalizing concept of identity and a less optimistic view of the individual’s capacity for proactive change.57 Rather than doing battle with demons, understood literally or as metaphors, the sinner’s redemption was contingent on her willingness—no, her desire—to submit to God and be punished: Did I meet no trials here, No chastisement by the way; Might I not, with reason, fear I should prove a cast-away: Bastards may escape the rod, Sunk in earthly, vain delight; But the true-born child of God, Must not, would not, if he might.58 William Smellie was a stranger to the demons that beset William Cowper. Yet he understood something of Cowper’s—or any person’s—physical and spiritual vulnerability. In a letter to a Calvinist clergyman, Smellie questioned the perfection of divine Providence, citing the individual’s inability to remain pious and cheerful when undermined by chronic pain or disease. ‘‘It has been alleged’’ he wrote, ‘‘that many of the evils, to which human nature is subjected, take their rise from irregularities in our own conduct:—that physical evils are productive of moral good.’’ (This indeed was Smellie’s argument regarding the utility of dreams: whether caused by

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indigestion or anxiety, our bad dreams tell us who we are, and we should study them to improve our waking selves.) ‘‘But every person of reflection must have observed that there is a prodigious group of physical evils which have no dependence on our behaviour.’’ Ordinary pain can make us more pious, but ‘‘the mind, when constantly galled with pain, is so totally occupied, that it is deprived of the power of exerting any virtuous disposition, unless the fortitude of a few individuals be an exception.’’59 Given the vicissitudes of even an ordinary life, the attempt to master one’s conscious or unconscious self is ultimately doomed to fail. The writers and religious seekers who explored the phenomenon of dreaming failed to resolve the questions they themselves had raised, but they did complicate the idea of the bounded self that is said to characterize late eighteenth-century culture.60 Once dreams began to be attributed to a newly discovered unconscious self rather than the activity of spirits, a part of one’s identity became inaccessible to the conscious mind at the same cultural moment when the concept of an integrated individual identity was becoming more clearly defined. Eighteenth-century dream theory and interpretation thus promoted not just new knowledge about the self but new levels of mystery and anxiety. And it is a matter of individual perception as to who is more terrifying, the devil or Robert Louis Stevenson’s Mr. Hyde.

Chapter 1 1

Visions of Handsome Lake Seneca Dreams, Prophecy, and the Second Great Awakening matthew dennis

Now it came to pass in these days that one of the Heathen (the Brother of Corn-planter the Chief[)] lay upon his bed sick and behold he was in a trance for nearly an hour, and when his Spirrits revived again he spake of the many things which he had seen and heard. —Quaker missionary Halliday Jackson (1800)

With these words, the Quaker missionary Halliday Jackson narrated the genesis of a new Seneca religion. He employed an archaic, biblical language to mark the seriousness of his purpose and the larger historic moment.1 Not just among the Senecas, but also throughout the United States, Americans were beginning to undergo revivals, experiment with communitarianism, contemplate the millennium, experience visions, hail new prophets, and found new faiths. Historian Gordon S. Wood has called this era ‘‘the time of greatest religious chaos and originality in American history.’’2 By midsummer 1799, the young Quaker missionaries Halliday Jackson, Joel Swayne, and Henry Simmons had been living among the Allegany Senecas for barely a year. These men represented the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and its well-established Indian philanthropy efforts. The Seneca community at Allegany, located in southwestern New York, along the border with Pennsylvania, would be a major Quaker missionary focus well into

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the nineteenth century, yielding both successes and setbacks for Natives and Friends alike. Jackson, Swayne, and Simmons had arrived the previous May. Welcomed by the community leader Cornplanter and his people, they set themselves up in the old village of Genesinguhta, upriver from Cornplanter’s town, Jenuchshadago. There, Jackson wrote, ‘‘we began to be husbandmen and Vinedressers, and laboured abundantly in the field.’’ The young men persisted through the fall and winter. In the spring, an optimistic Jackson was inspired to quote Song of Songs (2:12): ‘‘the winter is past, the storms were over and gone, the flowers appeard on the Earth, & the time of the Singing of Birds was come.’’ Jackson hoped for more than the annual renewal that came each spring; he dreamed of cultural revolution among the Senecas: ‘‘And the works of our hands did prosper, and brought forth fruits of increase—And the Heathen round about us began to labour in these days and enclose fields, like unto us for they desired to become husbandmen.’’ But the rebirth that materialized among the Senecas—a revitalization the Quakers themselves helped to advance—was not the one these Friends had envisioned. A hybrid faith influenced by Christianity and white social practice, the Gaiwiio (or Good Message) nonetheless found its deepest inspiration in Iroquois traditions and the new prophecies of Handsome Lake.3 This essay examines the visions of Handsome Lake and the Native revival and new religion it engendered. It places the Seneca prophet’s revelations in the context of an ancient Iroquois dream practice—an old and enduring cultural phenomenon, with important religious, social, and therapeutic functions—as well as the popular world of the early national United States, which remained a ‘‘world of wonders.’’ In examining the theology and moral reform that emanated from Handsome Lake’s revelations, I explore the gendered content of the prophet’s ministry, which in limited ways meshed with the messages of Protestant missionaries. And I analyze the ways in which dreams offered power, authorizing both radical and conservative teachings. Handsome Lake’s visions were simultaneously innovative and ‘‘traditional’’—through his dreams the prophet translated relative powerlessness into new strength and revitalization, offering his people (like the citizens of the new republic generally) a means to deal with their postcolonial predicament. A focus on dreams and visions among the Senecas helps to situate this Native revival within the contours of the Second Great Awakening—a critical historical event largely examined by historians as if Indians did not exist. Yet the Senecas lived and continued to live within the

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heart of the Burned-Over District in New York, a dynamic place of dreamers and prophets, radical experimentation and emergent new religions.4 ‘‘The winter of 1799–1800 was in western New York long called the time of the Great Revival.’’ So wrote the historian of American religion Whitney R. Cross, as he considered the onset of the Second Great Awakening without mentioning the Senecas or Handsome Lake. Yet the Seneca prophet anticipated by a matter of months the surge of revivals that swept through early national and antebellum America when he experienced the first of a series of visions in the summer of 1799. The advent of Handsome Lake’s new way should be measured on its own terms, but it did not occur in isolation and should be understood in the context of American revivalism. Not merely a product of white evangelism, the Seneca Awakening, like other revivals, represented a creative adaptation to changed circumstances. Those adaptations varied in part because of the diverse religious traditions that Indians and whites possessed, the different predicaments they faced, and the distinctive responses such circumstances inspired. Nonetheless, Seneca revitalization represented a variation on a larger American theme, an indigenous contribution to the Second Great Awakening.5 On June 15, 1799, Henry Simmons was laboring just outside Jenuchshadago, building a schoolhouse, and Cornplanter was nearby supervising construction of a new house, when the chief received an urgent message. His brother, Handsome Lake, was dying. The news was dire but not surprising. Handsome Lake was formerly a heavy drinker and had been in declining health for several years. Cornplanter rushed home to see his stricken brother surrounded by concerned family. He had collapsed, ‘‘laying breathless’’ for a half hour, and then continued in a trance for another two hours. Though he appeared to die, Handsome Lake awoke to become a Seneca prophet.6 Simmons stood among anxious family members who watched helplessly as life seemed to drain out of Handsome Lake. The old man lay still, and his arms and legs grew increasingly cold to the touch. Viewing Handsome Lake’s comatose body, Simmons must have concluded that he would soon pass away, a victim of age, personal dissipation, and national trauma. Handsome Lake had once been a man of some status—half brother of the prominent Seneca leader Cornplanter and one of the Six Nations’ fifty league chiefs. He was now sixty-four, and his health and fortune had declined as precipitously as those of the Senecas generally. On that

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midsummer afternoon it would have been hard to predict that Handsome Lake would ever revive. If he had not, few beyond his own family would have remembered him.7 Yet to Henry Simmons’s surprise, Handsome Lake ‘‘came to himself again,’’ and as he regained strength he related a remarkable vision to Cornplanter and those around him. Handsome Lake asked his brother to call the people together, and in a great council Cornplanter passed on the prophecy Handsome Lake had revealed. Simmons recounted that the Senecas congregated in large numbers—men, women, and children—‘‘with shorter notice than ever I had seen them before.’’ They appeared ‘‘solid and weighty’’— that is, serious and moved by the moment. Simmons himself ‘‘felt the love of God flowing powerfully amongst us.’’ This was the beginning of the Seneca revival, a Native fire that blazed within the Burned-Over District.8 But, we might pause to ask, why did Cornplanter and the Allegany Senecas consider the elaborate, seemingly outlandish, dreams of Handsome Lake credible? In fact dreams and visions had long played an essential role in Iroquois—and particularly Seneca—life and culture. The Jesuit missionary Father James Fre´min among the Senecas in 1668, for example, had been inspired to write, ‘‘The Iroquois have, properly speaking, only a single Divinity—the dream. To it they render their submission, and follow all its orders with the utmost exactness. The Tsonnontouens [Senecas] are more attached to this superstition than any of the others.’’ Fre´min disparaged Seneca convictions and saw in their beliefs and rites surrounding dreams a major obstacle to conversion. ‘‘Whatever it be that they think they have done in their dreams,’’ he wrote, ‘‘they believe themselves absolutely obliged to execute at the earliest moment. . . . This people . . . would think itself guilty of a great crime if it failed in its observance of a single dream. The people think only of that, they talk about nothing else, and all their cabins are filled with their dreams.’’ The anthropologist and historian Anthony F. C. Wallace has described the Iroquois theory of dreams as ‘‘basically psychoanalytic.’’ They played an essential role in the maintenance of Iroquois physical and mental health, not merely among individuals but entire communities, and those communities participated fully in the interpretation and therapeutic fulfillment of dreamers’ desires. ‘‘Dreams were not to brood over, to analyze, or to prompt lonely and independent actions,’’ Wallace writes; ‘‘they were to be told, or at least hinted at, and it was for other people to be active. The community rallied around the dreamer with gifts and rituals.’’9

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Such belief and practice persisted into the era of Handsome Lake, as Halliday Jackson attested. Jackson wrote of the Allegany Senecas, ‘‘They are superstitious in the extreme, with respect to dreams, and witchcraft, and councils are often called, on the most trifling occurrences of this nature.’’ In the winter of 1799, he recalled, a Native girl some eighty miles away dreamed that ‘‘the devil was in all white people alike, and that they ought not to receive instructions from the Quakers, neither was it right for their children to learn to read and write.’’ The young girl’s dream was judged sufficiently credible to demand the meeting of a council, and, though the Senecas allowed the Friends’ mission to continue, for a time some would not allow their children to attend the Quaker school.10 Handsome Lake’s remarkable vision must be understood in this context. Seneca men and women expected people to dream and granted their dreams considerable importance. They experienced both ‘‘symptomatic’’ and ‘‘visitation’’ dreams. The former, as we have seen above, expressed hidden desires of the soul and required some actual or symbolic propitiation to maintain or restore health. The latter occurred when a supernatural being—perhaps even the Creator and Master of Life—visited a human to convey some particularly important message or divine desire. Wallace writes that such dreams, ‘‘in which the dreamer met a supernatural being who promised to be a friend and patron, and to give his prote´ge´ special powers and responsibilities, were very common.’’ Visitation dreams seemed most likely to occur during moments of individual—and perhaps community—transition, travail, anxiety, and stress, among pubescent youths, during sickness, and as individuals approached death.11 In the aftermath of the American Revolution, as they experienced tumult and trauma—individually, or as a community and nation— Senecas would not have been surprised to receive otherworldly messages through dreams and visions. Might not their Creator have wisdom and guidance to offer them in their time of trouble? Prophetic visitation dreams ‘‘expressed the wishes of . . . various supernatural beings, particularly Tarachiawagon [Tharonhiawagon], the Holder of the Heavens, the Master of Life,’’ according to Wallace. A visitation dream involving a powerful supernatural figure was ‘‘apt to achieve great currency.’’ Particularly if a dream seemed ominous, ‘‘the whole nation might exert itself to fulfill the dream’s demands; neglect invited national disasters.’’12 In extraordinary times an extraordinary figure might arise—a prophet, such as Handsome Lake.

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In visitation dreams, supernatural beings spoke directly to visionaries to communicate messages of importance not merely to individuals but to entire communities. These encounters could be radically transformative, satisfying longings, removing doubts, and resolving conflicts that had beset the dreamer, who in turn could emerge with a new dignity and capacity for leadership, a renewed sense of health and well-being. The formerly sick and broken Handsome Lake seemed to be just such a dreamer in 1799. In the tradition of other visionaries (though with superior, more lasting success), the Seneca prophet acquired great influence. Senecas knew to take the wishes of the supernatural seriously; to neglect them could prove disastrous to their society, perhaps even apocalyptical. Such dreams, then, ‘‘were matters of national moment.’’ Wallace writes, ‘‘The culture of dreams may be regarded as a necessary escape valve in Iroquois life.’’ Indeed Handsome Lake’s dreams and visions seemed to offer a radical means of escaping—or overcoming—the quandary that the Senecas experienced in the persistently colonial postcolonial United States.13 Other visions followed Handsome Lake’s first otherworldly encounter in June 1799. The prophet fell into a trance on August 8, 1799, and another on February 5, 1800. These revelations would continue until the prophet’s death in 1815. In Handsome Lake’s initial vision, three middle-aged, male messengers, or angels, approached him as emissaries of the Creator (another would subsequently appear and Handsome Lake himself would later become a ‘‘fifth angel’’). These holy beings gave him four ‘‘words,’’ describing the evil practices that saddened and angered the Seneca Great Spirit: whiskey (One-ga), witchcraft (Got-gon), compelling charms (Gawenodus-ha), and abortion or sterility magic (Yondwi-nais-swa-yas, literally, ‘‘she cuts it off by abortion’’). The angels admonished the people to confess, repent, and avoid sin. During his second vision, they conducted Handsome Lake on a cosmic tour of the horrors into which the Senecas had descended, and he was shown the way to a righteous future.14 In the course of his journey, surprisingly, the prophet met George Washington and Jesus Christ. The latter criticized the behavior of whites who claimed to be Christians and endorsed the message of revitalization particular to the Senecas: ‘‘You are more successful than I for some believe in you but none in me. . . . Now tell your people that they will become lost when they follow the ways of the white man.’’ Handsome Lake’s encounter with the recently deceased Washington revealed the national hero as a

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demigod, not only among white Americans but among Senecas as well. The prophet’s divine conversations and communion with the dead—departed family members as well as more famous and remote figures—helped sanctify his mission.15 At each stage of Handsome Lake’s supernatural wandering, he learned and would later relate lessons for proper social as well as religious behavior. Native people were to avoid drunkenness, stinginess, materialism. They were instructed to honor their fathers, a surprising directive in a traditionally matrilineal society. And they were urged to be on guard against witches and the devil, and to ‘‘quit all kinds of frolicking and danceing except the worship dance.’’16 Toward the end of his celestial sojourn, Handsome Lake entered the domain of ‘‘the punisher,’’ a horrific Seneca inferno, where he witnessed the tortures that unrepentant Indian women and men would endure forever. The apocalyptic threat of destruction by fire hung over them all, Handsome Lake warned—the price Senecas would pay for their failure to reform. Forecasts of cosmic catastrophe proliferated in early nineteenthcentury America, culminating in the predictions of a farmer from Low Hampton, New York, William Miller, that the world would end on October 22, 1844, with the Second Coming of Christ. When life went on as usual, scoffers scoffed and believers continued to believe. Handsome Lake’s warnings were similarly dire if less temporally specific, but they should not be too quickly dismissed. Jemima Wilkinson, the self-described prophet and Publick Universal Friend (established in a utopian community near the Senecas, named New Jerusalem), William Miller, and other millennialists have often been considered crackpots, their visions outlandish. Such a portrayal is based particularly on the inaccuracy of their predictions about the world’s end. But how absurd was Handsome Lake’s millennialism, given the extreme threat his people faced, both externally and internally? White encroachment, the loss of land and resources, the assault on Native economy and society, as well as the specter of evil that many believed haunted Seneca communities, might reasonably breed a sense of impending doom. The Seneca crisis might well have led to physical or cultural annihilation.17 In the hellish place that Handsome Lake visited, miscreants suffered punishments appropriate to their crimes. Drunkards ceaselessly poured molten metal down their throats, and gamblers shuffled and dealt red-hot iron cards. Wicked musicians repeatedly hacked their own arms with searing iron bars as if they were playing the fiddle. These offenses violated

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both Seneca tradition and many Christian proscriptions. Quaker Indian Committee visitors in 1806 echoed previous missionaries when they told a Seneca assembly, ‘‘playing Cards Gameing and other idle practices’’ do ‘‘much harm’’; ‘‘we hope you will keep out of these things as the[y] hinder the good work we desire to promote among you.’’ Handsome Lake agreed.18 The punisher reserved some tortures especially for female offenders. The sin of witchcraft, for example, was personified by a woman who was repeatedly plunged into a cauldron of boiling liquid. The angels told Handsome Lake, ‘‘The woman whom you saw will suffer two deaths in this place and when her body is reduced to dust the punisher will gather them up again and conjure the dust back into a living body and continue his sport until finally he has become weary when he will blow her ashes to destruction. Such things happen to those who will not believe in Gaiwiio.’’ Handsome Lake’s early visions occurred in a context of dread and foreboding within Cornplanter’s town, amid suspicious deaths and an ongoing fear of covert sorcery. Under these circumstances, the prophet’s condemnation of witchcraft is unsurprising. Witchcraft and witch hunting among the Senecas was not new. Nor was belief in witchcraft exclusive to Native people in this era. Even John Wesley, the eighteenth-century founder of Methodism, had believed strongly in witchcraft and sometimes attributed disease to the work of demons. Many of his early nineteenth-century followers would do the same. Christian beliefs influenced Seneca understanding of witchcraft, inflecting an ancient and well-established practice. The prophet’s denunciation of sorcery represented no departure from tradition, but his definition and energetic prosecution of the dark art did. In the Seneca underworld that Handsome Lake visited, significantly, the witch assumed the shape of a woman, and she was not merely punished, not merely executed, but obliterated.19 As the prophet continued his journey through hell, the angels showed him a temptress who had used love magic to attract men. She had been a beautiful woman, but now her punishment left her ‘‘parched to the bone,’’ exposed and hideously naked, with exfoliating flesh and hair composed of writhing serpents. Soon Handsome Lake encountered another woman whose delight on earth, he was informed, had been gaknowe-haat (that is, to copulate). The punisher ‘‘lifted up an object from a pile and thrust it within her. Now the object was like ha’ji-no ganaa [that is, a penis], and it was red hot.’’ ‘‘You have seen the punishment of the immoral woman,’’ the angels told Handsome Lake.20

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Men did not escape torture in Handsome Lake’s visions. Sanctions against male offenders seem designed (through deterrence) to create and maintain peaceful, patriarchal households, in which men enjoyed privilege but also contracted certain obligations. In the Seneca inferno, for example, an abusive husband was forced to endure endless, searing agony, as he was compelled repeatedly to strike an image of a woman ‘‘heated hot with fire.’’ His act of domestic violence thus reversed itself, inflicting excruciating injury on his own body. Such men undermined the households that the Creator and Handsome Lake sought to form and nurture. Both husbands and wives were disciplined for quarreling. Yet women, unlike men, were demonized for sexual transgression.21 It is difficult to see the punisher’s brutal treatment of ‘‘immoral’’ women—like rape in general—as anything but the deployment of violence to demean and disempower women. These gendered and sexualized tortures surprise us, both by their severity and their focus. They represent a historical departure in Iroquois culture, and in fact they seem specific to this historical moment, unlike that which preceded or followed. They look like cultural imports from the white patriarchal and misogynous society that surrounded the Senecas, at odds with Iroquois tradition. But they suggest a profound anxiety about the post-Revolutionary Seneca domestic world, its perceived social disorganization, and the gender relations at its heart. Like Jemima Wilkinson (the self-described sexless prophet), to paraphrase the historian Susan Juster, the prophet Handsome Lake appeared at ‘‘a particularly anxious moment in the history of American [and Seneca] gender politics.’’ The Publick Universal Friend’s innovation was to challenge traditional patriarchal authority; Handsome Lake’s was to attempt to establish it. Wilkinson’s odd costume and demeanor ‘‘performed’’ a new and ambiguous gender identity in alarming fashion. The Seneca punisher performed new tortures on the bodies of women. In the prophet’s inferno, he policed the reformed gender identities of Handsome Lake’s vision, as sexual violence symbolized a novel masculine control and a brutal ‘‘feminization’’ of those who defied the prescribed Seneca patriarchy.22 A revised Native theology and reformed means of living in the world would emerge from Handsome Lake’s prophetic visions. His hybrid teachings and developing code reflected the prolonged intercultural conversation between Seneca religious traditions and various representatives of Christianity, which had begun in the seventeenth century and would continue

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into the nineteenth century and beyond. Yet amid adjustments and innovation, Handsome Lake’s prophecies largely represented continuity—not rupture—with Iroquois religious traditions. Handsome Lake’s theology revised but did not displace older Iroquois knowledge and belief about God and the ‘‘supernatural.’’ The prophet’s Gaiwiio seemed to offer a new god, or at least one no longer called by the traditional name, Tharonhiawagon, the Holder of the Heavens. But this Great Spirit behaved not unlike the older one; it is unclear whether the new deity joined or simply renamed the Tharonhiawagon of old. From the seventeenth century, some Christian missionaries had been impressed by Iroquois belief in a higher being, which encouraged Jesuits and subsequent proselytizers to hope they might be predisposed to worship their own one true God, Jesus Christ. Quakers no doubt noticed the potential for the Senecas to embrace their monotheism as well, even if they did not actively pursue Native conversion. (The practical benevolence of their mission focused largely on social and economic reform—what came to be known as ‘‘modernization’’—and displayed great patience in waiting for the Inner Light to emerge and reveal itself to individual Senecas.) Handsome Lake’s nephew and chief disciple, Governor Blacksnake, endorsed the presence of the Friends in 1806 in this fashion: ‘‘we all know there is but one God that made and Directs us all to Do alike. . . . [The] Great Spirit is not Blind But can see Every thing and he is pleased with your Living amongst us.’’23 But if Quakers and other Christians approved of Seneca faith in a Supreme Being, they could not take credit for the Senecas’ belief, nor could they be confident that other, lesser gods no longer inhabited the Native pantheon. Senecas continued to be sustained through interactions with a range of deities, who controlled the physical and natural world and the cycles of life itself (from the spirit forces on earth to the most lofty and sacred beings—waters, grasses, herbs, bushes, trees, agricultural foods, game animals, birds, the rainmaking thunderers, the wind, sun, moon, and stars, and ultimately the Creator). If the workings of the Great Spirit might resemble the Quakers’ Inner Light, the Seneca Creator was not the Christian God Almighty or his Son Jesus Christ—certainly not in the view of other, more evangelical Christian missionaries. And what did it say about Handsome Lake’s new theology that he could equate himself as a prophet with Jesus Christ, whom he met in his visions and treated as a colleague,

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not as a savior? The Congregational minister and missionary to the Oneidas Samuel Kirkland confided about Handsome Lake in his journal, ‘‘I have never condemned him in public. On the contrary, I have expressed my approbation of many things he enjoins, which tend to the reformation of the Indians. But I have never expressed my belief that he was inspired by the Spirit of God, or that he ever had any interview with the Great God.’’ Indeed, Kirkland saw Handsome Lake as ‘‘an impostor.’’ And he sharply rejected the claims of the Oneida ‘‘pagan’’ leader, Doctor Peter, who elevated the Seneca prophet, ‘‘or man of God, as they stile him,’’ above Protestant ministers forced to rely on a holy book for their knowledge, while Handsome Lake ‘‘receives his directly from the same source from whence that [Bible] originated.’’ Such a view might make the prophet less a pagan than a heretic, though he was hardly the only holy figure in the BurnedOver District believed by some to communicate directly with God, or criticized by others as a charlatan.24 Handsome Lake sought to revive and maintain the traditional Iroquois ritual calendar, not to substitute a Christian one, even in modified form. If his teachings also represented resistance and revolution, in this regard he led Senecas back to the future, taking them full circle in his prescribed observance of traditional rites and ceremonies, appropriate to the cycles of the year. In some cases, these rituals took on new dimensions—with additions to the Midwinter Festival, for example, or inclusion of the Four Beings (the four messengers to Handsome Lake) in the Thanksgiving Address— but the prophet acted conservatively.25 Moreover, as we have seen, Handsome Lake affirmed other, traditional rites, such as those surrounding dreams, their interpretation, and their ritual fulfillment, though with shifts in emphasis. His own visions powerfully embodied the notion that dreams could express both wishes of the soul and extraordinary revelation. Here the prophet and his people required no Christian example or precedent, though Quakers—with their rich, complicated understanding of dreams—could see similarities with their own practices or more readily accept the idea that Indian dreams might provide insight and power.26 As historian Carla Gerona has demonstrated, late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century America was ‘‘a dream-infused culture,’’ and Quakers, like other religious groups, found in their dreams a means of dealing with modernity, helping them to revise their sense of their world and themselves. Seneca and white Christian attitudes toward their ‘‘night journeys’’ had

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much in common. Quaker dreams, like those of Handsome Lake, often entailed a journey, sometimes a tour of heaven or hell. Both peoples created foundational myths in their dream narratives; both listened to specialists adept at interpretation; both employed formal rules and rites in dream analysis. In both social worlds, the interpretation of dreams could prove contentious; and after the advent of the Quaker mission among the Allegany Senecas, explicating dreams at times became a cross-cultural (and sometimes controversial) enterprise, as Friends and Native leaders both sought to interpret the meaning of particular Seneca dreams and visions.27 Although Quakers generally downplayed catastrophic visions and constrained the effects of dreamwork in the interests of conformity, radical dreams could emerge that challenged social or religious orthodoxy. Jemima Wilkinson and Ann Lee were both former Quakers who experienced visions, which pushed them well beyond the Quaker (and Christian) mainstream. Their extraordinary dreaming helped transform them into prophets, leading them to found new religious sects and communities—the Society of the Universal Friend and the Shakers. Wilkinson and Lee were unusual, but in post-Revolutionary revivalism, dreams, visions, apparitions, and divine intervention were commonplace. Methodist itinerants enthusiastically shared their dreams with audiences. Such visions predicted salvation, foretold death, and described the realities of hell. One Methodist itinerant preacher, Freeborn Garrettson, visited heaven in a dream; another, George Peck, journeyed to hell in a vision, seeing there ‘‘nothing but devils and evils spirits, which tormented me in such a manner, that my tongue or pen cannot express.’’ Other Methodists’ dreams predicted the demise of an itinerant, who succumbed to the temptations of cards and drink, and foretold the preacher Benjamin Abbot’s entry into the ministry. Abbot’s autobiography featured his dreams extensively and unabashedly. Joseph Smith’s revelations similarly emanated from sacred dreams. It was in a vision that the angel Moroni visited Smith and revealed the location of the ‘‘Golden Bible,’’ later translated into the Book of Mormon in the 1820s. Such dreaming, much of it within the Burned-Over District of upstate New York, suggests that Handsome Lake’s visions were not wholly unique; they were distinctive episodes within a larger intercultural world of revelation and revival.28 Dreams could offer power and authorize both radical and conservative teachings. Handsome Lake’s visions did both, and the Quakers at Allegany seemed to validate his prophecies, even when they sought to temper his more radical claims. Henry Simmons, the Quaker schoolteacher at Cornplanter’s

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village in 1799, acknowledged to his hosts that Friends too fell into trances, and in the process they viewed both the ‘‘good place and the bad place’’ and saw ‘‘many wonderful sights.’’ He linked the two peoples explicitly by declaring they were ‘‘all of one flesh and blood made by the Great Spirit.’’ Simmons hardly undermined his larger endorsement of Handsome Lake’s dream and prophecy when he skeptically (and privately) wrote in his journal, ‘‘perhaps as there was so much of it [the dream], the man [Handsome Lake] might not have recollected so as to tell exact as he seen or heard it.’’ But maybe he had, and it’s not inconceivable that other white observers gave them credence.29 Senecas might have been influenced by the new prophetic practices they encountered among white Christians, and surely they were buoyed by the Friendly (if inadvertent) support they received, but they could find substantial prophetic precedent in their own traditions and beliefs. Prior to Handsome Lake’s revelation, in 1791, an Oneida experienced a vision, which prescribed the restoration of ‘‘ancient feasts, religious dances & ball-play . . . , or no good should come to the Six nations.’’ No Oneida prophet rose to prominence on that occasion, but the vision did galvanize opposition to Samuel Kirkland’s Christian mission. Later, around the time of Handsome Lake’s first visions, an Iroquois prophet allegedly emerged from the Six Nations Reserve in Canada. His influence spread as far as Oneida and contributed to the revival of the white dog ceremony there, abandoned a generation earlier. The Seneca prophet’s cataclysmic vision—which presented a terrifying Native Hades and warned of a fiery end of the world—perhaps seems unconventional by Iroquois standards and might have been affected by Christian apocalypticism. Yet even here Senecas could recall the ancient origins of their League of Peace, ensconced in sacred myth and vitalized by ritual. The Iroquois believed that the visionary Hiawatha and a great prophet—the Peacemaker—intervened in the chaos of a distant time filled with deadly feuds to pacify combatants and create the institutions and rites of peace. We do not know whether early nineteenth-century Senecas saw their crisis as one comparable to the bloody circumstances of ancient times. But we do know that many affirmed the new prophet and his teachings, revealed in a series of dreams, as they sought a means to deal with their own bleak predicament.30 Handsome Lake’s moral reforms were his greatest innovations, and perhaps the part of his ministry most indebted to Christianity. The anthropologist Elisabeth Tooker has convincingly argued that among the Iroquois

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and other northeastern Native people, morality was not equated with religiosity, as it was among Christians. Moral transgressions were not typically punished by supernatural beings, they believed, nor would the Great Spirit reward them for good, moral behavior. ‘‘Admonitions are apt to be justified not by reference to what the supernatural will do or think, but by reference to what people will say,’’ Tooker writes. ‘‘The most explicit statements of Indian moral standards are to be found in the admonition of the people to one another, particularly parents to children.’’ Yet Handsome Lake’s teachings mobilized divine sanctions, conveyed to him through his revelatory dreams, against certain behaviors formerly policed by mortals—worldly Seneca women and men, parents and families, clans and communities. And the prophet urged his followers to confess, repent, and avoid sin—an admonition more common among evangelical Christians than among traditional Senecas. Extraordinary circumstances required extraordinary responses. Anthony F. C. Wallace, for example, has described the late eighteenth-century Seneca reservations as ‘‘slums in the wilderness’’ and concluded that they were ‘‘not healthy communities by either white or Indian standards,’’ with deteriorating material welfare and morale, rampant drunkenness, violence (including the covert violence of witchcraft), and unstable households. In such an environment, confession and repression— not indulgence—of illicit or antisocial desires (as defined by the prophet) promoted health and order. Though some resisted Handsome Lake, many Senecas recognized their unprecedented predicament and abided by the new moral strictures. This code was now enforced, not merely by traditional community means (ridicule, gossip, shunning), but also by a new divine sanction.31 Temperance (the attempt to banish alcohol) played a crucial role in Handsome Lake’s program of moral reform. This too was hardly novel, among the Senecas or throughout the early American republic. Seneca and other Iroquois leaders had complained about liquor and its effects and had worked to keep it out of their villages for generations, though with mixed results. In the crisis of the late eighteenth century, demoralized Seneca men had more reason to indulge and increased access to drink. Alcoholic spirits often possessed them.32 The prophet’s battle against demon rum or whiskey was both individual and national, fought personally and on behalf of his people. Handsome Lake’s prophecy offered new tools to combat this enemy—divine authority, based on revelation, not mere reason. The Great Spirit told the prophet,

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according to Halliday Jackson’s account, that if the Indians ‘‘continued to get drunk, hurt themselves and abuse others the[y] need not expect to come to that happy place.’’ Like white reformers, Handsome Lake associated abuse of alcohol with a host of other social and economic problems— destruction of physical health, families, and material subsistence. Among the Senecas, alcohol was also heavily implicated in their loss of land. In the unsettled conditions of the early republic, white Americans as well as Native people consumed liquor in surprising quantities. By 1830, the yearly consumption of white Americans reached nearly four gallons per capita. The Great Spirit had told Handsome Lake that ‘‘Whisky . . . belonged to White people and was not made for Indians,’’ but increasingly white reformers also rejected its place in their world. Nearly all revivalists condemned imbibing, and temperance societies grew, as new middle-class values came to predominate in the antebellum United States. Handsome Lake’s prohibition might have been influenced by Christian moral preaching, but it also drew on a long history of nativist rejection of alcohol, appealed to Native experience and religion, and sought to solve a pressing indigenous crisis. As Seneca chiefs explained in a petition to ban liquor on their reservations in this era, the ‘‘great Good Spirit will send all drunkards to everlasting fire after death.’’33 The prophet’s condemnation of gambling and dancing appeared to rehearse Christian revivalists’ denunciations, and it seemed to forbid activities that Senecas and other Iroquois people had traditionally relished. Handsome Lake’s new proscriptions were designed to address not traditional Indian games but a new, destructive form of gambling: card play. The visiting Friends in 1806 who cautioned Senecas against ‘‘Cards Gameing and other idle practices’’ simply reinforced the prophet’s own warnings against fresh forms of dissipation. Handsome Lake’s rejection of ‘‘dancing’’ likewise represented an aversion to a novel behavior learned from white neighbors— one that the prophet perceived, as did Protestant missionaries, as lascivious and corrosive to stable marriages and pure social life. Meanwhile, he endorsed and encouraged customary religious and social dancing in conjunction with traditional Seneca festivals. Quaker missionaries Henry Simmons and Joel Swayne saw these firsthand and reported much divinely approved ‘‘Singing Shouting & dancing’’ in the wake of the prophet’s revelation. Their colleague Halliday Jackson had written earlier in his own prophetic idiom: ‘‘surely it availeth nothing your dancing and Musick and Burnt offerings—your appointed Feasts and your sacrifices.’’ But Handsome Lake

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and his followers disagreed. They revived and maintained (and updated) an ancient Seneca religious cycle, marked by sacred singing, dancing, and divinely approved games.34 The prophet’s hybrid teachings mixed old and new in the interest of tradition to promote social progress as well as religious revival. They sometimes mirrored Christian moral pronouncements, but in doing so they sought to eliminate some innovations (whiskey, cards, frolics, and fiddles) introduced by white neighbors and associated with destructive consequences. As the ‘‘old Chief’’ told Henry Simmons, ‘‘he liked some ways of the white people very well, and some ways of the Indians also.’’ He was realistic about the difficulty of leading his people ‘‘out of all their own Customs,’’ which he was reluctant to do. ‘‘As to the Worship Dance,’’ he told Simmons, his people ‘‘intended to keep it up, as they . . . knew of no other way of Worshiping the great Spirit, [and] if they declined that they would have no manner of Worship at all.’’ Handsome Lake’s new methods and message—emphasizing divine revelations, a potential apocalypse, and a new moral code—served a conservative and progressive purpose: to revive Seneca spiritual and material life and preserve Seneca identity and relative autonomy.35 The historian of New York’s Burned-Over District, Whitney Cross, was more right than he knew when he wrote, ‘‘Upon this broad belt of land congregated a people extraordinarily given to unusual religious beliefs, peculiarly devoted to crusades aimed at the perfection of mankind and the attainment of millennial happiness. Few of the enthusiasms or eccentricities of this generation of Americans failed to find exponents here.’’36 The Senecas were such a people. Their new religious beliefs, developed in the wake of Handsome Lake’s 1799 revelations, might be considered ‘‘unusual’’ because they departed both from mainstream Protestant Christianity and from their own traditions in some important ways. But the prophecy of Handsome Lake was not so different from the sometimes eccentric revivalists and millennialists of the Second Great Awakening. Handsome Lake’s emphasis on visions, otherworldly journeys, angelic visitations, temperance, patriarchy, even witchcraft did not set him completely apart. As a prophet, Handsome Lake was no odder than the remarkable Jemima Wilkinson, who now resided in her New Jerusalem, on Seneca Lake, sixty miles east of Allegany, close to the place where the Seneca prophet had been born in 1735.37 Unlike the Publick Universal Friend, Handsome

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Lake had not transcended sex. He remained a man, and his teachings promoted a new Seneca patriarchy. Handsome Lake did not invent patriarchy, but the prophet encouraged such a trend and gave it new momentum. We cannot now say whether the patriarchal dimensions of his program were unself-consciously acquired from white brethren, or if they were deployed opportunistically to acquire white support and to constrain some of the forces of traditional power, especially represented by senior women. It is clear, however, that attacks on women would play a central role in the prophet’s program, as his visions and prescriptions transformed Iroquois demonology, demonized some Seneca women, and challenged women’s social and religious authority. But our story does not end there. Seneca women were not mere victims of Handsome Lake’s reforms, any more than the Iroquois generally were, simply, passive sufferers of United States colonialism, Christianization, or the market revolution. The power of the prophet’s vision made it compelling, and the new religion’s teachings offered a means of accommodating change while maintaining Iroquois ethnic identity and protecting some measure of Seneca autonomy. People and communities in stress often reinvent themselves in order to survive, but the new identities available to such groups are limited by imagination and constraining circumstances. What they can become is constrained by what they can dream. Women as well as men somehow found in the new way of Handsome Lake a prospect they could imagine, and as they followed the prophet—either as devotees or, more distantly, as fellow travelers or reluctant political allies—they negotiated and renegotiated the terms of his charter and their own future. Ironically, as the new religion became the ‘‘Old Way of Handsome Lake,’’ it was increasingly feminized. Post-Revolutionary developments in the United States (destruction and alienation of Native hunting grounds, U.S. monopolization of military activity, and reduction of Native peoples to diplomatic insignificance) undermined traditional male activities—that is, hunting, warfare, and diplomacy. At the same time, despite Christianization and ‘‘civilization’’ programs, women’s traditional activities among the Senecas— particularly farming—flourished. And as a result, the rituals associated with women’s social and economic contributions persisted. In a sense, the patriarchal nature of Handsome Lake’s Good Message might be read as a male attempt to restore a gender balance in Iroquois traditional life.38 When Handsome Lake died in 1815, he left no formal gospel. His influence continued but waxed and waned in the absence of the charismatic

Visions of Handsome Lake

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prophet himself. His nativism revived to combat new threats of dispossession and removal late in the decade, but his followers also feared that Senecas might lapse into the behaviors that had produced decline and social crisis. Significantly, the codification of Handsome Lake’s Gaiwiio was initiated by women—‘‘faithkeepers’’ at the community of Tonawanda. Concerned about backsliding, they met, decided to enlist the Tonawanda chief Jimmy Johnson, who was Handsome Lake’s grandson, and implored him to recall and revive the teachings of the prophet. After an initial reluctance, Johnson agreed. He summoned up his grandfather’s revelations and lessons and preached them publicly, making the recitation an annual ritual event. The Good Message spread to other Iroquois communities and was ultimately recorded as the Code of Handsome Lake in the 1840s. Women such as those at Tonawanda worked with other believers—male and female— over generations to institutionalize the Longhouse religion. In the process, they created a faith that accorded women status and conserved women’s religious roles.39 As the Gaiwiio matured, women occupied a prominent religious position, as ritualists, as deacon-like faithkeepers, and as ‘‘fortunetellers,’’ interpreters of dreams and signs, diagnosticians and prescribers of remedies. The theology and practice of the Good Message of Handsome Lake evolved into a lived religion that proved supportive and meaningful to women as well as men. Here too we might see parallels between the feminization of nineteenth-century Senecas and white revivalism.40 Drawing on Iroquois tradition, and working through its social, psychological, and religious protocols, Handsome Lake and his visions offered a hybrid means to dissolve or transcend the waking nightmare Senecas faced in the early American republic. The revised faith of Handsome Lake helped Senecas fend off those who hoped to assimilate them religiously and subordinate them socially and economically. It helped them conserve their ethnicity and identity and preserve their land in the face of encroachment and fraud. But the Senecas, their revival and new religion, were not unique. In the years following the War for Independence, developments in the United States (particularly rapid economic growth and the emergence of a new market economy) were unsettling and transformative, and Seneca rural dependency bore some resemblance to the growing dislocation and dependency experienced by other, white Americans in the countryside. Americans—Native and well as white—responded to such transformation in part by remapping their social and religious landscape, most famously in New York’s Burned-Over District during the Second Great Awakening. If

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nineteenth-century Americans saw essential difference between Indians and whites, in retrospect we can see shared problems and similarities in their responses, sometimes in the form of prophetic visions, revitalizing evangelical movements, and the construction of new religions. No one imagined that Seneca followers of the Gaiwiio belonged inside the big tent of an evangelical Protestant empire. But, then, that tent contained considerable dissension among sects and denominations, and it initially excluded some new faiths (Mormons, for example) as problematically Christian. At the same time, white observers could view the Seneca revival favorably despite its non-Christian provenance, and despite their preference for Christian assimilation, because of its similar and complementary social prescriptions (in promoting temperance, for example). Like nineteenth-century white evangelicals, the followers of Handsome Lake sought rebirth for themselves, their communities, and their country, and like them they achieved that rebirth in part through dreams and visions.

Notes

Introduction 1. For a recent work on Descartes, see Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 2. The manuscript book in which the dreams were reported has been lost. But it was the basis for the detailed accounts given by Descartes’s first biographer, Adrien Baillet, in his La Vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes, 2 vols. (Paris, 1691), 1:81–85. Baillet reports that Descartes believed the dreams were divinely inspired. 3. Susan Parman, Dream and Culture: An Anthropological Study of the Western Intellectual Tradition (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1991), 9–16. 4. The literature on the construction of the Atlantic world is, at this point, voluminous. Some key resources include Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005); Jack P. Greene and Philip D. Morgan, eds., Atlantic History: A Critical Reappraisal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); and J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007). 5. Thus, clinicians have observed dreams signaling new developmental steps, or as means for solving cognitive puzzles or problems that escape or elude the waking mind: James L. Fosshage, ‘‘The Developmental Function of Dreaming Mentation: Clinical Implications,’’ 3–11 in Dimensions of Self Experience: Progress in Self Psychology, vol. 5 (Hillsdale, N.J.: Analytic Press, 1989). 6. Ernest Hartmann, The Nature and Functions of Dreaming (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 5. 7. Hartmann, The Nature and Functions of Dreaming, 5. 8. Hartmann, The Nature and Functions of Dreaming, 5. 9. Barbara Tedlock, ‘‘Dreaming and Dream Research,’’ 1–30 in Tedlock, ed., Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), quotation on 25, and ‘‘The New Anthropology of Dreaming,’’ Dreaming 1:2 (1991), no pagination in online edition, http://www.asdreams.org/journal/articles/1–2tedlock1991.htm accessed October 21, 2012. 10. Daniel Pick and Lyndal Roper, introduction, 1–21 in Dreams and History: The Interpretation of Dreams from Ancient Greece to Modern Psychoanalysis, ed. Pick and Roper (London: Routledge, 2004), quotation on 17.

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11. Jacques Le Goff, The Medieval Imagination, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 229. 12. Le Goff, The Medieval Imagination, 229. 13. In recent years, anthropologists have drawn increasing attention to this aspect of dreaming, shifting their focus from the content of dreams to the ways that dream sharing and communication mediate social relationships, including, in living cultures, the relationship with the ethnographer him- or herself. See, for example, Barbara Tedlock, ‘‘Zuni and Quiche´ Dream Sharing and Interpreting,’’ 105–31 in Tedlock, Dreaming, esp. 106–7. This point is made for a European context in Faith Wigzell, ‘‘The Dreambook in Russia,’’ 179–97 in Pick and Roper, Dreams and History, esp. 184–85. 14. Tedlock, ‘‘Dreaming and Dream Research,’’ writes, ‘‘it is not enough to know what people dream about; we must also know how and what parts of their dreaming experiences they communicate to others. Studying dream sharing and the transmission of dream theories in their full contexts as communicative events . . . is not just a method for the extraction of data that are already there’’ (22–23). 15. In the early modern period, when the notion of an interiorized self was still in flux, the study of reported dream and vision experience became one avenue through which to study the relation of self to society. See Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse, ‘‘The Interior Difference: A Brief Genealogy of Dreams, 1650–1717,’’ ‘‘The Politics of Difference,’’ special issue of Eighteenth-Century Studies 23:4 (Summer 1990): 458–78, esp. 458; and Mechal Sobel, Teach Me Dreams: The Search for Self in the Revolutionary Era (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), esp. 3–5. 16. In ancient Greece, dreams were literally described as personified messengers, sent by the gods to a particular dreamer: Parman, Dream and Culture, 27. 17. As A. C. Spearing notes in the introduction to a collection on medieval and early modern dreaming, there has been a ‘‘confusion of interiority with individuality.’’ Regarding premodern approaches to dreams, he writes: ‘‘The dream’s content may not be individualized for it may claim to offer a vision of absolute truth rather than a glimpse of what is peculiar to one dreamer’s mind and body . . . [but] the space of the dream is unquestionably that of an interiority that can only be called subjective.’’ See A. C. Spearing, ‘‘Iintroduction,’’ 1–21 in Reading Dreams: The Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare, ed. Peter Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), quotation on 2–3. 18. See Matt. 1–2. The apostle Paul experiences a dream, in Acts 16:9–10. Acts is normally credited to the author of the Gospel of Luke. 19. Deut. 13:1–5; Ezek. 13:1, 7; Jer. 14:14–16, 23:16, 25–32, 27:9–11. 20. Artemidorus Daldianus, The Interpretation of Dreams (Oneirocritica), ed. and trans. Robert J. White (Park Ridge, N.J.: Noyes Press, 1975). On Artemidorus, see S. R. F. Price, ‘‘The Future of Dreams: From Freud to Artemidorus,’’ Past and Present 113 (November 1986): 3–37; and Daniel Harris-McCoy, ‘‘Artemidorus’ SelfPresentation in the Preface to the Oneirocritica,’’ Classical Journal 106:4 (April–May 2011): 423–44.

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21. See Patricia Cox Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994); Steven Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Lisa Bitel, ‘‘In Visu Noctis: Dreams in European Hagiography and Histories, 450–900,’’ History of Religions 31:1 (August 1991): 39–59, esp. 48–50. 22. M. M., ‘‘Dream Interpretation,’’ 285–87 in The Classical Tradition, ed. Anthony Grafton et al. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), 285. 23. Anthony Grafton, Cardano’s Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 19–20; on Descartes, see Peter Holland, ‘‘’The Interpretation of Dreams’ in the Renaissance,’’ 125–46 in Reading Dreams: The Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare, ed. Peter Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 125. 24. Lise Andries, ‘‘L’interpre´tation populaire des reˆves dans les cle´s des songes du XVIIIe sie`cle,’’ Revue des Sciences Humaines 211 (1988): 49–64. 25. Holland, ‘‘’The Interpretation of Dreams,’ ’’ 132–33. 26. See Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), and Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); also Lyndal Roper on ‘‘Fantasy,’’ part II in Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004), esp. 104–23. 27. Lyndal Roper, ‘‘Sexual Utopianism in the German Reformation,’’ Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 1994), 79–103. 28. See Carla Gerona, Night Journeys: The Power of Dreams in Transatlantic Quaker Culture (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004). See also Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 29. On Lucrecia de Leo´n, see Richard Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 30. Lee Irwin, The Dream Seekers: Native American Visionary Traditions of the Great Plains, The Civilization of the American Indian Series (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 3, 11–13. 31. See Jane Monnig Atkinson, ‘‘Shamanisms Today,’’ Annual Review of Anthropology 21 (1992): 307–30, esp. 310–13. For a classic account, see A. Irving Hallowell, ‘‘Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View,’’ in Culture in History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin, ed. Stanley Diamond (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960); and see also Jennifer S. H. Brown, ‘‘Fields of Dreams: Revisiting A. I. Hallowell and the Berens River Ojibwe,’’ 17–41 in New Perspectives on Native North America: Cultures, Histories, and Representations, ed. and intro. Sergei A. Kan and Pauline Turner Strong (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006). 32. See Josiah Jeremy (Micmac), ‘‘The Dream of the White Robe and the Floating Island,’’ 225–27 in Legends of the Micmacs, by Silas Tertius Rand (1894; New York:

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Johnson Reprint, 1971), 225. We are indebted to the reference and quotation of this story in Colin G. Calloway, ed., The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America (New York: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 33–34. 33. See, for example, Jacqueline Peterson, ‘‘Women Dreaming: The Religiopsychology of Indian White Marriages and the Rise of a Me´tis Culture,’’ 49–68 in Western Women: Their Land, Their Lives (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988), esp. 57. 34. Thomas Shepard, The Clear Sun-Shine of the Gospel Breaking Forth upon the Indians in New-England; or, An Historicall Narration of Gods Wonderfull Workings upon sundry of the Indians, both chief Governors and Common-people in bringing them to a willing and desired submission to the Ordinances of the Gospel; and framing their hearts to an earnest inquirie after the knowledge of God the Father, and of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the World (London: John Bellamy, 1648), 10, discussed in Ann Marie Plane, Colonial Intimacies: Indian Marriage in Early New England (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), 45–46. 35. Erik R. Seeman, ‘‘Reading Indians’ Deathbed Scenes: Ethnohistorical and Representational Approaches,’’ Journal of American History 88:1 (June 2001): 17–47. 36. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding cited in Armstrong and Tennenhouse, ‘‘The Interior Difference,’’ 468–71, quotations 471. 37. The quoted description of Wesley’s views is found in Ann Taves, Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), 53. 38. ‘‘Since the rejection of the mythological hypothesis, . . . dreams have stood in need of explanation.’’ Sigmund Freud, On Dreams, trans. and ed. James Strachey (1901; New York: W. W. Norton, 1952), 5. 39. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans and ed. James Strachey (1900; New York: Avon Books, 1965), ch. 2; ‘‘The Secret of Dreams’’ was how Freud referred to his discovery in a fanciful postscript to a letter to Wilhelm Fliess: 154, n. 1. 40. Freud, On Dreams, 59. 41. Ernest Jones, ‘‘On the Nightmare,’’ American Journal of Insanity 66 (1910): 383–417. These materials later appeared as On the Nightmare (London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1931), published in the United States under the title Nightmares, Witches and Devils (New York: W. W. Norton, 1931). See also the helpful discussion in Brenda Maddox, Freud’s Wizard: Ernest Jones and the Transformation of Psychoanalysis (2006; Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2007), 88. For a critique, see Noel B. Cuff, review of On the Nightmare, by Ernest Jones, American Journal of Psychology 45:2 (April 1933): 383. 42. Jeannette Marie Mageo, ‘‘Theorizing Dreaming and the Self,’’ 3–22 in Dreaming and the Self: New Perspectives on Subjectivity, Identity, and Emotion, ed. Mageo, SUNY Series in Dream Studies, ed. Robert L. Van de Castle (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 4. This approach was taken by Ge´za Ro´heim and his students: see Clyde Kluckhohn and William Morgan, ‘‘Some Notes on Navaho Dreams,’’

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120–31 in Psychoanalysis and Culture: Some Essays in Honor of Ge´za Ro´heim, ed. George B. Wilbur and Werner Muensterberger (New York: International Universities Press, 1951). 43. J. S. Lincoln, The Dream in Primitive Cultures (London: P. Cresset, 1935), quoted in Iain R. Edgar, ‘‘Encountering the Dream: Intersecting Anthropological and Psychoanalytical Approaches,’’ Counselling and Psychotherapy Research 3:2 (2003): quotation on 96. 44. See Edgar, ‘‘Encountering the Dream,’’ 96–97. See also Regna Darnell, ‘‘Keeping the Faith: A Legacy of Native American Ethnography, Ethnohistory, and Psychology,’’ 3–16 in Kan and Strong, New Perspectives on Native North America, esp. 11–12. 45. Dorothy Eggan, ‘‘The Significance of Dreams for Anthropological Research,’’ American Anthropologist, n.s., 51:2 (April–June 1949): 177–98, quotation on 177), ‘‘The Manifest Content of Dreams: A Challenge to Social Science,’’ American Anthropologist, n.s., 54:4 (October–December 1952): 469–85, and ‘‘The Personal Use of Myth in Dreams,’’ ‘‘Myth: A Symposium,’’ special issue of Journal of American Folklore 68:270 (October–December 1955): 445–53. 46. Anthony F. C. Wallace, ‘‘Dreams and the Wishes of the Soul: A Type of Psychoanalytic Theory Among the Seventeenth Century Iroquois,’’ American Anthropologist, n.s., 60:2 (April 1958): 234–48. 47. See Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, 3rd ed. (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2009). 48. E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), 1. 49. Collingwood argued for excluding these as ‘‘not parts of the historical process’’ (unnamed work quoted in Dodds, The Greeks) while Dodds argued that inclusion was essential to full understanding, a position consonant with the Freudian emphasis on unconscious motivation later championed by the historian and psychoanalyst Peter Gay in his book Freud for Historians (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). See Dodds, The Greeks, 269, n. 108. 50. Dodds, The Greeks, quotations on 103, 103–4. 51. One early example of this approach is found in L. H. Butterfield, ‘‘The Dream of Benjamin Rush: The Reconciliation of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson,’’ Yale Review, n.s., 40:2 (December 1950): 297–319, but one suspects that numerous historical analyses of dream reports are located within the voluminous corpus of annotated diaries, edited autobiographies and biographies. We omit most such works from our discussion here, as they do not engage in a sustained conversation about the nature and function of dreaming in historical and cultural context. 52. Merle Curti, ‘‘The American Exploration of Dreams and Dreamers,’’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 27:3 (July–September 1966): 391–416, quotation on 393, revisions to Freud on 413–14. 53. Works and authors cited in Curti, ‘‘The American Exploration,’’ 408 and 408, nn. 67, 68, 69. Curti also cites Anthony F. C. Wallace’s seminal article, ‘‘Dreams and the Wishes of the Soul,’’ cited above, on 408, at n. 64.

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54. Jacques Le Goff, ‘‘Mentalities: A New Field for the Historian,’’ International Social Science Council Social Science Information 13 (1974): 64–86. For reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of the mentalite´ approach, see the essays in Stuart Clark, ed., The Annales School: Critical Assessments 2 vols. (London: Routledge, 1999), 2:381–490. 55. Jacques Le Goff, ‘‘Dreams in Culture and Collective Psychology of the Medieval West,’’ in Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), and The Medieval Imagination. 56. For an important attempt to extend Le Goff ’s mentalite´ approach to seventeenth-century England, see Peter Burke, ‘‘The Cultural History of Dreams,’’ in Varieties of Cultural History (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997), 23–42. The essay was first published, in French, as ‘‘L’histoire sociale des reˆves,’’ Annales: E´conomies, Socie´te´s, Civilisations 28:2 (March–April 1973): 329–42. 57. For English translations, see Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), esp. ‘‘Dreaming of the Dead,’’ 35–58, and The Conversion of Herman the Jew: Autobiography, History and Fiction in the Twelfth Century, trans. Alex J. Novikoff (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). 58. Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983; originally pub. as I Benandanti, 1966); and Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (New York: Scribner’s, 1971). 59. One influential and relatively early statement of the usefulness of reported dreams for social history research is found in Burke, ‘‘L’histoire sociale des reˆves,’’ esp. 333–34. 60. Respectively, Alan MacFarlane, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin, a Seventeenth-Century Clergyman: An Essay in Historical Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), esp. 183–98; and William A. Christian, Jr., Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981). 61. David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989). The introduction (3–20) as well as his first chapter are particularly helpful in articulating these aspects of his argument. 62. Mack, Visionary Women; Gerona, Night Journeys; and Sobel, Teach Me Dreams. 63. Gerona, Night Journeys, esp. 239–40. 64. In addition to Sobel, Teach Me Dreams, and Taves, Fits, Trances, and Visions, see Phyllis Mack, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in Early Methodism (Cambridge: Cambridge, 2008), 219–60; and Susan Juster, Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), esp. 58–62.

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65. See Alexandra Walsham, ‘‘The Reformation and ‘The Disenchantment of the World’ Reassessed,’’ Historical Journal 51:2 (June 2008): 497–528. 66. See Fosshage, ‘‘The Developmental Function of Dreaming Mentation,’’ and Hartmann, The Nature and Functions of Dreaming, 5. 67. For examples of dream and vision reports playing a similar function in Protestant politics, see Carole Levin, Dreaming the English Renaissance: Politics and Desire in Court and Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 68. Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Knopf, 1970). Chapter 1. The Inner Eye 1. See Giambattista Vico, Principi di un scienzia nova [The new science] (Naples, 1725); and George Berkeley, Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709), http:// en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Essay_Towards_a_New_Theory_of_Vision, accessed January 6, 2011. 2. Kaja Silverman’s work continues this utopian line of reasoning; from a psychoanalytic ground, she argues for a refreshed perception of the proper or beautiful body that does not repudiate the body of the socially determined ‘‘other’’: Kaja Silverman, The Threshold of the Visible World (New York: Routledge, 1996). 3. Al-Hacen, The Optics of Ibn Al-Haytham: Introduction, Commentary, Glossaries, Concordance, Indices, ed. A. I. Sabra (London: Warburg Institute, 1989). Recent work in optics stemming from Al-Hacen’s theory of depth perception has been done by H. A. Sedgwick, ‘‘Alhazen’s ‘Ground Theory’ of Distance Perception,’’ Perception 30 (2001), 103; he found inspiration in the contemporary ‘‘ground theory’’ of his former teacher J. J. Gibson, Perception of the Visual World (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950). The standard account of premodern theories of vision is David C. Lindberg’s Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976). See also the more recent essays on the history of European philosophical interest in vision in David Michael Levin, Sites of Vision: The Discursive Construction of Sight in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1997); and the final chapter (‘‘Signs’’) of Stuart Clark’s brilliant Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), which was not available when I first drafted this essay: that work also includes a chapter on ‘‘Dreams’’ (ch. 9) in the context of demonology. Important works in English on the early epistemological vagaries of visual perception and knowledge also include Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2007), which analyzes eighteenth- to twentieth-century reproductions, from the copper-plate engraving to the electron microscope and radio telescope of visual or (in various senses) visible, data; and an earlier work on medical imagery and imaging in the eighteenth century, Barbara Maria Stafford’s Body Criticism (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1993). Svetlana Alpers’s groundbreaking interdisciplinary Art of Describing: Dutch Seventeenth-Century Art (Berkeley: University

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of California Press, 1979) set the stage for a cornucopia out of which I list only a few major synthetic works, in its presentation of intertwined invention in visual instruments and techniques of painting and engraving in the period of the ‘‘scientific revolution.’’ 4. This was signaled by the publication in 1562 of a Latin translation of Sextus Empiricus’ Outline of Pyrrhonian Skepticism, and is often epitomized by reference to the works of the two canonical giants, Montaigne and Descartes. 5. On Jesuit work in natural philosophy see Mordecai Feingold, ed., Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2003). 6. Cf. Jean Nicot, Thresor de la langue francoyse, tant ancienne que modern . . . (Paris: David Douceur, 1606); Le Dictionnaire de l’Acade´mie franc¸aise (Paris: J. B. Coignard, 1694). 7. For the Macrobian dream categories, see his Commentaries on the Dream of Scipio, trans. William Harris Stahl (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), 1.3, 87–92. For a characteristic contemporary treatment of dream as a neurobiological phenomenon, see J. Allan Hobson, Dreaming: An Introduction to Sleep (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), especially ch. 8, ‘‘The New Neuropsychology of Dreaming.’’ 8. This remains true even, at the limits of his skepticism, in terms of waking sight, as at the famously paranoid beginning of his 1641 Meditations. 9. For general introductions to Renaissance and seventeenth-century dream discourse, see chronologically overlapping essays by Peter Holland, ‘‘Interpretation in the Renaissance,’’ in Reading Dreams: The Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare, ed. Peter Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); and Mary Baine Campbell, ‘‘Dreaming, Motion, Meaning,’’ 15–30 in Reading the Early Modern Dream: The Terrors of the Night, ed. Katharine Hodgkin, Michelle O’Callaghan, and Susan Wiseman (London: Routledge, 2008). Stuart Clark profitably discusses the twin problem of the unreliability of both dreaming and, as a consequence, waking vision in ‘‘Dreams’’ (ch. 9 in Vanities of the Eye) in relation to the pan-European literature on the reality of the witches’ sabbat. 10. The complexity of their use in French poetry has been magnificently and exhaustively examined in Florence Dumora, L’oeuvre nocturne: Songe et repre´sentation au XVIIe sie`cle (Paris: Honore´ Champion, 2005). Although it is primarily a work on literary dreams, the first two long chapters are immensely erudite and intelligent accounts of dream interpretation and theory in seventeenth-century France. 11. Stuart Clark cites a question ‘‘put by Galileo, to an opponent in an argument: ‘I should like to know the visual differences by which he so readily distinguishes the real from the spurious’ ’’ (Vanities of the Eye, 2–3). 12. See Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), ch. 3, ‘‘Fallen Women and Fallen Angels.’’

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13. For an early fifteenth-century case, see Dyan Elliott, ‘‘Seeing Double: John Gerson, the Discernment of Spirits, and Joan of Arc,’’ American Historical Review 107:1 (February 2002): 26–54. 14. For twentieth-century English translations, see Artemidorus Daldianus, The Interpretation of Dreams (Oneirocritica), ed. and trans. Robert J. White (Park Ridge, N.J.: Noyes Press, 1975); and Achmet, The Oneirocriticon of Achmet, trans. and introd. Steven M. Oberhelman (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1991), which includes a very extended and useful introduction to both text and context. The dream book of Synesius was translated from Greek to Latin by Girolamo Cardano in the later sixteenth century. The earliest vernacular print republications of Artemidorus were in 1500 in France (Rouen), 1547 in Italy (Venegria), and 1606 in England (London). The materials of Achmet’s manual have largely seventh-and eighth-century Islamic Arabic origins, themselves influenced to some degree by Artemidorus. See also Maria Mavroudi, A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 15. ‘‘Fourthly, those dreams that involve the harbors and walls, the marketplaces and gymnasia and the public monuments of the city are called ‘public.’ Finally, those that predict a total eclipse of the sun, the moon, and the other stars as well as chaotic upheavals of earth and sea—those that predict cosmic conditions—are called, appropriately enough, ‘cosmic dreams’ ’’ (Artemidorus 1:16). 16. Aristotle’s main relevant work is available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of On the Soul, the Parva Naturalia, and On Breath, in Aristotle VIII, trans. W. S. Hett (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957). 17. John Locke, An Essay on Human Understanding, ed. Alexander Campbell Fraser (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894; rpt. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952). Modern New World anthropologists in a world of cognitive science tend to see all but Western-industrial-style ratiocination as what is currently called ‘‘ASC’’ (Altered States of Consciousness), and see dream, trance, vision, hallucination, and reverie as culturally differentiated gradations of ‘‘thinking.’’ See, e.g., the stimulating essays in Barbara Tedlock’s collection, Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations (Santa Fe, N.M.: School of American Research Press, 1992); and also ch. 1, ‘‘Culture, Dreams, and Theory,’’ in Lee Irwin’s excellent work on Plains Indian religion: The Dream Seekers: Native American Visionary Traditions of the Great Plains, The Civilization of the American Indian Series (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 9–25. 18. It is impossible to omit mention here of experiments undertaken recently between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Duke Medical Center in Durham, N.C., in which a monkey in Cambridge, Mass., was made to raise his arm by the thought of a scientist in Durham. See M. A. L. Nicoletis and J. K. Chapin, ‘‘Controlling Robots in the Mind,’’ Scientific American 287 (2002): 46–53. 19. The historian of science Lorraine Daston has written extensively on the development of suspicion about the subjectivity of personal vision (and therefore ironically the necessity for science of those very communities of witness that natural communities had once provided—or declined to—in the case of dreams) and on the invention

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of ‘‘objectivity’’: see most recently the first two chapters of Daston and Gallison, Objectivity. 20. The Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge was founded in 1660 by a group of scientists who had been meeting for discussion and experiments at Gresham College in London since 1645, and who published reports in the Philosophical Transactions beginning in March 1665; the journal is still publishing. The Bureau d’Addresse in Paris was a more short-lived venue for the discussion of mostly natural knowledge, run by The´ophraste Renaudot, who published the conversations in ‘‘centuries’’ (see n. 24). On the development of the value of ‘‘objectivity,’’ as I have been discussing it, in the verification of miracles, see Fernando Vidal, ‘‘Miracles, Science, and Testimony in Post-Tridentine Saint-Making,’’ Science in Context 20:3 (2007): 481–508; and Robert M. Burns, The Great Debate on Miracles: From Joseph Glanvill to David Hume (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1981). The increasing scrupulosity of the canonization process and its investigation of miracles did not start in the seventeenth century, but it underwent major reforms under Pope Urban VIII, who also interdicted the publication of unauthorized ‘‘revelations’’ in the bull Sanctissimus Dominus Noster (March 13, 1625). 21. A contemporary scholarly edition exists (drawn mainly from pages quoted and paraphrased by Descartes’s contemporary biographer Adrien Baillet), with commentary: Fernand Hallyn, ed., Les olympiques: E´tudes et textes (Geneva: Droz, 1995). 22. Moyse Amyraut, Discours sur les songes divins dont il est parle´ dans l’E´scriture (Saumur: Desbordes, 1659), 36. 23. Amyraut, Discours sur les songes, 9. Amyraut makes no reference to the contemporary theory of the ‘‘animal spirits,’’ but for my purposes these amount to the same thing: early physiological theories of dreams as bodily experiences produced by individual physiologies. 24. The´ophraste Renaudot, ‘‘Des songes’’ (originally an oral presentation, ‘‘Confe´rence Vingt-et-unie`me’’), in Pre´mie`re Centurie des questions traite´es ´es confe´rences du Bureau d’Addresse (Paris: Bureau d’Addresse, 1634); and Paul Le Jeune, Relation de ce qui s’est passe´ en la Nouvelle France en l’anne´e 1634 (Paris: Sebastian Cramoisy, 1635). Le Jeune had sent home one previous relation, in 1633, but it was a narrative report. For convenience I will cite the Relations (as JR) from the widely available bilingual edition published in vol. 6 of the Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (1896–1900; New York: Pageant Book Company, 1959). I have checked the texts in the original Cramoisy volumes, and adjusted Thwaites’s sometimes tendentious English translation. 25. ‘‘Confe´rence Vingt-et-unie`me,’’ in Premiere Centurie des Questions traitees ez conferences du Bureau d’addresse (Paris: Bureau d’Addresse, 1635), 2nd printing. 26. The barely emergent social science of psychology is not of equal interest for this essay: it only belatedly turned its attention, at least outside Germany, toward dream experience. In his Cours General de Psychologie of 1789, Benoni Debrun mentions dream only once, in passing, with reference to tactile impressions during sleep,

Notes to Pages 41–43

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and dreams are not a category either in Fernando Vidal’s recent history of the disciˆ me: XVIeme au XVIIIe sie`cles (Paris: Honore´ Champion, 2006). pline, Sciences de l’A Benoni Debrun’s work is reprinted in Un cours de Psychologie durant la re´volution franc¸aise de 1789: Le traite´ de psychologie de Benoni Debrun, ed. Serge Nicolas (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003). Freud’s interest, fed by the never quite moribund interest in dreams of the German medical establishment, was novel and productive for the twentieth century, but it does not depart from the Lockean model of the pure subjectivity, bodily containment, and fundamentally antisocial nature of dream experience; and as for Locke (et al.), the dream for Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalysis is not associated in any way with ‘‘vision.’’ The only twentieth-century analysis I have found that links modern Western dream either to ‘‘vision,’’ at least in its now-reduced metaphorical sense, or to the communal life of social beings, is by Charlotte Beradt, another German, who collected the dreams of ordinary persons during the 1930s in Berlin, and then escaped with them to France and England in 1939 and in 1941, to the United States, where after twenty-five years she published (in German first and soon after in English) her now well-known Third Reich of Dreams: she reads these dreams of the emerging totalitarian state as what Macrobius or Artemidorus would have called ‘‘public’’ dreams—except nobody talked about them, and even she did not publish them until 1966. The English edition, Charlotte Beradt, The Third Reich of Dreams, with an essay by Bruno Bettelheim (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968), was a translation of the original German, Das Dritte Reich des Traums (Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1966). 27. JR 54:97. 28. For a stimulating account of the specifically European intellectual context of the Jesuit interest in and struggle against the ‘‘socie´te´s a` reˆve’’ in Nouvelle France, see Leslie Tuttle’s chapter in this volume. 29. Paul Ragueneau, JR 30:27 (1645–46). 30. That he was skeptical even of many Montagnais’ belief in their own visionary experience, never mind of its objective reality, does not make him representative of all French or even Jesuit missionaries in New France, but it was a common response of the priestly competitor with native shamans and dreamers. Compare, however, the attitude toward prophetic dreams in the writing of Le Jeune’s contemporary the Ursuline abbess Marie de l’Incarnation in Montre´al or, later in the century, the Jesuit mystic Claude Chauchetie`re’s advocacy for sainthood of the Iroquois Catherine Tekakwitha. See also, e.g., Peter Goddard, ‘‘The Devil in New France: Jesuit Demonology, 1611– 1650,’’ Canadian Historical Review 78:1 (March 1997): 40–62. 31. This is evident in a large number of accounts of unfulfilled dreams in Montagnais and Huron villages. 32. JR 6:182. 33. See Anthony Wallace, ‘‘Dreams and the Wishes of the Soul: A Type of Psychoanalytic Theory Among the Seventeenth-Century Iroquois,’’ American Anthropologist, n.s., 60:2 (1958): 234–48.

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34. The famous phrase is the poet Marianne Moore’s, from ‘‘Poetry,’’ the long version, in print in her ‘‘Notes’’ to The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (New York: Macmillan and Viking Press, 1981), 266–67. 35. For a more detailed treatment of this scene, see my article ‘‘The Sorceror [sic] and the Priest: Wandering Souls in Canadian Forests, 1634,’’ in Points of Arrival: Travels in Time, Space and the Self/Zielpunkte: Unterwegs in Zeit, Raum und Selbst (Tuebingen: Francke, 2008), 49–60. 36. Weyer’s manual was published a year after the Outline of Pyrrhonian Skepticism came out in nearby Geneva. 37. I have spent less time so far with the spottier records of Jesuit, Dominican, and Augustinian missionaries in Central and South America, but see Bruce Mannheim, ‘‘A Semiotic of Andean Dreams,’’ in Tedlock, Dreaming, 132–53, and his chief seventeenthcentury sources, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva coronica y bve gobierno (Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie, 1936) (facsimile ed.), and the Ritual formulario of the priest and musician Juan Pe´rez Bocanegro, dream texts from which can be found in Mannheim’s Ph.D. dissertation, ‘‘Structural Change and the Structure of Change’’ (University of Chicago, 1983). Neither Bernardino Sahagu´n nor Die´go Duran, ethnographically inclined missionaries in Mexico in the sixteenth century, discuss dreams. 38. See the article on ‘‘songe’’ in Encyclope´die de Diderot de d’Alembert ou Dictionnaire raisonne´ des sciences, des arts et des me´tiers (CD) (Marsanne: Edition Redon, 2000). 39. Anamorphosis, popular in the early modern and, particularly, baroque periods in the history of painting, involves the projection of images that must be viewed with a mirror or special lens or from a particular angle to be interpretable. 40. On the links between prophetic or ‘‘inspired’’ dream and political subversion in the nineteenth century, see Rhodri Hayward’s anti-Freudian article, ‘‘Policing Dreams: History and the Moral Use of the Unconscious,’’ in Dreams and History: The Interpretation of Dreams from Ancient Greece to Modern Psychoanalysis, ed. Daniel Pick and Lyndal Roper (London: Routledge, 2004), 159–77; for early modern English political dreaming, on a broader scale, see Michelle O’Callaghan, ‘‘Dreaming the Dead: Ghosts and History in the Early Seventeenth Century,’’ in Hodgkin, O’Callaghan, and Wiseman, Reading the Early Modern Dream, 81–96. 41. Michael F. Brown, ‘‘Ropes of Sand: Order and Imagery in Aguaruna Dreams,’’ 154–70 in Tedlock, Dreaming, quotations on 167–68. 42. My unpublished article on the history of the word ‘‘reˆve’’ goes into some detail on the etymologies and semantic histories of these words, particularly of ‘‘reˆve,’’ particularly in the early modern period; publication has been delayed for a forthcoming series of word histories to be edited in France by Laurent Loty. Meanwhile, for the fascinating etymological origins of ‘‘reˆve,’’ see Daniel Fabre, ‘‘ ‘Reˆver’: Le mot, la chose, l’histoire,’’ Terrain 26 (March 1996): 69–82.

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Chapter 2. Demons of Desire or Symptoms of Disease? 1. Thomas Vaughan, British Library manuscript, Sloane 1741, fol. 107; see E. L. Marilla, ‘‘Henry and Thomas Vaughan,’’ Modern Language Review 39:2 (1944): 180–83. 2. For modern studies of sleep paralysis see J. A. Cheyne, ‘‘Sleep Paralysis Episode Frequency and Number, Types, and Structure of Associated Hallucinations,’’ Journal of Sleep Research 14 (2005): 319–24; J. A. Cheyne, Ian R. Newby-Clark, and Steve D. Rueffer, ‘‘Relations Among Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Experiences Associated with Sleep Paralysis,’’ Journal of Sleep Research 8 (1999): 313–17; J. A. Cheyne, ‘‘Situational Factors Affecting Sleep Paralysis and Associated Hallucinations: Position and Timing Effects,’’ Journal of Sleep Research 11 (2002): 169–77; Albert Yeung, Yong Xu, and Doris F. Chang, ‘‘Prevalence and Illness Beliefs of Sleep Paralysis Among Chinese Psychiatric Patients in China and the United States,’’ Transcultural Psychiatry 42:1 (2005): 135–45; Mariana Szklo-Coxe, Terry Young, Laura Finn, and Emmanuel Mignot, ‘‘Depression: Relationships to Sleep Paralysis and Other Sleep Disturbances in a Community Sample,’’ Journal of Sleep Research 16 (2007): 297–312; Umit B. Semiz, Cengiz Basoglu, Servet Ebrinc, and Mesut Cetin, ‘‘Nightmare Disorder, Dream Anxiety, and Subjective Sleep Quality in Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder,’’ Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 62 (2008): 48–55. 3. Richard Blackmore, A Treatise of the Spleen and Vapours: or, Hypocondriacal and Hysterical Affections . . . (London: J. Pemberton, 1725), 16; Robert Whytt, Observations on the Nature, Causes, and Cure of those Disorders which have been Commonly Called Nervous Hypochondriac, or Hysteric . . . (Edinburgh: J. Baldour, 1765), 317–18. 4. Owen Davies, ‘‘Hag-Riding in Nineteenth-Century West Country England and Modern Newfoundland: An Examination of An Experience-Centred Witchcraft Tradition,’’ Folk-life 35:1 (1997): 36–53. 5. Owen Davies, ‘‘The Nightmare Experience, Sleep Paralysis and Witchcraft Accusations,’’ Folklore 114 (2003): 181–203; Willem de Ble´court, ‘‘Bedding the Nightmare: Somatic Experience and Narrative Meaning in Dutch and Flemish Legend Texts,’’ Folklore 114 (2003): 227–45. 6. Davies, ‘‘The Nightmare Experience,’’ 286. 7. Owen Davies, The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 146. 8. Caroline Oates, ‘‘Cheese Gives You Nightmares: Old Hags and Heartburn,’’ Folklore 114 (2003): 205–25. 9. The Spectator, Vol. 2, 6th ed. (London: J. Tonson, 1723), 128. 10. Davies, ‘‘Hag-riding in Nineteenth-century West County England,’’ 36. 11. Edward Fairfax, ‘‘A Discourse on Witchcraft,’’ British Library, MS Add. 32495, fol. 2. 12. Anon, Evidences of the Kingdom of Darkness: Being A Collection of Authentic and Entertaining Narratives of . . . Ghosts, Demons, and Spectres: Together with Several

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Wonderful Instances of the Effects of Witchcraft . . . (London: Printed for T. Evans, 1770), 225. 13. Patricia Crawford and Laura Gowing, eds., Women’s Worlds in SeventeenthCentury England (London: Routledge, 1999), 275. 14. Crawford and Gowing, Women’s Worlds, 276. 15. Edmund Gardiner, Phisicall and Approved Medicines, Aswell in Meere Simples . . . (London: Mathew Lownes, 1611), 55. 16. This work was translated into English in 1683 by S. Pordage. Thomas Willis, Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes Which is That of the Vital and Sensitive of Man . . . (London: Thomas Dring, 1683), 142. 17. Thomas Tryon, A Treatise on Dreams and Visions (London: T. Sowle, 1695), 24–25. 18. David Kathman, ‘‘Heywood, Thomas (c.1573–1641),’’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, http://www.oxforddnb.com .myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/view/article/13190 (accessed January 27, 2010). 19. Thomas Heywood, The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells (London: Adam Islip, 1635), 539. 20. Heywood, Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells, 541. 21. Heywood, Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells, 542–43. 22. Heywood, Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells, 539–43. 23. Thomas Walkington, The Optick Glasse of Humors . . . (London: Martin Clerke, 1607), 30. 24. James Ferrand, Epotomania; or, A Treatise Discoursing of the Essence, Causes, Symptomes, Prognosticks, and Cure of Love or Erotique Melancholy (Oxford: L. Luchfield, 1640), 211. 25. James I, Daemonologie (London: Robert Waldgrave, 1603), 65–68. 26. James I, Daemonologie, 66. 27. Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Holbrook Jackson (New York: NYRB, 2001), 253. 28. Richard Bernard, A Guide to Grand-Jury Men Divided into Two Books . . . (London: Printed by Felix Kyngston for Edw. Blackmore, 1630), 205. 29. Pierre le Loyer, A Treatise of Specters or Strange Sights, Visions and Apparitions . . . (London: Printed by Val. Simmes for Mathew Lownes, (1605), 3. 30. Le Loyer, A Treatise of Specters, 102. 31. Extract from Richard Haydock’s Oneirologia in British Library, MS Landsdowne 489, fol. 131. For full version see, Richard Haydock, ‘‘ ‘Oneirologia, or, a Brief Discourse of the Nature of Dreames,’’ Dramatic and Poetical Miscellany, Folger Shakespeare Library, MS j.a.1 Vol. 5. For an article on Haydock, see E.P. Scarlett, ‘‘Richard Haydock: Being the Account of a Jacobean Physician Who Is Also Known to History as ‘The Sleeping Clergyman’,’’ Canadian Medical Association Journal 60 (1949): 177–82. 32. ‘‘On the Nightmare’’ British Library, MS Sloane 1851, fols. 95–96.

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33. Wilhelm Scribonius, Naturall Philosophy: or A Description of the World . . . (London: Printed by Thomas Cotes for John Bellamie, 1631), 51. 34. Walter Bruele, Praxis Medicinae, or, the Physicians Practice Wherein Are Contained Inward Diseases from the Head to the Foote . . . (London: John Norton, for William Sheares, 1632), 51. 35. Page Life, ‘‘Bright, Timothy (1549/50–1615),’’ in Matthew and Harrison. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Goldman, online ed., January 2008, http://www .oxforddnb.com/view/article/3424, (accessed June 30, 2009). 36. Timothie Bright, A Treatise of Melancholy . . . (London: William Stansby, 1613), 238. 37. Bright, A Treatise of Melancholy, 239. 38. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 253. 39. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 101. 40. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 252. 41. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 101. 42. Edmund Gardiner, Phisicall and Approved Medicines (London: Printed by E. Allde for Mathew Lownes, 1611), 55. 43. Walkington, The Optick Glasse of Humors, 29–30. 44. Thomas Willis, Dr Willis’s Practice of Physick, Being the Whole Works of That Renowned and Famous Physician. . . . (London: T. Dring, C. Harper, and J. Leigh, 1684). 45. John Bond, An Essay on the Incubus, or Night-mare (London: D. Wilson and T. Durham, 1753), Preface. 46. Willis, Dr. Willis’s Practice of Physick, 92. 47. Jeremy Collier, Miscellanies upon Moral Subjects (London: Sam Keeble, 1695), 35. 48. Anon., The Problems of Aristotle, with other Philosophers and Phisitions (Edinburgh: Roger Waldgrave, 1595). 49. For an excellent history of the body in parts, see David Hillman and Carla Mazzio, The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 1997). 50. Anon., The Problems of Aristotle, C4r. 51. Philip Woodman, Medicus Novissimus; or, the Modern Physician . . . (London: J.H., 1722), 191. 52. Anon., The British Apollo: Containing Two Thousand Answers to Curious Questions in Most Arts and Sciences . . ., Vol. 1, 3rd ed. (London: Theodore Sanders, 1726), 744–45. 53. A Treatise of Diseases of the Head, Brain & Nerves . . . (London: s.n., 1714), 73: Note, this medical tract was published a further three times in 1721, 1727 and 1738. 54. John Radcliffe, Pharmacopoeia Radcliffeana: or, Dr. Radcliffe’s Prescriptions, Faithfully Gather’d from his Original Recipe’s . . . 3rd ed. (London: Charles Rivington, 1718), 111.

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55. Steven Blankaart, The Physical Dictionary . . . (London: Printed for Sam. Crouch and John Sprint, 1702), 124. 56. Thomas Sydenham, Schedula monitoria de novae febris ingressu per Tho. Sydenham (London: Typis R.N., Impensis Gualt. Kettilby, 1686). See also, Kaara L. Peterson, Popular Medicine, Hysterical Disease, and Social Controversy in Shakespeare’s England (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2010). 57. Blackmore, Treatise of the Spleen and Vapours, 16. 58. Blackmore, Treatise of the Spleen and Vapours, 23–24. 59. Whytt, Observations on the Nature, 319. 60. Whytt, Observations on the Nature, 322–23. 61. John Locke, An Essay on Human Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 10, 49. 62. Andrew Baxter, An Enquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul . . . (London: Printed for James Bettenham, 1733), 203. 63. Baxter, Enquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul, 203. 64. Lucia Dacome, ‘‘ ‘To What Purpose Does It Think’: Dreams, Sick Bodies and Confused Minds in the Age of Reason,’’ History of Psychiatry 15:4 (2004): 402. 65. Dacome, ‘‘ ‘To What Purpose Does It Think,’ ’’406; Thomas Branch, Thoughts on Dreaming . . . (London: Printed for R. Dodsley; and J. Jolliffe, 1738). 66. Bond, Essay on the Incubus, 5. 67. Bond, Essay on the Incubus, Preface. 68. Bond, Essay on the Incubus. 69. Bond, Essay on the Incubus, 47. 70. Bond, Essay on the Incubus, 47. 71. Thomas Hobbes, Philosophcall Rudiments Concerning Government and Society (London: R. Royston, 1651), 184. 72. Walkington, The Optick Glasse of Humors, 30. 73. Barrough, The Methode of Phisicke, 34. 74. Thomas Laqueur, Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation (New York: Zone Books, 2004). 75. Bond, Essay on the Incubus, 55. 76. Isbrand van Diemerbroeck, The Anatomy of Human Bodies Comprehending the Most Modern Discoveries and Curiosities in that Art . . . Translated from the Last and Most Correct and Full Edition of the Same by William Salmon (London: Printed for W. Whitwood, 1694), 184. 77. Tryon, Treatise of Dreams, 24–25. 78. Helkiah Crooke, A Description of the Body of Man (London: William Jaggard, 1615), 500. 79. Robert Bayfield, Tes iatrikes kartos; or, A Treatise de morborum capitis essentiis & pronosticis Adorned with Above Three Hundred Choice and Rare Observations. . . . (London: D. Maxwel, 1663), 65. 80. Anon., The Problems of Aristotle, C4r.

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81. Anon., Nocturnal Revels: Or, A General History of Dreams. In Two Parts, (London: Andrew Bell, 1706), 14. 82. Francis Bacon, Sylua syluarum; or, A Naturall Historie in Ten Centuries. . . . (London: William Lee, 1627), 259; and Nicholas Culpeper, The English Physitian; or, An Astrologo-Physical Discourse of the Vulgar Herbs of This Nation (London: Peter Cole, 1652), 193. 83. Barrough, Method of Phisicke, 34. 84. Thomas Coohan, The Haven of Health (London: Roger Ball, 1636), 275; and Anon., Directions and Observations Relative to Food, Exercise and Sleep (London: S. Bladen, 1772), 22. 85. William Buchan, Domestic Medicine; or, A Treatise on the Prevention and Cure of Diseases by Regimen and Simple Medicines (London: W. Stahan, 1772), 108; and Dacome, ‘‘ ‘To What Purpose Does It Think,’ ’’ 395. 86. Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 108. 87. Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 108. 88. Dacome, ‘‘ ‘To What Purpose Does It Think,’ ’’ 395. 89. Coohan, The Haven of Health, 31, 63–65, 275. 90. Davies, ‘‘The Nightmare Experience,’’ 187–88. Chapter 3. Competition and Confirmation in the Iberian Prophetic Community 1. Archivo Histo´rico Nacional (AHN), Madrid, Inquisicio´n, leg. 3712, fol. 126. This legajo (bundle) contains the transcriptions of over four hundred of Lucrecia de Leo´n’s dreams. Hereafter all direct citations to her dreams are from this source and are identified by date and folio numbers. 2. AHN, leg. 3712, fol. 127. 3. Andre´s Martı´nez, ed., El cerco de la Corun˜a en 1589 y Mayor Ferna´ndez Pita (La Corun˜a: Biblioteca Gallega, 1889), 81–86. The author indicates that this information is found in Archivo General de Simancas, Secretarı´a de Guerra, leg. 244. 4. N. A. M. Rodger, ‘‘The Drake-Norris Expedition: English Naval Strategy in the Sixteenth Century,’’ Militaria, Revista de Cultura Militar, no. 8 (Madrid: Servicio de Publicaciones, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1996), 89–100. 5. Jacques Le Goff, ‘‘Le christianisme et les reˆves,’’ 171–215 in I sogni nel Medioevo, ed. T. Gregory (Rome: Ateneo, 1985); and Peter Burke, ‘‘The Cultural History of Dreams,’’ 23–42 in Varieties of Cultural History (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997). A recent work dedicated to the relation between dreams and historical reality is Carole Levin, Dreaming the English Renaissance: Politics and Desire in Court and Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 6. Fernando Bouza A´lvarez, Portugal no tempo dos Filipes: Polı´tica, Cultura, Representac¸o˜es (1580–1668) (Lisbon: Edic¸o˜es Cosmos, 2000), 133–34. 7. Marı´a V. Jorda´n Arroyo, Son˜ar la historia: Riesgo, creatividad y religio´n en las profecı´as de Lucrecia de Leo´n (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 2007), 8–10; and Richard Kagan, Los

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Notes to Pages 75–78

suen˜os de Lucrecia: Polı´tica y profecı´a en la Espan˜a del siglo XVI (Madrid: Nerea, 1990), 1–33. Kagan emphasizes the political content and context of the dreams. 8. Juan Bla´zquez Miguel, Suen˜os y procesos de Lucrecia de Leo´n (Madrid: Tecnos, 1987). See the sentences of those involved in Julio Sierra, ed., Procesos en la Inquisicio´n de Toledo (1575–1610): El manuscrito de Halle (Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 2005). 9. Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker, The Spanish Armada (New York: Norton, 1988), 135–36; and Kagan, Los suen˜os, 112–13. 10. Garret Mattingly, The Armada (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959), 93–110, presents the classic discussion of Drake’s raid on Ca´diz and the subsequent destruction of the staves for the water casks with deleterious effects on the Spanish Armada’s later capacity to stay at sea. 11. Marı´a del Carmen Saavedra Va´zquez, ‘‘La formacio´n de armadas y sus efectos sobre el territorio: El ejemplo de Galicia, 1580–1640,’’ Cuadernos de Historia Moderna, supp. 5 (2006): 55–76. 12. Calendar of State Papers, (Spain) Simancas, January 21, 1589, Bernardino de Mendoza to King Philip II. (Archives K.1570). online at www.British-History.ac.uk. 13. AHN, leg. 3712, dream of the third Friday of May 1589, fol. 151. 14. ‘‘Mandou a fazer prestes em toda castela aos grandes y pequenos e neste Reino e c¸idade mandou logo se fizese toda a gente e erguir quatro coroneis com seus terc¸os.’’ Pero Roı¯z Soares, Memorial, ed. M. Lopes de Almeida (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 1953), 288–90. This work covers the period 1565 to 1628. 15. The study of Rodger suggests that Norris’s attack on La Corun˜a was a serious error that permitted the Spanish authorities to take the necessary steps to defend Lisbon, but at the same time he does not deny the failures of the Spanish naval forces that were characterized by improvisation and lack of preparation. See Rodger, ‘‘The Drake-Norris Expedition,’’ 95, 100. 16. Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970); and Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London: Penguin, 1973). 17. Robert Bruce Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Church (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988); and Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1972). 18. Alain Milhou, Colo´n y su mentalidad mesia´nica en el ambiente franciscanista espan˜ol (Valladolid: Casa-Museo de Colo´n, 1983). 19. Erich Lassota Steblovo, ‘‘An˜o 1580–1584,’’ Viajes de extranjeros por Espan˜a y Portugal en los siglos XV, XVI, XVII, Javier Liske, ed. (Madrid: Medina, 1879), 170–71; 210–11. He reported the story of Emmanuel Cerrada, who was executed on the island of Terceira in the Azores because he refused to recognize Philip II as his king. Although he would have been pardoned if he had recognized the authority of the Spanish king, he remained firm in his position and refused to do so, saying, ‘‘I don’t know your Philip.’’

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20. Joa˜o Francisco Marques, A Parene´tica portuguesa e a dominac¸a˜o Filipina (Porto: Instituto Nacional de Investigac¸a˜o Cientı´fica, 1986), 3–113. 21. Marques, A Parene´tica Portuguesa; see document 3 in the appendix, 405–8. 22. Jose´ Pedro Paiva, ‘‘Bishops and Politics: The Portuguese Episcopacy During the Dynastic Crisis of 1580,’’ Journal of Portuguese History 4:2 (2006): 1–19. Paiva presents an extensive panorama of the positions taken by different sectors of the Portuguese clergy. For Lucrecia’s concern with foreign intervention against Spain’s interest, see dreams of March 6 and 7, 1588, fols. 342–47 and April 18, 1588, fol. 18. 23. Schaub notes that in order to discourage these ‘‘sebastianist conspiracies,’’ Philip II ordered that the remains of Dom Sebastian be buried in an elaborate funeral ceremony, but despite that effort, self-proclaimed Sebastians continued to appear in various corners of the world as savior kings. See Jean-Fre´de´ric Schaub, Portugal na Monarquia Hispaˆnica (Lisbon: Livros Horizonte, 2001) , 57–60. 24. Dreams of March 6 and 7, 1588, and April 18, 1588. See the recent monograph on the trial of a Portuguese female Sebastianist, Bryan Givens, Judging Maria de Macedo: A Female Visionary and the Inquisition in Early Modern Portugal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011). 25. Mercedes Garcı´a Arenal notes that the defeat of Dom Sebastian led to a flurry of diplomatic activity as various European states sought realignment. A number of European states established diplomatic relations with Morocco. See Garcı´a Arenal, Messianism and Puritanical Reform (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 271–73. 26. Dream of February 17, 1589, fols. 109–10. 27. Dream of June 2, 1589, fol. 128. 28. Dream of May 26, 1589, fols. 124–26. In various dreams Lucrecia speaks of ‘‘traitors’’ who operate from Spain and who help the enemies in their plans of invasion. See also the dream of June 2, 1589. 29. Dream of April 20, 1589, fol. 119. 30. John H. Elliott, Spain and Its World, 1500–1700 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), 217–40. 31. Jose´ I. Fortea Pe´rez, ‘‘Economı´a, arbitrismo, y polı´tica en la monarquı´a a fines del siglo xvi,’’ Manuscrits: Revista d’Historia Moderna 16 (1998): 157–76. 32. ‘‘Pero tiempo vendra´ en que yo me mude y dan˜e al alto y al pequen˜o ayude.’’ Miguel de Cervantes, La Numancia, Florencio Cedilla Arroyo y Antonio Rey Hazas, eds. (Madrid: Alianza Editorial y Centro de Estudios Cervantinos, 1996), jornada 4, vv. 1990–91. 33. Joaquim Verrı´simo Serra˜o Histo´ria de Portugal, 17 vols. (Lisbon: Ed. Verbo, 1979), 4:37–40; Francisco Caeiro, O Archiduque Alberto de Austria (Lisbon: privately published, 1961); and Luiz Augusto Rebelo da Silva, Histo´ria de Portugal, 5 vols. (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1860–71), 2:124–29. 34. Dream of July 7, 1589, fols. 144–46. See Paiva, ‘‘Bishops and Politics.’’ For a literary production that takes an anti-Antonine position, see Ju´lio J. Gonza´lez Montan˜e´s, ‘‘El teatro de los Jesuitas en Galicia en los siglos xvi y xvii,’’ dialnet.unirioja.es, accessed September 27, 2007, 1–20.

264

Notes to Pages 82–88

35. R. B. Wernham, The Expedition of Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake to Spain and Portugal, 1589 (Aldershot: Temple Smith–Navy Records Society, 1988), 178–84. 36. Caeiro, O Archiduque, 167–95. 37. Verissimo Serra˜o, Historia, 4:37–38. 38. Dream of Saturday, some date in July, fols. 150–51. The dreams of July do not carry an exact date. 39. ‘‘Y estavan los enemigos tan sosegados como si tuvieran la Victoria por suya.’’ Dream of Saturday, July 1589, fols. 150–51. 40. Dream of Saturday, July 1589, fols. 150–51. 41. Dream of Sunday, July, 1589, fols. 148–50. 42. Catalina Micaela, the younger daughter of Philip II and sister of the infanta Isabel, married Carlos Manuel de Saboya, Duke of Savoy, in 1585. Such marriage alliances were key elements in dynastic strategies. See Marı´a Jose´ del Rı´o, ‘‘De Madrid a Turin: El ceremonial de las reinas espan˜olas en la corte ducal de Catalina Micaela de Saboya,’’ Cuadernos de Historia Moderna, supp. 2 (2003): 97–122. 43. Robert E. Scully, ‘‘In the Confident Hope of a Miracle: The Spanish Armada and Religious Mentalities in the Late Sixteenth Century,’’ Catholic Historical Review 89:4 (2003): 643–70. 44. Marı´a Echaniz Sans, ‘‘El cuerpo femenino como encarnacio´n de Cristo: Marı´a de la Visitacio´n, la monja de Lisboa,’’ Duoda: Revista d’Estudis Feministas 9 (1995): 33–35. 45. These words were spoken by Martı´n de Ayala, a neighbor of Lucrecia de Leo´n, and appear in a note to the dream of March 18, 1588. 46. I have analyzed the complex relationship between Castilian and Portuguese prophets in chapter 5 of Son˜ar la historia, 147–78. 47. ‘‘Ay de ti Madrid, que presto seras despedrada a puras pisadas de enemigos, y guai de ti Espan˜a que te versa asolada y muy presto.’’ Dream of September 1, 1588, fols. 55–59. 48. ‘‘Si mi sobrina no fuera decubierta, no costara tanto ganar a Lisboa.’’ Dream of Saturday, July 1589, fols. 150–51. 49. It is notable that the theologians and transcribers of Lucrecia’s dreams tended to express a profound admiration of Sor Marı´a, See AHN, leg. 2085, fol. 73. 50. I have discussed this relationship in Jorda´n Arroyo, Son˜ar la historia, 15–16. 51. Lucrecia called Philip II ‘‘unfortunate, he levies taxes for his armada’’ (‘‘desventurado, que hecha pechos para . . . su armada’’). Dream of July 7, 1589, fols. 144–46. 52. Le Goff, ‘‘Le christianisme et les reˆves’’; and Burke, ‘‘The Cultural History of Dreams.’’ See also Levin, Dreaming the English Renaissance. Chapter 4. The Peasant Who Went to Hell 1. Porter was a page`s, for which there is no good equivalent in English. I will refer to him as a peasant, in the sense of a modest landowner who lived from his farming.

Notes to Pages 88–92

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2. Anonymous, Viatge a l’infern d’en Pere Porter: Entre la realitat i la ficcio´, ed. Josep Maria Pons i Guri (Barcelona: Fundacio´ Pere Coromines, 1999), 104–5. I had the honor to meet the eminent Catalan historian Pons i Guri (1909–2005), who kindly answered my research questions about Pere Porter and later sent me a photocopy of his conclusions before his edited book’s publication. 3. See a transcription of the manuscripts in Viatge a l’infern, 59–102. The originals are located at the Bibliothe`que Nationale, Paris (henceforth, BNP), Baluze Collection no. 238, and the library of the University of Barcelona (Biblioteca Universita`ria de Barcelona, henceforth BUB), ms. 1009. 4. The papers of Barcelona’s Inquisition have been largely destroyed, and those that survive in the Archivo Histo´rico Nacional, in Madrid, are partly illegible as the result of water damage. Consequently, the surviving documentation cannot offer conclusive evidence to confirm or deny whether the tribunal investigated Porter’s case; Viatge a l’infern, 55–56. 5. Relacio´ y memoria y espanto´s viatje que feu Pere Porter, ed. Gayeta´ Vidal y Valenciano, in La Renaixensa, any 7, 1:1 (January–March 1877): 1–162; see also, John H. Elliott, The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Spain (1598–1640) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 88–90. 6. For a list of printed editions of the story, see Viatge a l’infern, 17–18. On Porter’s tale as popular literature, see Arseni Pacheco, ed., Viatges a l’altre mo´n (Dos relats dels segles XIV i XVII) (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1973), xv; and Pep Valsalobre and Albert Rossich, Literatura i cultura catalanes (segles XVII–XVIII) (Barcelona: Editorial UOC, 2007), 221–25. On the story’s transatlantic influence, see Zamir Bechara, ‘‘El otro mundo en el Desierto prodigioso y prodigio del desierto de Pedro de Solı´s y Valenzuela: Procedencia de la leyenda de Pedro Porter,’’ Hispanic Review 65:1 (Winter 1997): 25–45, summarized in Literatura hispanoamericana colonial: Primeros siglos de poesı´a colombiana: Siglos XVII y XVIII (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1997), 160–77. 7. Viatge a l’infern, esp. 5–9. 8. Pons i Guri wrote that the manuscripts were too numerous for him to list; see Viatge a l’infern, 15. His edition of the story cites a dozen examples, of which I have read those at Barcelona’s Biblioteca de Catalunya, the rare book collection of the BUB (Sala de Reserva), and the BNP, mentioned below. 9. See below for the opinions of the seventeenth-century Catalan lawyer Jeroni Pujades. 10. On the dating of the events, see Viatge a l’infern, esp. 21–22. 11. Viatge a l’infern, 61. 12. Viatge a l’infern, 112, 114. 13. Viatge a l’infern, 114. 14. Viatge a l’infern, 120. 15. Viatge a l’infern, 44; and Pacheco, Viatges a l’altre mo´n, 67. 16. Viatge a l’infern, 44; and Pacheco, Viatges a l’altre mo´n, 70. 17. Viatge a l’infern, 140–42.

266

Notes to Pages 93–96

18. Dante, Inferno: A Verse Translation, trans. Allen Mandelbaum (1980; New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 13 (canto 1, line 11). 19. Francisco de Quevedo, Suen˜os y discursos, ed. Felipe C. R. Maldonado (Madrid: Castalia, 1972), 108–9. For the date of composition and publication of Suen˜os, see 39–41. The title Suen˜os has also been translated as Visions. 20. Miguel de Cervantes, El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. Luis Andre´s Murillo, 4th ed. (Madrid: Castalia, 1986), part 2, chaps. 22–24, esp. 210 (chap. 22), which describes Don Quixote coming out of the cave asleep. 21. ‘‘Revolver en la phantası´a alguna especie, durmiendo’’; ‘‘Se toma tambie´n por discurrir phanta´sticamente, y dar por cierto lo que no es’’; Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 6 vols. (Madrid: F. del Hierro, 1726–1739), 3:153, available on www.rae.es. Both meanings are also true of the Catalan word somniar, although the texts cited in Diccionari catala`-valencia`- balear (available at dcvb.iec.cat) are later than the eighteenth century. 22. Sebastia´n de Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o espan˜ola, ed. Felipe C. R. Maldonado, 2nd ed. (1611; Madrid: Castalia, 1995), 536–37 (fantası´a, fantasma); and Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5:502 (real). 23. Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua, 901. 24. Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua, 864. On beatas, see William A. Christian, Jr., Local Religion in Sixteenth Century Spain (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), 16. 25. ‘‘Fingir como real y verdadero lo que no es ni hai’’; Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 3:430 (encantar, to enchant or to cast a spell). 26. Viatge a l’infern, 140–42. 27. In addition to Vidal y Valenciano and Elliott cited in n. 5, see Luis R. Corteguera, For the Common Good: Popular Politics in Barcelona, 1580–1640 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002), 132–36, and ‘‘Felipe III y Catalun˜a,’’ 4:196–214 in La Monarquı´a de Felipe III: La Casa del Rey, ed. Jose´ Martı´nez Milla´n and Marı´a Antonietta Visceglia, 4 vols. (Madrid: MAPFRE, 2007–8), esp. 205–6. 28. For a brief summary of the revolt and additional references, see Corteguera, For the Common Good, 94–95. 29. Pasquı´n del infierno: Dia´logo de lo sucedido en Zaragoza a 24 de mayo de 1591, 60–75 in La rebelio´n de las palabras: Sa´tiras y oposicio´n polı´tica en Arago´n (1590–1620), ed. Jesu´s Gasco´n Pe´rez (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2003). 30. Viatge a l’infern, 26–28. 31. Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 3:44. On early modern Spanish critics of popular politics, see Luis R. Corteguera, ‘‘Sancho Panza Wants an Island: The Politics of Peasant Rulers in Cervantes,’’ Romance Quarterly 52:4 (Fall 2005): 261–70, esp. 265– 66, and ‘‘The Mad Arbitrista: Vulgar Men, Municipal Politics, and the Rhetoric of Counsel,’’ 216–36 in Urban Elections and Decision-Making in Early Modern Cities (1500–1800), ed. Rudolf Schlo¨gl (Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars, 2009).

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32. Ottavia Niccoli, Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), 101. 33. Richard L. Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); and more recently, Marı´a V. Jorda´n Arroyo, Son˜ar la historia: Riesgo, creatividad y religio´n en las profecı´as de Lucrecia de Leo´n (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 2007). For other examples of prophets, see Geraldine McKendrick and Angus MacKay, ‘‘Visionaries and Affective Spirituality During the First Half of the Sixteenth Century,’’ 93–104 in Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World, ed. Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 34. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (New York: Scribner’s, 1971), 133. 35. John Strype, Annals of the Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1824), 1, part 1:433–34. 36. David Warren Sabean, Power in the Blood: Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 65. 37. Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘‘Women on Top,’’ in Society and Culture (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1975), 166–67. 38. Phyllis Mack Crew, Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, 1544–1569 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 27. 39. For this example and the preceding one, see Yves Berce´, History of Peasant Revolts: The Social Origins of Rebellion in Early Modern France, trans. Amanda Whitmore (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), 310. 40. Gaspar Sala, Proclamacio´n Cato´lica (Barcelona: Sebastian y Iayme Matevad, 1640), 19–20. 41. Peter Burke, ‘‘The Virgin of the Carmine and the Revolt of Masaniello,’’ Past and Present 99 (1983): 15–16, 18. 42. Vidal y Valenciano, Relacio´ y memoria, 235. 43. William A. Christian, Jr., Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), 199. 44. On fraudulent miracle tales and the need for proof, see Christian, Apparitions, 37–38 (fraudulent tales), 72–73, 135, 140, 188–203. For the possibility that miracles might yield evidence for strange natural and preternatural events, see Lorraine Daston, ‘‘Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern Europe,’’ Critical Inquiry 18:1 (Autumn 1991): 93–124, esp. 98. 45. Viatge a l’infern, esp. 21–57. 46. Lorraine J. Daston and Katharine Park, ‘‘Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France and England,’’ Past and Present 92 (1981): 25. See also Daston and Park, Wonders of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998). 47. Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), chap. 11, ‘‘Histoire prodigieuse, Histoire tragique,’’ esp. 233–35.

268

Notes to Pages 98–104

48. Vidal y Valenciano, Relacio´ y memoria, 233–35. Not all versions of Porter’s story include these explanations. 49. Henry Ettinghausen, ‘‘The News in Spain: Relaciones de sucesos in the Reigns of Philip III and IV,’’ European History Quarterly 14 (1984): 1–20, and ‘‘The Illustrated Spanish News: Text and Image in the Seventeenth-Century Press,’’ 117–33 in Art and Literature in Spain: 1600–1800: Studies in Honour of Nigel Glendinning, ed. Charles Davis and Paul Julian Smith (London: Ta´mesis, 1993). 50. Verdadero retrato del monstruoso pescado que se hallo´ en Alemania (Seville: Juan Serrano de Vargas y Uren˜a, 1614 [sic, 1624]); reprinted in Henry Ettinghausen, ed., Noticias del siglo XVII: Relaciones espan˜olas de sucesos naturales y sobrenaturales (Barcelona: Puvill Libros, 1995), n.p. 51. Jerome Friedman, The Battle of the Frogs and Fairford’s Flies: Miracles and the Pulp Press During the English Revolution (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 48. 52. Anonymous, Cas raro d’un home anomenat Pere Portes, de la vila de Tordera, que vivint entra` i eixı´ de l’infern, 97–124, in Ramo´n de Perello´s, Viatge al Purgatori de Sant Patrici, ed. Ramo´n Miquel y Planas (Barcelona: Fidel Giro´, 1917). 53. Cervantes, El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote, part 1, chap. 9. 54. Viatge a l’infern, 134, 136. 55. BNP, Baluze Collection no. 238, fol. 380r: ‘‘Relacio´ del cas d’en Pere Porter, qui diu baxa` al infern, y lo que allı´ veu.’’ I quote from the original manuscript, which Pons i Guri transcribes in Viatge a l’infern, 60–102, although he does not include all of Pujades’s marginal comments. On Pujades, see James S. Amelang, ‘‘The Mental World of Jeroni Pujades,’’ 211–26 in Spain, Europe and the Atlantic World: Essays in Honour of John H. Elliott, ed. Richard L. Kagan and Geoffrey Parker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 56. BNP, Baluze 238, fol. 385v. 57. Viatge a l’infern, 39. 58. BNP, Baluze 238, fol. 380r. 59. Jeroni Pujades, Dietari de Jeroni Pujades, ed. Josep Maria Casas Homs, 4 vols. (Barcelona: Fundacio´ Salvador Vives Casajuana, 1975–76), 1:212–13. 60. Agustı´ Dura´n i Sampere, ‘‘L’historiador Jeroni Pujades,’’ in Barcelona i la seva histo`ria, 3 vols. (Barcelona: Curial, 1975), 3:514–15. 61. Viatge a l’infern, 11–18. 62. For a compelling discussion of the impact of libels and pamphlets on early modern Spanish opinion, see Jesu´s Gasco´n Pe´rez’s introduction to La rebelio´n de las palabras, xxiii–xcv. Chapter 5. Dreams and Prophecies The volume editors thank Prof. Francis Dutra and Bianca Brigidi for their valuable additional assistance with the translation during the revision of this essay. 1. Joa˜o Antonio Andreoni, S.J., ‘‘Relac¸a˜o de um caso notavel que succedeu antes da morte do P. Jose´ Suares, companheiro do P. Antonio Vieira, auctorizado com o

Notes to Pages 105–109

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testemunho do P. Reitor que enta˜o era do Collegio,’’ Annaes da Bibliotheca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro 19 (1897): 161–63. 2. Antonio Vieira, Livro anteprimeiro da Historia do Futuro (Lisbon: Biblioteca Nacional, 1983). 3. Antonio Vieira, Histo´ria do Futuro, 2nd ed. (Lisbon: IN/CM, 1992), 249–66. 4. See J. Delumeau, Mil anos de felicidade (Sa˜o Paulo: Cia. das Letras, 1997). 5. J. Castro, Paraphrase et concordancia de algvas prophec¸ias de Bandarra, ¸capateiro de Trancoso, por Dom Ioam de Castro ([Paris?]: n.p., 1603); and Gonc¸alo Anes Bandarra, Trovas de Bandarra Apurada e impressas, por ordem de hum grande Senhor de Portugal: Offerec¸idas aos verdadeiros Portugueses, devotos do Encuberto (Nantes: Guillermo de Munier, 1644). 6. J. Hermann, No reino do desejado (Sa˜o Paulo: Cia. das Letras, 1999), 56–57. 7. E. O. Franc¸a, Portugal na E´poca da Restaurac¸a˜o (Sa˜o Paulo: Hucitec, 1997), part 3, ch. 1, ‘‘A ideologia da Revoluc¸a˜o.’’ 8. See B. Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men (1972; London: Faber and Faber, 2008). For Menasseh Ben Israel, see Y. Kaplan, H. Me´choulan, and R. H. Popkin, eds., Menasseh Ben Israel and His World (Leiden: Brill, 1989). 9. A. H. Williamson, ‘‘An Empire to End Empire: The Dynamic of Early Modern British Expansion,’’ Huntington Library Quarterly 68:1–2 (2005): 227–56. 10. C. C. Maurı´cio, ‘‘Entre o sileˆncio e o ouro—sondando o milagre de Ourique na cultura portuguesa,’’ Ler: Histo´ria 20 (1990): 3–28; and A. M. Buescu, ‘‘Vı´nculos da Memo´ria: Ourique e a fundac¸a˜o do reino’’ in Portugal: Mitos revisitados, ed. Y. K. Centeno (Lisbon: Salamandra, 1993) 11–50; See also J. F. Marques, A parene´tica portuguesa e a Restaurac¸a˜o (Porto: INIC, 1989), 2:111 passim. 11. See Luı´s Filipe Silve´rio Lima, Impe´rio dos sonhos: Narrativas profe´ticas, sebastianimo e messianismo brigantino (Sa˜o Paulo: Alameda Editorial, 2010), esp. chs. 4, 5, 6. 12. The brief story related here is drawn from some of the many biographies about Vieira, among them J. L. Azevedo, A vida de Antonio Vieira, 2 vols. (Sa˜o Paulo: Alameda, 2008); H. Cidade, Padre Anto´nio Vieira (Lisbon: Arca´dia, 1964); J. V. D. Besselaar, Anto´nio Vieira: O homem, a obra, as ide´ias (Lisbon: Ministe´rio da educac¸a˜o e cultura, 1981); and V. Muraro, Padre Antoˆnio Vieira: Reto´rica e Utopia (Floriano´polis: Insular, 2003). In English, see Charles R. Boxer, A Great Luso-Brasilian Figure, Padre Antonio Vieira S.J. 1608–1697 (London: Hispanic and Luso-Brasilian Councils, 1957); Thomas Richard Graham, The Jesuit Antoˆnio Vieira and His Plan for the Economic Rehabilitation of Seventeenth Century Portugal (Sa˜o Paulo: Divisa˜o de Arquivo de Estado, 1978); Thomas M. Cohen, The Fire of Tongues: Antoˆnio Vieira and the Missionary Church in Brazil and Portugal (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998). 13. On the possible dialogues between Vieira and Menasseh, see A. J. Saraiva, ‘‘Antonio Vieira: Menasseh ben Israel et le cinquie`me Empire,’’ Studia Rosenthaliana 1 (1972): 25–57; F. Levi, ‘‘La prophe´tie et le pouvoir politico-religieux au XVIIe sie`cle au Portugal et au Hollande: Vieira et Menasseh Ben Israel,’’ 433–45 in La prophe´tie comme arme de guerre de pouvoirs, ed. Augustin Redondo (Paris: PSN, 2000); and Muraro, Padre Antoˆnio Vieira.

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Notes to Pages 109–113

14. Menasseh Ben Israel, Esperanc¸a de Israel (Amsterdan: Semvel Ben Israel Soeiro, [1650] ). 15. Antonio Vieira. Serman que pregou o R. P. Antonio Vieira da Companhia de Jesus, na Capella Real o Primeiro de Janeiro de 642 (Lisboa: Lourenc¸o de Anueres, 1642). The messianic themes, however, had appeared before in a sermon about Saint Sebastian in 1634, still in Bahia, when Vieira had been recently ordained. See Muraro, Padre Antoˆnio Vieira. 16. Antoˆnio Vieira, Serman do esposo da may de Deos S. Ioseph. No dia dos Annos del Rey nosso Senhor Dom Ioam IV. Que Deus quarde por muytos, & felicissimos. Pre`gou o na Capella Real o P. Antonio Vieira da Companhia de IESV Pre`gador de S. Magestade (Lisbon: Domingos Lopes Rosa, 1644), reprinted in: Sermoens do P. Antonio Vieira da Companhia do Jesu, Pre´gador de Sua Magestade. Septima Parte (Lisboa : Officina de Miguel Deslandes, 1692); Antoˆnio Vieira. Xavier dormindo, e Xavier accordado. Dormindo em tres Orac¸o˜es Panegyricas no Triduo da sua Festa Dedicadas aos tres principes que A Rainha Nossa Senhora confessa dever a` intercessa˜o do mesmo Santo, Accordado, Em doze Sermoens Panegyricos, Moraes, & Asceticos, os nove da sua Novena, o decimo da sua Canonizac¸a˜o, o undecimo do seu dia, o ultimo do seu Patrocinio, author a padre Antonio Vieya Da Companhia de Jesu, Pre`gador de Sua Magestade. Oitava Parte (Lisboa : Officina de Miguel Deslandes, 1694), 1–137. 17. See Luı´s Filipe Silve´rio Lima, Padre Vieira: sonhos profe´ticos, profecias onı´ricas. O tempo do Quinto Impe´rio nos sermo˜es de Xavier Dormindo (Sa˜o Paulo: Humanitas, 2004) (esp. ch. 3). 18. See Luı´s Filipe Silve´rio Lima, ‘‘Sonho e pecado: Viso˜es onı´ricas e oniromancia dos ‘ı´ndios’ e ‘gentios’ na catequese jesuı´tica na Ame´rica Portuguesa (1549–1618),’’ Revista de Histo´ria (USP) 149 (2003): 139–80. 19. Antoˆnio Vieira. Palavra de Deos empenhada e desempenhada: Empenhada no Sermam das Exequias da Rainha N. S. Dona Maria Francisca Isabel de Saboya: Desempenhada no Sermam de acc¸am de Grac¸as pelo nascimento do Principe D. Joa˜o Primogenito de S. S. Magestades. . . . (Lisbon: na Officina de Miguel Deslandes, 1690). This volume was later considered an edition of the sermons. 20. ‘‘Carta do Padre Anto´nio Vieira para o Padre Leopoldo Fuess, Confessor da Rainha N. S., Baı´a, 19 de Julho de 1689,’’ in Palavra de Deus empenhada e desempenhada. 21. On this, see Jacqueson L. Silva, ‘‘Arquitetura do Quinto Impe´rio’’ (Ph.D. diss., Unicamp, 2007); Adma F. Muhana, ‘‘O processo inquisitorial de Vieira: Aspectos profe´tico-argumentativos’’ Semear 2 (1997): 9–21, and ‘‘Introduc¸a˜o,’’ in Os Autos do processo de Vieira na Inquisic¸a˜o. 1660–1668. (Sa˜o Paulo: Edusp, 2008), 13–28. 22. Familiar letters were neither about business nor intended to be uplifting, and, therefore, were not considered suitable for publication. On this, see Jose´ Carlos S. Bom Meihy, Presenc¸a do Brasil na Companhia de Jesus (1549–1649) (Ph.D. diss., University of Sa˜o Paulo, 1975); Alcir Pe´cora, ‘‘A arte das cartas jesuı´ticas do Brasil,’’ in Ma´quina de geˆneros (Sa˜o Paulo: Edusp, 2001), 17–68; Fernando Torres London˜o, ‘‘Escrevendo cartas: Jesuı´tas, escrita e missa˜o no se´culo XVI,’’ Revista Brasileira de Histo´ria 22:43 (2002):

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11–32; and Joa˜o Adolfo Hansen, ‘‘Cartas de Antoˆnio Vieira (1626–1697),’’ 7–74 in Cartas do Brasil: 1626–1697: Estado do Brasil e Estado do Maranha˜o e Gra˜-Para´, by Antonio Vieira (Sa˜o Paulo: Hedra, 2003). 23. Panegyric sermons were divided into two oratory styles: exornatory, which exalted the subject of the sermon, or deliberative, which used the deeds of the person as an example. Vieira often mixed the two styles. On this topic, see L. G. Cabral, Vieira-pre`gador, 2nd ed. (Braga: Cruz, 1936), 2:400–421. 24. Vieira, Histo´ria do Futuro, 244. 25. Vieira, Histo´ria do Futuro, 249. 26. Vieira, Histo´ria do Futuro, 251–54. 27. Vieira, Histo´ria do Futuro, 261. 28. Adma F. Muhana, Recursos reto´ricos na obra especulativa de Antonio Vieira (M.A. thesis, University of Sa˜o Paulo, 1989); cf. Muhana, ‘‘Introduc¸a˜o,’’ and ‘‘O processo inquisitorial de Vieira.’’ 29. On this, see, Luı´s Filipe Silve´rio Lima, ‘‘’Vejo, agora que estou sonhando’: O problema do sonho e da visa˜o em comenta´rios seiscentistas a`s Trovas de Bandarra,’’ Cultura 21 (2005): 205–31. 30. Ordenac¸o˜es filipinas (org. Caˆndido Mendes de Almeida) (Rio de Janeiro, 1870), 1147–52, book 5, title 3. 31. Os do Conselho Geral do Sancto Officio da Inquisic¸a˜o . . . fazemos saber . . . a todos os fieis christa˜os . . . prohibimos e hauemos por prohibida, a lic¸a˜o, co˜municac¸a˜o, & retenc¸a˜o das ditas trouas do dito Gonc¸al’Annes Bandarrra. . . . ([Lisbon : n.p.], 1665). 32. Antonio Vieira. Defesa perante o Tribunal do Santo Ofı´cio, (Salvador, Bahia: Livraria Progresso Editora, 1957), v. 2, ‘‘Representac¸a˜o Segunda,’’ §46, Cf. Vieira, Histo´ria do Futuro. 33. Francis Dutra, who assisted with the translation of this essay, noted this linkage, which might otherwise be obscured in the English translation. 34. A. P. Viegas, Principios del Reyno de Portugal (Lisbon: Paulo Craesbeck, 1641), fol. 127. 35. Vieira, Histo´ria do Futuro, 283; on the Defesa (‘‘Representac¸a˜o segunda,’’ question 5a. §61) it reads ‘‘Imperio & Reyno da terra, ou na terra.’’ 36. Vieira, Histo´ria do Futuro, 300. 37. Vieira, Histo´ria do Futuro, 66–67. 38. Vieira, Histo´ria do Futuro, ch. 5. 39. On the question of reigning (regnum) and the priesthood (sacerdotium), see D. Heffner, ‘‘Regnum vs. Sacerdotium in a Reformatiom pamphlet,’’ Sixteenth Century Journal 20:4 (1989): 617–30. 40. Vieira, Defesa perante, ‘‘Representac¸a˜o segunda,’’ question 6, §68, v. 1, 263–65. 41. Vieira, Defesa perante, ‘‘Representac¸a˜o segunda,’’ question 18, §278, v. 2, 60–61. 42. Vieira, Histo´ria do Futuro, 136. 43. Thomas M. Cohen, ‘‘Millenarian Themes in the Writing of Antonio Vieira,’’ Luso-Brazilian Review 28:1 (1991): 23–24, 26; see also Cohen, The Fire of Tongues.

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44. Antonio Vieira, Xavier dormindo, e Xavier accordado, 16. 45. I thank Prof. Arnaldo do Espı´rito Santo of the University of Lisbon, who kindly passed along to me the citation about Xavier in the first book of Clavis from a lecture in which he comments on the figure of Xavier in Vieira and on the question of conquest and discovery. 46. Arnaldo do Espı´rito Santo, ‘‘Camo˜es e Vieira: epopeia e profecia,’’ unpublished lecture, c. 1997, University of Lisbon. Chapter 6. Flying Like an Eagle 1. ‘‘Letter and Report of Fray Francisco Casan˜as,’’ 256–57 in Source Material on the History and Ethnology of the Caddo Indians, ed. John R. Swanton (1942; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996); and Fray Isidro Felix de Espinosa, Cro´nica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide de la Nueva Espan˜a, ed. Lino G. Canedo (1746; Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1964), 101–8. Translations are mine. 2. I discuss these issues in an entirely different European-indigenous context in Carla Gerona, ‘‘Imagining Peace in Quaker and Native American Dream Stories,’’ 41–62 in Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania, 1682–1800, ed. Daniel Richter and William Pencak (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), and Night Journeys: The Power of Dreams in Transatlantic Quaker Culture (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004). 3. Richard L. Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 4. ´ vila: Lettered Woman (Nashville: Vanderbilt 4. Barbara Louise Mujica, Teresa de A University Press, 2009). 5. Marc Simmons, Donna Pierce, and Joan Myers, Santiago: Saint of Two Worlds (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991). 6. Marc Simmons and D. A. Brading, Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 7. John Leddy Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970); and Lino Go´mez Canedo, Evangelizacio´n y Conquista: Experiencia Franciscana en Hispanoame´rica (Mexico City: Editorial Porru´a, 1977). ´ greda: Mystical Lady in Blue (Albuquerque: Uni8. Marilyn H. Fedewa, Marı´a of A ´ greda: versity of New Mexico Press, 2009); and Clark A. Colahan, Marı´a de Jesu´s de A Writing Knowledge and Power (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994). 9. Alonso de Benavides, Fray Alonso de Benavides’ Revised Memorial of 1634, ed. Frederick Webb Hodge, George P. Hammon, and Agapito Rey (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1945), 92–96.

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10. Michael B. McCloskey, The Formative Years of the Missionary College of Santa Cruz of Quere´taro, 1683–1733 (Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955). 11. Espinosa, Cro´nica, 464–65. 12. Espinosa, Cro´nica, 475–81. 13. Espinosa, Cro´nica, 469–76. 14. Espinosa, Cro´nica, 477–79. 15. Espinosa, Cro´nica, 471. 16. Espinosa, Cro´nica, 470–71. 17. Fernando Cervantes, ‘‘The Devils of Quere´taro: Scepticism and Credulity in Late Seventeenth-Century Mexico,’’ Past and Present 130 (February 1991): 51–61, quotation on 54. 18. Cervantes, ‘‘The Devils of Quere´taro,’’ 59. 19. Juan Domingo Arricivita, Apostolic Chronicle of Juan Domingo Arricivita: The Franciscan Mission Frontier in the Eighteenth Century in Arizona, Texas, and the Californias, trans. George P. Hammond, Agapito Rey, and Vivian C. Fisher (Berkeley, Academy of American Franciscan History, 1996), 1:44, 68–70, 118, 124. For a more recent biography of Margil see Donald E. Chipman and Harriett Denise Joseph, Notable Men and Women of Spanish Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999). 20. Arricivita, Chronicle, 1:106–8. On the Maya during this period see Nancy F. Farriss, Maya Society Under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984). 21. Arricivita, Chronicle, 1:109. 22. Arricivita, Chronicle, 1:92, 93, 107. 23. Arricivita, Chronicle, 1: 24. 24. Donald E. Chipman, Spanish Texas, 1519–1821 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992) and [Damia´n Massanet], ‘‘Mazanet on the Prospects for Settlement, 1690,’’ in The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain: A Documentary History, ed. Diane Hadley, Thomas H. Naylor, and Mardith K. Shuetz-Miller (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997), 2:332, 334. 25. ‘‘Letter of Fray Damia´n Massanet to Don Carlos de Sigu¨enza, 1690,’’ 353–87 in Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542–1706, ed. Herbert Eugene Bolton (1908; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1952), quotation on 387; and Juliana Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 35–38. 26. Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 27. Juan Bautista Chapa, Texas and Northeastern Mexico, 1630–1690 ed. William C. Foster, trans. Ned F. Brierley, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 138; and Adina de Zavala, History and Legends of the Alamo and Other Missions in and Around San Antonio ed. Richard R. Flores (1917; Houston: Arte Pu´blico Press, 1996), 57. 28. Espinosa, Cro´nica, 457.

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Notes to Pages 139–147

29. Espinosa, Cro´nica, 487–88. 30. ‘‘Letter of Casan˜as,’’ 256–59. 31. Espinosa, Cro´nica, 701–5. 32. ‘‘Letter of Casan˜as,’’ 262. 33. Arricivita, Chronicle, 1:24, 174. 34. Curtis D. Tunnell and W. W. Newcomb Jr., ‘‘A Lipan Apache Mission: San Lorenzo de la Santa Cruz, 1762–1771,’’ Bulletin of the Texas Memorial Museum 14 (July 1969):168–71. 35. Arricivita, Chronicle, 1:24. 36. James Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 (1890; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), 1097–98. 37. George Dorsey, Traditions of the Caddo (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1905). 38. Elsie Clews Parsons, Notes on the Caddo (Menasha, Wis.: American Anthropological Association, 1941), 35, 47–50. 39. La´zaro Lamadrid, ‘‘The Letters of Margil in the Archivo de la Recoleccio´n in Guatemala,’’ Americas 7 (January 1951), 354–55. Chapter 7. Dream-Visions and Divine Truth in Early Modern Hispanic America My thanks to Sabine Dedenbach-Salazar for her initial thoughts and assistance. Thanks also to Alfred Andrea for his comments on an earlier version of this essay delivered at the WHA Conference, Salem, Mass., June 2009, and to Luke Clossey, Jack Leung, Ann Marie Plane, and Leslie Tuttle for their comments on manuscript drafts. Note to epigraphs: ‘‘No aveis de dar credito a los suen˜os ni pedir q os los declaren, porque los suen˜os son vanidad.’’ ‘‘Sermon XIX, de los mandamientos,’’ in Tercero Cathecismo y Exposicion de la Doctrina Christiana, por Sermones. Para que los curas y otros ministros prediquen y ensen˜en a los Yndios y a las demas personas (Ciudad de los Reyes: Antonio Ricardo, 1585), fol. 113v. See also the facsimile edition, Doctrina Christiana y Catecismo para instruccion de Indios (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1985), 574. This and, unless otherwise stated, all other translations are my own. From a reported conversation about a dream between Francisco Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n and his Mapuche friend Ignacio (c. 1620–30) in his autobiographical account Cautiverio feliz, 2 vols., ed. Mario Ferrecio Podesta´ and Raı¨ssa Kordic´ Riquelme (c. 1675; Santiago: Ril Editores, 2001), 1:465. King Abimelech’s dream warned him against taking Abraham’s wife for himself (Gen. 20:3–8); Jacob dreamed of a stairway on which angels descended and ascended to heaven (Gen. 28:10–17); the dream that foretold the Israelites’ victory against the Midianites was dreamed by a soldier in Gideon’s camp. Gideon interpreted the dream as a sign from God (Judg. 7:13–15). 1. Arguably this imperceptible blurring of boundaries between reality, imagination, and illusion is a universal condition of human existence and transcends the early

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modern period. I would suggest, though, that these boundaries have been perceived to harden as the modern period progressed although (from an early modern perspective) this perception could be considered a modern delusion. 2. Pedro Ciruelo, Reprouacion de las supersticiones y hechizerias, ed. Alva V. Ebersole (1530; Valencia: Albatros Hispanofila, 1978), 65–66. He uses the term nigroma´ntico (lit. ‘‘necromancer’’), which he appears to apply generically to soothsayers and diviners, rather than specifically to those who foretell the future by raising the dead. In this case he is referring to diviners of dreams and not those who merely dream per se. 3. In fact, this was a tension that existed within Catholic tradition for many centuries prior to the seventeenth, with a number of authorities including Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Thomas Aquinas considering the issue. For a concise summary of this patristic and medieval tradition, see R. Po-Chia Hsia, ‘‘Dreams and Conversions: A Comparative Analysis of Catholic and Buddhist Dreams in Ming and Qing China: Part I,’’ Journal of Religious History 29:3 (2005): 223–40, esp. 226–27. My thanks to Paolo Aranha for drawing this article to my attention. For a more in-depth discussion, see Steven F. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 35–122. 4. Bruce Mannheim, ‘‘A Semiotic of Andean Dreams,’’ 132–53 in Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations, ed. Barbara Tedlock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), esp. 134; and Michael Brown, ‘‘Ropes of Sand: Order and Imagery in Aguaruna Dreams,’’ 154–70 in Tedlock, Dreaming, esp. 155–56. 5. Brown, ‘‘Ropes of Sand,’’ 155. 6. Hsia, ‘‘Dreams and Conversions,’’ 225. 7. Brown, ‘‘Ropes of Sand,’’ 168. 8. Relating to inquisitorial persecution of dream-visions in particular, see especially the late sixteenth-century case of Lucrecia de Leo´n in Richard Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), and Roger Osborne, The Dreamer of the Calle de San Salvador (London: Jonathan Cape, 2001). Most famously, Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, was investigated on numerous occasions (and imprisoned twice) under suspicion of heresy resulting from his mysticism and spiritual exercises. Such behavior and practice caused the inquisitors to suspect that he was involved in the Illuminist heresy in which individuals considered themselves to receive direct revelations from God. See Alvaro Huerga, Historia de los alumbrados: V-te´mas y personajes (1570–1630) (Madrid: Fundacio´n Universitaria Espan˜ola, 1994), 221–36. For an account of Illuminist trials in Peru, see Fernando Iwasaki Cauti, ‘‘Mujeres al borde de la perfeccio´n: Rosa de Santa Marı´a y las alumbradas de Lima,’’ Hispanic American Historical Review 73:4 (1993): 581–613. For a comparable case of a series of trials for Illuminism of a group of individuals from Santiago de Chile—though with less emphasis on ecstasies and visions—see Rene´ Millar Carvacho, Misticismo e Inquisicio´n (Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Cato´lica de Chile, 2000). Other famous Spanish mystics investigated by the Inquisition include Teresa de A´vila and Fray Luis de Leo´n.

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9. See Mannheim, ‘‘A Semiotic of Andean Dreams.’’ 10. See Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva coro´nica y buen gobierno, c. 1615, fol. 282 [284], http://www.kb.dk/elib/mss/poma/indices/indice-en.htm (accessed February 16, 2012). See also Mannheim, ‘‘A Semiotic of Andean Dreams,’’ 139–40. 11. Tercero Cathecismo y Exposicion de la Doctrina Christiana, por Sermones. Para que los curas y otros ministros prediquen y ensen˜en a los Yndios y a las demas personas (Ciudad de los Reyes: Antonio Ricardo, 1585). Guaman Poma de Ayala was a committed Christian and worked closely with the extirpator Cristo´bal de Albornoz (Mannheim, ‘‘Semiotic of Andean Dreams,’’ 140). 12. For a concise overview of the position of the Catholic Church in this period and the Council of Trent, see Robert Bireley, ‘‘Early-Modern Catholicism as a Response to the Changing World of the Long Sixteenth Century,’’ Catholic Historical Review 95:2 (2009): 219–39, esp. 237. For a detailed study of the impact of Trent on Andean Christianity, see Juan Carlos Estenssoro Fuchs, Del paganismo a la santidad: La incorporacio´n de los indios del Peru´ al catolicismo 1532–1750 (Lima: IFEA, 2003). 13. Mannheim, ‘‘A Semiotic of Andean Dreams,’’ 137. Cf. ‘‘Sermon XIX, de los mandamientos,’’ in Tercero Cathecismo, fol. 113v—‘‘Ama moscoyta yupaychanquichicchu, caytam chaytam mosconi, ymapac mosconam n˜ispa ama tapucunquichicchu: moscoyca yancallan manam yupaychaypacchu.’’ 14. Frank Salomon, ‘‘Nightmare Victory: The Meanings of Conversion Among Peruvian Indians (Huarochirı´, 1608?),’’ 1992 Lecture Series, Working Paper No.7 (Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Maryland, College Park, 1990), 11. See also the note to the first epigraph above. 15. See Frank Salomon and George L. Urioste, trans. and eds., The Huarochirı´ Manuscript: A Testament of Ancient and Colonial Andean Religion (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), ch. 21, 107–10. Salomon elsewhere suggests the manuscript was probably composed ‘‘at the behest of P. Francisco de Avila as secret intelligence for the purpose of attacking, publicizing, and victimizing parishioners opposed to Avila’s faction.’’ He continues with the emphatic assertion that the manuscript itself is ‘‘not from Avila’s own hand’’ and also mentions that ‘‘Cristo´bal Choque Casa was a key ally of Avila’s who himself had a hand in compiling the manuscript.’’ Choque Casa’s father was curaca (noble indigenous leader) and wavered between support of Christianity and support of propitiation of the huacas (he returned to huaca worship when an epidemic afflicted the community, but recanted on his deathbed). The subsequent curaca, Juan Sacsalli Uya, supported huaca veneration, but the community remained divided. Salomon, ‘‘Nightmare Victory,’’ 4, 6. In fact the compilation of the manuscript from oral histories of the region paradoxically aided the preservation of the Huarochirı´ traditions. Salomon writes, ‘‘one gets the impression that the creator [of certain parts of the text] was engaged in reconceptualizing the Andean mythic tradition rather than destroying its memory’’ and ‘‘because it was composed in relative independence from Spanish pre-conceptions about native religion, it has in the end provided a uniquely authentic monument of the very beliefs Avila meant to destroy.’’ The Huarochirı´ Manuscript, 2.

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16. ‘‘Valid’’ here refers to dreams’ unsuitability for knowledge acquisition. They are not ‘‘valid’’ epistemologically because they do not contain truths. They are not ‘‘valid’’ institutionally because the Council of Lima condemned their interpretation. 17. On closer analysis the content and successful result of the dream sequence proves much more ambiguous. See Salomon and Urioste, The Huarochirı´ Manuscript, 107–13. 18. Salomon and Urioste, The Huarochirı´ Manuscript, 110. 19. Salomon, ‘‘Nightmare Victory,’’ 17. 20. For the entire passage, see Salomon and Urioste, The Huarochirı´ Manuscript, 108. For Salomon’s analysis, see n. 522. See also Salomon, ‘‘Nightmare Victory,’’ 14. 21. Salomon gives weight to this suggestion by citing the Jesuit extirpator Pablo Jose´ de Arriaga’s treatise (1621) that describes this practice of leaving silver coins as offerings to the huacas. Salomon, ‘‘Nightmare Victory,’’ 15. See Pablo Jose´ de Arriaga, Extirpacion de la idolatria del piru (Lima: Geronymo de Contreras, 1621), 25. See also Arriaga, Extirpacion de la idolatria, 66 for a similar account. 22. I have commented on similar Andean crises of conscience recorded in Jesuit letters from the seventeenth century in Diabolism in Colonial Peru 1560–1750 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008), 115–20. 23. Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), 213–14. 24. Salomon and Urioste, Huarochirı´ Manuscript, 104–5. 25. Salomon and Urioste, Huarochirı´ Manuscript, 109. 26. Mannheim, ‘‘A Semiotic of Andean Dreams,’’ 136, 144–46, 149–51. 27. ‘‘The First Prelude’’ of ‘‘A Meditation on the Two Standards,’’ 65–67 in The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, trans. George E. Ganss (Chicago: Loyola Press, 1992), quotation on 65. 28. ‘‘The Fourteenth Rule’’ of ‘‘Discernment of Spirits for Week I,’’ 121–25 in Spiritual Exercises, quotation on 125. 29. Francisco Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n and his Mapuche friend Ignacio (c. 1625) in his autobiographical account Cautiverio feliz, 2 vols., ed. Mario Ferrecio Podesta´ and Raı¨ssa Kordic´ Riquelme (c. 1675; Santiago: Ril Editores, 2001). 30. Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Cautiverio feliz, 1:248–301. According to this chronicle the battle took place during the month of May either in 1620 or 1629. The editors transcribed 1620 as the recorded date but note that the 0 has been changed to 9 and that there is a margin note on the manuscript that explains, ‘‘this number is incorrect, it is and should be 1629.’’ Cautiverio feliz, 1:249, 253. Cacique is a Caribbean term used to designate indigenous leaders and nobles. The term entered the Spanish language at the beginning of the sixteenth century and was used throughout the Americas. In the Peruvian Andes, the Quechua term curaca was more frequently used, albeit interchangeably with cacique. Francisco most frequently uses the term cacique but in reported speech occasionally uses ilmen, the Mapuche equivalent. 31. This stage of Francisco’s captivity was remarkably egalitarian. He was treated as an honored guest and adopted son by the families with which he stayed. Despite

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this, Francisco never lost sight of the fact that he was still held captive and his life still hung on a thread and could be instantly forfeit should his master wish it. The question of equality in knowledge sharing is interesting and one that I would suggest depended very much on the perceived quality of the knowledge to be shared. Francisco marveled at many aspects of Mapuche life and culture, yet according to the account, the ‘‘sharing’’ of religious belief was very much a one-way process (as might be expected of a seventeenth-century Spaniard who held firm to a belief in the universal truth of Catholicism). There is certainly room for further study here. 32. Although he was held captive during the 1620s, the memoirs were written many years afterwards and were directed toward a royal readership, so it is difficult to know how much of the old and erudite Francisco was superimposed onto the young soldier (the text was initially dated 1663, revised as 1673, and finally dated 1675; Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Cautiverio feliz, 1: title page, 2:980). He would have been aware of the danger of having documented his own dissemination of religious error and took steps (as the author) to ground his claimed teachings in authoritative sources as well as adding a disclaimer at the end of the text professing ignorance and willingness to retract any statement found to be erroneous (2:971). He writes that he was Jesuit educated as a boy, however, and the works, authors, and theologians he cites and even the arguments he uses while explaining Christianity do reflect this Jesuit education (1:240–41). At the same time, there is a notable difference in style between the learned citations he uses for rhetorical purposes and those authorities he implies he remembered at the time when trying to explain difficult theological questions. 33. Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Cautiverio feliz, 1:433. See also 447, 451, 462–76. I use the colloquial term ‘‘lads’’ to translate muchachos here because of the familiarity of the exchange: ‘‘youths’’ seems somewhat stilted under the circumstances. ‘‘Oh shut up!’’ is literal (‘‘pues callad la boca’’) and suggests friendly exasperation. Francisco was continually surprised by the apparent Christian devotion of his Mapuche hosts and suggests various reasons for it ranging from optimism about the workings of natural reason to cynicism. Compare, for example, his suggestion that children are particularly inclined to pray and become Christian while caciques are more inclined to defend and protect their communities (436) with his supposition that many participated in his baptismal ceremony merely because they wanted a Spanish name (476). Linked to Francisco’s understanding of Catholicism as universally true (hence humankind will naturally seek it out if given the opportunity) would have been the Mapuche perception that there was real power in the Catholic religion—power that they might be able to use for protection (as Francisco did) if they learned the necessary invocations and rituals (such as making the sign of the cross) and were baptized. Also noteworthy in this particular exchange is Francisco’s initial hesitation for fear of offending his hosts. The scene is extremely relaxed and familiar, yet Francisco is still unsure of how best to behave for his own safety. 34. One question that particularly threw Francisco was about the virginity of Mary. His attempt to find a suitable explanatory metaphor failed until he was helped

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out by the cacique who had been listening and was able to explain what Francisco meant using a different metaphor (Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Cautiverio feliz, 1:462–63). 35. Prior to the baptism Francisco does not use or mention the boy’s indigenous name; rather he refers to him as the youth (el muchacho), my companion (mi compan˜ero), and my friend (mi amigo). My use of ‘‘Ignacio,’’ then, is briefly anachronistic but preferable to writing about him anonymously. 36. Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Cautiverio feliz, 1:465. He uses the term negro grande, which literally translates as a ‘‘large Negro.’’ It is thus suggestive of the demonization of the African race that can be found in colonial discourses (see, for example, Joan Cameron Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers and Witches: Afro-Mexican Ritual Practice in the Seventeenth Century [Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007], 44–47). I would nevertheless caution against overemphasizing racial interpretations of visions like these when the crucial element of the image is the darkness emanating from the demonic apparition. Cameron Bristol also notes that earlier discourses focused primarily on religious difference (28–36). While racial categories became progressively more important in Hispanic America, first to mark otherness but later particularly with respect to social hierarchy, these categories were not rigid—for example, it was not unheard of in the eighteenth century for ‘‘white’’ status to be purchased. In cases of demonic persecution such as that described by Ignacio, the unchanging feature is always the evil darkness in contrast to the divine light. While overlap certainly took place (and progressively so during the colonial period), I would suggest that more than race this overwhelming spiritual darkness is the fundamental reason these characters are described as negro. 37. Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Cautiverio feliz, 1:465–66. From a modern perspective, this section of the narrative also reflects a racialization of spiritual imagery, but again I would suggest that the important feature of the imagery is the blinding supernatural radiance of the visionary boy (the Christ child) as opposed to the ordinary (rather than subordinary) nature of the ‘‘little Indians like me.’’ 38. Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Cautiverio feliz, 1:465–66. 39. Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Cautiverio feliz, 1:466. 40. Again it is difficult to know precisely how much of the response is a creative superimposition by the older, wiser, more learned Francisco as he wrote the chronicle and how much can be credited to the twenty-one-year-old. 41. Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Cautiverio feliz, 1:466. My italics. 42. Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Cautiverio feliz, 1:466. The citation is for Somnium Scipionis, and it is Francisco’s referencing of Cicero, rather than Aristotle’s On Dreams—which would have been a more appropriate classical source for someone familiar with Scholastic theology—that demonstrates his Jesuit schooling, as a thorough grounding in classical rhetoric formed a significant part of this education. There is evidence also here to suggest that Francisco was in fact writing from boyhood memories (rather than a well-stocked adult library) as the citation does not contain paragraph references and the work is incorrectly entitled De somno sipionis. The section

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Francisco was referring to reads: ‘‘I think myself that it was because of what we had been speaking of; for it often happens that our thoughts and conversations give rise to something in our sleep’’ (Cicero, ‘‘The Dream of Scipio from Book IV of De Republica,’’ 136–47 in On Friendship and the Dream of Scipio, ed. and trans. J. G. F. Powell [Oxford: Aris & Phillips, 1990], quotation on 137). 43. See Alonso de Ovalle, Histo´rica Relacio´n del Reino de Chile (1646; Santiago de Chile: Pehue´n, 2003), 268–76. Ovalle is suitably vague about the place and time of Mary’s intervention in the siege: ‘‘I do not remember the particular place where it happened; but I do know that it took place in one of the cities of Chile when it was founded.’’ The miracle is in fact particularly reminiscent of the legendary Marian intervention during the siege of Cuzco c. 1536. See Guaman Poma de Ayala, Primer nueva coro´nica, fol. 404 [406]. In the miracle of Cuzco she cast either hail or stones into the faces of the attacking Andeans. In the Chilean miracle she blinded the indigenous warriors by casting dust into their eyes. 44. Other trees are also sacred to the Mapuche, including the cinnamon tree, which is considered to have healing properties and is believed to be directly linked to the machis or shamanic healers. Given this association, however, I doubt that the Virgin would have been seated in a cinnamon tree as, according to the narrative, Francisco had previously been horrified by a machi healing ceremony and transferred this sense of horror to Ignacio who later refused to be cured by one (Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Cautiverio feliz, 1:453–58, 485–89). 45. Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Cautiverio feliz, 1:467. 46. Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Cautiverio feliz, 1:467; my italics. Despite his desire to become Christian, Ignacio still considers God to be a god exclusive to the Christians. 47. Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Cautiverio feliz, 1:467. 48. For medieval notions of demons causing apparitions by moving bodily humors, see question 3, article 4, answer, in Thomas Aquinas, On Evil, ed. Brian Davies, trans. Richard J. Regan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 155–56. See also Caciola, Discerning Spirits, 213–14. 49. These cases are recorded in the annual letters sent from the provinces to Rome and it is worth bearing in mind that these were copied and sometimes edited and selected for wide distribution across their global network. They were therefore intended to be edifying and need to be read with caution as they are structured around certain recognizable formulae. That said, ‘‘edifying’’ does not mean ‘‘invented’’ and these letters can be surprisingly candid about setbacks suffered in order to demonstrate the fortitude of missionaries on the ground (and to appeal for more resources). At the same time, reports from many ordinary missions were often very brief and cursory, so when spectacular events were reported in detail it is reasonable to assume that something at least had occurred to provoke the narrative, even if the events are distorted by formulaic translation and interpretation. 50. Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (hereafter ARSI), Provincia Peruana (hereafter Peru): Litterae Annuae (hereafter Litt. Ann.), Tomus IV (1630–51) (hereafter

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IV), ‘‘1632–34’’ (fols. 23–54), fols. 33r–34r. I have already highlighted this case in the context of the inroads of Christianity into indigenous Andean consciousness. See Diabolism in Colonial Peru, 110–12. Here it will be discussed within the historical context of dream interpretation. 51. We can only speculate as to the significance of that particular feast day for the dream revelation. Santiago was certainly an important saint in the Hispanic world, associated with the ‘‘Reconquista’’ as Santiago the Moor Slayer, having purportedly routed the Moors at the Battle of Clavijo (c. 844) (see Linda B. Hall, Mary, Mother and Warrior [Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004], 25). Subsequently, in the Americas, this association was translated to one of conquista as he became Santiago Indian Slayer and was said to have participated in key battles to aid the Spanish Christians—a particularly famous ‘‘intervention’’ was, like the Virgin Mary’s, during Manco Inca’s siege of Cuzco, c. 1536. Santiago’s image was ubiquitous in the Hispanic world – see especially Guaman Poma de Ayala, Primer nueva coro´nica, fol. 404 [406]. Within indigenous Andean tradition the saint was also associated with Illapa, the god of thunder and lightening. There is no indication in the letter as to how the boy viewed the saint other than allowing the reader to assume that the feast was significant to the people of San Pedro de Quilcai. 52. ARSI, Peru: Litt. Ann. IV, ‘‘1632–34,’’ fol. 33v. 53. ARSI, Peru: Litt. Ann. IV, ‘‘1632–34,’’ fol. 33v. 54. This belief had become widespread through the Hispanic world even as early as the sixteenth century. Martina Will de Chaparro has noted how the angelito tradition, including cheerful bell ringing instead of mournful tolling, survived well into the nineteenth century in New Mexico in Death and Dying in New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007), 96–99. For an earlier history of the tradition throughout the Hispanic world together with further references, see my essay ‘‘Angelic Death and Sacrifice in Early Modern Hispanic America,’’ 142–69 in Death and Dying in Colonial Latin America, ed. Miruna Achim and Martina Will de Chaparro (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2011), esp. 164–67. 55. See, for example, Arriaga, Extirpacion de la idolatria, 44: ‘‘Another cause [of idolatry] is not having . . . burned their Munaos of the plains, which are the Malquis of the Sierra [mountains], not having destroyed their Machays, which are the tombs of their grandparents, and progenitors, and to where they take the corpses stolen from the churches.’’ 56. See Frank Salomon, ‘‘ ‘The Beautiful Grandparents’: Andean Ancestor Shrines and Mortuary Ritual as Seen Through Colonial Records,’’ 315–47 in Tombs for the Living: Andean Mortuary Practices: A Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks 12th and 13th October 1991, ed. Tom D. Dillehay (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1995), esp. 325. 57. A particularly famous example can be seen today in the Church of Andahuaylillas near Cuzco, Peru. The Italian Jesuit Bernardo Bitti painted churches throughout the province after his arrival in 1575. The Jesuits also used paintings like these in miniature as pedagogical tools to better illustrate the point they were trying to make.

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58. Indeed, in the words of Alfred Andrea, this type of dream-vision is ‘‘particularly consonant with Ignatian spirituality’’ given Loyola’s own visionary experiences (personal communication). R. Po-Chia Hsia compares Matteo Ricci’s visionary dream with that of Loyola’s and makes the interesting point that ‘‘Ricci was wise and humble enough to place a state of wakefulness between the object of his imitatio ignesiana’’ (Hsia, ‘‘Dreams and Conversions,’’ 227). In other words, Ignatius Loyola’s vision was divine, as crucially, the saintly founding father of the Society of Jesus was awake at the time of his vision. Ricci’s dream, meanwhile, might, on the one hand, have been providential but, on the other, it might just have been a dream. He makes no proud claims to sainthood but the narrative suggests the possibility that what took place in China and the dream that caused him to persevere were a part of God’s plan. 59. ARSI, Provincia Mexicana (hereafter Mex): Litt. Ann. Tomus XIV (1574–1614) (hereafter XIV), ‘‘1596’’ (fols. 143–61), fol. 147r. 60. ARSI, Mex: Litt. Ann. XIV, ‘‘1596’’ (fols. 143–61), fol. 147r. 61. ARSI, Mex: Litt. Ann. XIV, ‘‘1596’’ (fols. 143–61), fol. 147r. Similar eschatological dream-visions in a Chinese context, also documented by Jesuits, have been analysed in Po-Chia Hsia’s essay ‘‘Dreams and Conversions,’’ 233–39. 62. The guide in fact acts very much like the Virgil of Dante’s Divine Comedy, who (after leading the poet through hell) led him up through purgatory before disappearing at the gates of paradise. See especially Inferno and Purgatorio, the first two volumes of the three-volume translation by John D. Sinclair, The Divine Comedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961). 63. Louise Burkhart, ‘‘Flowery Heaven: The Aesthetic of Paradise in Nahuatl Devotional Literature,’’ Res 21 (1992): 89–109, quotation on 89. 64. Burkhart, ‘‘Flowery Heaven,’’ 89. 65. It is this trajectory that Burkhart traces in her essay: ‘‘By equating Christianity’s paradisiacal tradition with their own flowery world, they [the Nahua] retained their sacred aesthetic but ended up applying it to a very different sort of garden . . . The garden becomes less a transformational aspect of the natural world, or of Nahua society collectively, and more a place of reward tied to an at least nominal participation in Christian morality’’ (‘‘Flowery Heaven,’’ 106). 66. ARSI, Mex: Litt. Ann. XIV, ‘‘1596,’’ fol. 147r. Hechicera was used in a pejorative sense and literally translates as ‘‘sorceress.’’ The term was used to refer to those practitioners of indigenous religious and medicinal rites. 67. ARSI, Mex: Litt. Ann. XIV, ‘‘1596,’’ fol. 147r. 68. ARSI, Mex: Litt. Ann. XIV, ‘‘1596,’’ fol. 147r. The general confession (confesio´n general) was a particularly Jesuit practice that encouraged the penitent to retrace his or her life and remember and repent of (and confess) all their previous transgressions. For many people this could prove to be a much more thorough spiritual exercise than remembering, repenting of, and confessing merely those transgressions committed since the last time. 69. ARSI, Mex: Litt. Ann. XIV, ‘‘1596,’’ fol. 147r.

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70. Hechicerı´as is from the same root as hechicera so literally translates as ‘‘sorcery’’ but in fact refers to indigenous healing practices and religious rituals. 71. ARSI, Peru: Litt. Ann. IV, ‘‘1632–34,’’ fol. 33v. 72. For the transformation of fervent Jesuit support for and collaboration with these campaigns into a policy of pragmatic distancing from them, see in particular Kenneth Mills, Idolatry and Its Enemies: Colonial Andean Religion and Extirpation, 1640–1750 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997). 73. For example, the Jesuit practice of disinterring skulls and engaging in ventriloquistic dialogue with them before astounded audiences has been documented as having occurred both in the Neapolitan Mezzogiorno and the Andes. For the Mezzogiorno, see Jennifer Selwyn, A Paradise Inhabited by Devils: The Jesuit’s Civilizing Mission in Early Modern Naples (Aldershot: Ashgate; Rome: IHSI, 2004), 213. For the Andes, see Redden, Diabolism in Colonial Peru, 113. 74. ARSI, Peru: Litt. Ann. IV, ‘‘1632–34,’’ fol. 33v. 75. Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Cautiverio feliz, 1:466. Chapter 8. French Jesuits and Indian Dreams in Seventeenth-Century New France 1. Le Ballet des songes (program 1671–08–05) is part of an extensive collection of Jesuit ballet programs preserved in the Bibliothe`que Nationale in Paris. On Jesuit ballet, see Judith Rock, Terpsichore at Louis-le-Grand: Baroque Dance on the Jesuit Stage in Paris (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996). For a more general discussion of the role of ballet in French elite culture, see Sarah Cohen, Art, Dance and the Body in French Culture of the Ancien Re´gime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 2. The fourth interval began with the entry of the allegorical figure of la verite´, ‘‘pour faire voir que son empire s’e´tend jusque sur les songes.’’ Le Ballet des songes, 7. 3. Throughout this essay, I cite the English edition of the Relations prepared under the direction of Reuben Gold Thwaites in the late nineteenth century. Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 73 vols. (Cleveland: Burroughs Brothers, 1896–1901). These documents have been digitized and are freely available and searchable at http://puffin.creighton.edu/jesuit/relations/. The Jesuit Relations is hereafter abbreviated as JR. 4. For information on dream customs among Amerindian groups, see Elisabeth Tooker, An Ethnography of the Huron Indians, 1615–49 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1991); 86–92, 114, 117; Bruce Trigger, The Children of Aatentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660, 2 vols. (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1976), 1:76–7, 79–84; James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 15, 17; Kenneth Morrison, The Solidarity of Kin: Ethnohistory, Religious Studies and the Algonkian-French Religious Encounter (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002); Dominique Deslandres, Croire et Faire Croire: Les Missions Franc¸aises au XVIIe sie`cle (Paris: Fayard, 2003); and Roger M. Carpenter, The Renewed, the Destroyed and the Remade: The Three Thought Worlds of the Iroquois

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and the Huron, 1609–1650 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2004). Since I began work on this essay, two important studies have appeared. See Deirdre McMurtry, ‘‘Discerning Dreams in New France: Jesuit Responses to Native American Dreams in the Early Seventeenth Century’’ (M.A. thesis, Ohio State University, 2009); and Dominique Deslandres, ‘‘Dreams Clash: The War over Authorized Interpretation in Seventeenth-Century French Missions,’’ 143–53, in Empires of God: Religious Encounters in the Early Modern Atlantic, ed. Linda Gregerson and Susan Juster (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 5. JR 10:171. 6. JR 52:153. 7. Anon., ‘‘De la vanite´ des songes, & sur les apparitions des Esprits,’’ Mercure Galant, January 1690, 87–135, quotation on 93–94. 8. Anthony F. C. Wallace, ‘‘Dreams and the Wishes of the Soul: A Type of Psychoanalytic Theory Among the Seventeenth Century Iroquois,’’ American Anthropologist, n.s., 60:2 (1958): 234–48. Wallace extended his discussion of dreaming in Iroquois culture, personality, and emotion in The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Knopf, 1970). 9. Carpenter, The Renewed, the Destroyed and the Remade. 10. Rene´ Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. and ed. George Heffernan (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992). For a brief introduction to Descartes’s biography and philosophy, see Anthony Grafton, ‘‘Descartes the Dreamer,’’ Wilson Quarterly 20:4 (Autumn 1996): 36–46. 11. The work on dream traditions in classical and late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance is voluminous. See, in particular, Lisa Bitel, ‘‘In Visu Noctis: Dreams in European Hagiography and Histories, 450–900,’’ History of Religions 31:1 (1991): 39–59; Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Nathalie Dauvois and Jean-Philippe Grosperrin, eds., Songes et songeurs, XIIIe– XVIIIe sie`cle (Saint-Nicholas, Quebec: Presses de l’Universite´ Laval, 2003); Florence Dumora, L’oeuvre nocturne: Songe et repre´sentation au XVIIe sie`cle (Paris: Honore´ Champion, 2005); Steven F. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Carole Levin, Dreaming the English Renaissance: Politics and Desire in Court and Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); and Patricia Cox Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997). 12. The most famous treatment of premodern folk beliefs about dreaming is Carlo Ginzburg’s study of Friulian peasants who struggled against maleficent witches in their dreams. See The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). 13. Thiers, Traite´ des superstitions selon l’E´criture Sainte, les decrets des conciles, et les sentiments des Saints Pe`res et des The´ologiens (1679; Paris: Antoine Dezallier, 1697). On Thiers, see Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason and Religion, 1250–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 286–91; and Jacques Revel, ‘‘Forms

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of Expertise: Intellectuals and Popular Culture in France (1650–1800),’’ 255–74 in Understanding Popular Culture, ed. Steven L. Kaplan (Berlin: Mouton, 1984). 14. Thiers, Traite´ des superstitions, bk. 1, ch. 1. 15. Clark, Thinking with Demons, esp. 472–88. 16. In addition to Clark, see also Cameron, Enchanted Europe; and Michael D. Bailey, ‘‘The Disenchantment of Magic: Spells, Charms, and Superstition in Early European Witchcraft Literature,’’ American Historical Review (April 2006): 383–404, esp. 383–89; Fabia´n Alejandro Campagne, ‘‘Witchcraft and the Sense-of-theImpossible in Early Modern Spain: Some Reflections Based on the Literature of Superstition (ca. 1500–1800),’’ Harvard Theological Review 96:1 (January 2003): 25–62; and Stuart Clark, Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 17. Levin, Dreaming the English Renaissance, 145. 18. Marc Vulson de la Colombie`re, Le Palais des curieux, ou` l’alge`bre et le sort donnent la de´cision des questions les plus douteuses, et ou` les songes et les visions nocturnes sont explique´s selon la doctrine des anciens (Paris: Nicolas Oudot, 1655). 19. Lise Andries, ‘‘L’interpre´tation populaire des songes,’’ Revue des Sciences Humaines 211 (1988): 49–64. 20. See JR 10:53–55; also, 13:95. Ursuline nuns also performed what they called ‘‘spiritual exercises’’ in New France, and reported that one of their charges ‘‘copied’’ their retreat for prayer. See JR 22:189. Did the missionaries teach the exercises to Amerindians? I have not yet found evidence they did so in New France, but Jesuit missionaries did introduce them in Latin America. See J. Michelle Molina, ‘‘Visions of God, Visions of Empire: Jesuit Spirituality and Colonial Governmentality in New Spain, 1572–1767’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2004). 21. The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, trans. Michael Ivens, S.J. (Leominster, Herefordshire: Gracewing, 2004), 57. 22. See Martin E. Palmer, S.J., ed., On Giving the Spiritual Exercises: The Early Jesuit Manuscript Directories and the Official Directory of 1599 (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996). 23. Antonio T. De Nicolas, Powers of Imagining (Albany: SUNY Press, 1986), 35–45. 24. Autograph directory of Loyola, in Palmer, On Giving the Spiritual Exercises, 8. 25. See Kimberley Patton, ‘‘ ‘A Great and Strange Correction’: Intentionality, Locality, and Epiphany in the Category of Dream Incubation,’’ History of Religions 43:3 (2004): 194–223. 26. J. F. X. O’Conor, S.J., ed., The Autobiography of Saint Ignatius (New York: Benziger Books, 1900), 28, 51–52. My thanks to Jodi Bilinkoff for bringing this work to my attention. 27. See, for example, the spiritual diaries from 1544 and 1545 in De Nicolas, Powers of Imagining, 185–238. In the diaries, the most notable ‘‘somatic’’ sign of Loyola’s interaction with the divine was tears. Dominique Deslandres has noted that the French

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Jesuits often saw tears as a telltale sign of Indians’ genuine conversion. ‘‘Exemplo aeque ut verbo: The French Jesuits’ Missionary World,’’ 258–73 in The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773, ed. John W. O’Malley et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), esp. 264–65. 28. Letter to Teresa Rajadell, in De Nicolas, Powers of Imagining, 322. 29. See Maria Jorda´n’s essay, Chapter 3; and Richard L. Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 30. Moshe Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), esp. 97–165. 31. Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit; and Michael C. Thomsett, The Inquisition: A History (Jefferson, N.C.:McFarland, 2010), 168–69. 32. Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit, 127–29. 33. JR 53:25. See Allan Greer’s introduction to the Bedford edition of The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America (Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2000), 1–19, esp. 14–16. 34. These correspond to vols. 5–30 of the Thwaites et al. edition of the Jesuit Relations. 35. For Le Jeune’s description of Montagnais ‘‘superstitions’’ regarding dreams, see JR 6:181–83. Bre´beuf offered a brief description of Huron ideas in 8:113–29 (from 1634–35) and then composed a nine-chapter monograph on Huron culture which he titled ‘‘On the belief, manners, and customs of the Huron,’’ in 10:125–317. 36. JR 6:181–83. 37. JR 10:125–209, esp. 169–73. 38. For a nuanced discussion of the Relations and how they were composed, see Allan Greer, ‘‘A Wandering Jesuit in Europe and America: Father Chaumonot Finds a Home,’’ 106–122 in Gregerson and Juster, Empires of God, esp. 116–17. See also Greer, introduction to The Jesuit Relations. 39. JR 7:169. 40. JR 8:147. 41. JR 11:203. 42. JR 5:161. 43. See also JR 4:217, 6:15–17, 6:183, 8:8–7, 8:169, 10:109, 11:241, 15:29. 44. For the dream prediction, see JR 5:213–15. 45. JR 8:85–87. 46. JR 5:159–61. 47. JR 6:183. 48. JR 12:151. 49. JR 11:167, 15:125. 50. JR 11:251–53, 263–65. 51. JR 14:237, 13:253.

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52. JR 22:105. See also 23:113, 26:99. 53. JR 13:225–27. For other examples of bad dreams understood as tests or demonic temptation, see 21:161, 26: 25–27, 26:267. 54. JR 12:55, 143–45. 55. JR 23:89–91. 56. See JR 20:187. My thanks to Allan Greer for alerting me to this possibility. 57. JR 15:73. 58. See Chapter 1 and also Mary Baine Campbell, ‘‘The Dreaming Body: Cartesian Psychology, Enlightenment Anthropology, and the Jesuits in Nouvelle France,’’ 239–51 in The Anthropology of the Enlightenment, ed. Larry Wolff and Marco Cipollini (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007). 59. JR 8:147. Chapter 9. ‘‘My Spirit Found a Unity’’ 1. Paul Ragueneau, La Vie de la Me`re Catherine de Saint-Augustin (Paris: Florentin Lambert, 1671), 115, my translation. The Vie is less a conventional biography than an edited collection of Catherine’s own writings, many of which have subsequently been lost. For analysis, see Jodi Bilinkoff, Related Lives: Confessors and Their Female Penitents: 1450–1750 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005), 71. 2. Jean de Bre´beuf was beatified in 1925 and canonized in 1930, along with seven other Jesuit or Jesuit-affiliated men (Re´ne Goupil, Isaac Jogues, Jean de la Lande, Antoine Daniel, Charles Garnier, Gabriel Lalemant, and Noel Chabanal) all of whom suffered violent deaths in New France in the 1640s, deaths that have traditionally been perceived by Catholics as martyrdoms. For a history of their veneration from the 1640s to the present, see Emma Anderson, The Death and Afterlife of the North American Martyrs, forthcoming, Harvard University Press, fall 2013. 3. Catherine’s cult, unlike that of the North American martyrs, has remained largely within the francophone world, in part because the critical primary source for her life, Ragueneau’s Vie, remains untranslated. With a few important exceptions, most of the secondary literature on Catherine is also in French. 4. Ragueneau, Vie, 24; for analysis, see Guy-Marie Oury, The Spiritual Journey of Catherine de Saint-Augustin (Quebec City: Centre Catherine de Saint-Augustin, 1995), 81–82. 5. Ragueneau, Vie, 23–24. For analysis of this exchange, see Oury, Spiritual Journey 35–39. 6. Ragueneau, Vie, 24. 7. Ragueneau, Vie, 26, 31. 8. Ragueneau, Vie, 31. The foundress was Catherine’s grandmother’s niece, though Catherine addressed her as ‘‘dear aunt’’ in her correspondence. 9. Ragueneau, Vie, 31. 10. Oury, Spiritual Journey, 91.

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11. Many Wendat objected to Christianity because they feared that the conversion of a minority of the population would lead to the political and military fragmentation of their society, which was all the more dangerous given greater Iroquois incursions northward during this period. See Bruce Trigger, The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1976), 745. 12. Catherine often mentioned the possibility of capture and death by torture in her letters to France, though she denied that she feared such a fate. See Ragueneau, Vie, 44–45. 13. Ragueneau, Vie, 44–45. 14. Ragueneau, Vie, 36. 15. Ragueneau, Vie. For analysis of Queen Anne’s involvement, see Oury, Spiritual Journey, 89–95. Catherine’s older sister, Franc¸oise, also volunteered for Canada, but quickly backed down in the face of fierce family opposition. 16. Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (Cleveland: Burrows Brothers, 1899), 31:17–137 (hereafter JR). For an influential analysis of native adoption, captivity, and ritual sacrifice, see Daniel Richter, ‘‘War and Culture: the Iroquois Experience,’’ William and Mary Quarterly 40 (1983): 528–59. 17. Ragueneau, Vie, 36. Spiritual self-preservation also seems to have played a role in her parents’ decision to let their daughter go. Catherine’s father expressed fears for his own salvation should he continue to stand in her way. 18. Ragueneau, Vie, 44. I have capitalized the divine pronouns, as was customary at the time. This has the added benefit of helping to distinguish between the multiple male actors in some of Catherine’s long and complex quotes. 19. Ragueneau, Vie, 59–63. See also Oury, Spiritual Journey, 123–27. 20. Ragueneau, Vie, 44. 21. Catherine was not alone in experiencing severe misgivings after arriving in Canada. Catherine’s more famous contemporary, Marie de l’Incarnation, faced serious depression after her own arrival. Noel Chabanal, canonized alongside Bre´beuf as a martyr in 1930, was likewise repulsed by virtually every aspect of life in the North American colony. 22. The Wendat, an aboriginal nation of sedentary agriculturalists living on the shores of Lake Huron, had long been the targets of Jesuit missionary attention, as their lifestyle was believed to make them particularly amenable to Christianity. 23. Demographic tensions, primarily caused by epidemic, seem to have been a prime motivator in escalating warfare, which was intended to augment declining Iroquois populations through the integration of large numbers of war captives. 24. Ragueneau, Vie, 44; see also Oury, Spiritual Journey, 124–26. 25. JR, 39:79–105, 183–205. 26. In 1999, Wendat from Que´bec, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Minnesota returned to their ancestral homeland to reinter the remains of more than five hundred of their ancestors (repatriated to them by the Royal Ontario Museum) and to reconstitute their ancient confederacy. See Francis Gros-Louis, ‘‘The Reburial of the Human

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Remains of My 350 Year Old Ancestors,’’ 1999, Huron/Wendat Cemetery, www.agon dachia.com, and Mima Kapches, ‘‘Ossassane´ Ossuary: The Circle Closes,’’ Archaeology of Eastern North America 38 (2010): 1–15. 27. These documents (published in Rapport de l’archiviste de la province de Quebec [Quebec City: 1924–25], 3–93) were commissioned by the bishop of Rouen, who in the early 1650s (erroneously) claimed jurisdiction over New France (JR 38:189). For analysis, see Julia Boss, ‘‘Writing a Relic: the Uses of Hagiography in New France,’’ 211–33 in Colonial Saints: Discovering the Holy in the Americas, 1500–1800, ed. Allan Greer and Jodi Bilinkoff (New York: Routledge, 2003). See also Anderson, The Death and Afterlife. 28. Catherine’s own primary devotion was always to Bre´beuf, though she also revered Isaac Jogues because he had ‘‘opened her way’’ to Canada. She made a vow to remain in Canada on the anniversary of his martyrdom. Ragueneau’s attempt to encourage Catherine’s veneration of Noel Chabanal, however, was not successful. Ragueneau used the text of Chabanal’s vow to live and die in Canada (JR 39:157) as the basis of a similar vow he had Catherine make in 1654 (see Oury, Spiritual Journey, 130–34). But the exercise didn’t, as he had anticipated, bring Catherine greater peace. Catherine’s desire to return to France would only be completely assuaged by her celestial spiritual director, Bre´beuf. 29. Only three of the eight canonized martyrs left relics: Jean de Bre´beuf, Charles Garnier, and Gabriel Lalemant. 30. JR 50:87–89, 123, 56:103–5. See also Albert Jamet, ed., Les Annales de l’HoˆtelDieu de Que´bec, 1636–1716 Quebec City: Hoˆtel-Dieu de Que´bec, 1939), 148, 239. 31. This hosting of cloistered female nuns in a male residence was unprecedented. In the early 1630s the Jesuits had turned away aboriginal females seeking shelter even when enemy attack appeared imminent (JR 5:107). 32. Oury, Spiritual Journey, 197, and Bilinkoff, Related Lives, 74, both see Catherine’s visions of Bre´beuf as being, at least initially, a substitutionary compensation for Ragueneau’s absence. 33. Oury, following Marie de l’Incarnation; see Guy-Marie Oury, ed., Marie de l’Incarnation: Correspondance. (Quebec City: Solesmes, 1971, 814), links the beginning of Catherine’s problems with demonic infiltration to her treatment of Barbe Halay, a reputed demoniac (Oury, Spiritual Journey, 183–94). 34. Ragueneau, Vie, 111–13. 35. This shift away from visual imagery is all the more striking because of, as Oury puts it, ‘‘the visual precision of Catherine’s mystical graces’’ (Spiritual Journey, 178). 36. Ragueneau, 1671, 118–19. 37. Thwaites, Vol. 52, 69. 38. Ragueneau, Vie, 123–24. 39. Ragueneau, Vie, 123–24; see also 125, 126. 40. Ragueneau scrupulously avoids the term ‘‘possession,’’ using ‘‘obsession’’ to describe Catherine’s symptoms. He argued that since the demons did not so dominate her that her condition became obvious to all around her, much of her inner self must

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Notes to Pages 197–201

have remained untouched. Marie de l’Incarnation voiced essentially the same opinion (see Oury, Marie de l’Incarnation, 746, and Spiritual Journey, 200–201, 146–53). 41. Ragueneau, Vie, 125. 42. With this important exception, Ragueneau’s editorial shaping of Catherine’s writing seems to have been quite minimal. Bilinkoff notes that his strong stress on reproducing large chunks of Catherine’s own writings is quite exceptional (see Bilinkoff, Related Lives, 70–75). 43. Catherine believed that her willingness to fulfill God’s will by permitting herself to be inhabited by demons nevertheless made her less acceptable in His sight. Ragueneau never succeeded in convincing her otherwise, though Bre´beuf seems to have mitigated her self-condemnation (Ragueneau, Vie, 124). 44. Psychologists would, of course, reverse the causality of Catherine’s seventeenth-century mystical reasoning in this case, positing instead that Catherine’s unbearable ambivalence—her holding two incompatible views or feelings simultaneously—led her to perceive herself as being at the mercy of two highly polarized external forces. Catherine’s calm demeanor belied her inner turmoil (Jamet, Annales, 155–58, 236, 238; and Oury, Marie de l’Incarnation, 815). 45. Ragueneau, Vie, 115. 46. To Bre´beuf and Christ one could also add St. Joseph, whom Catherine presents in very similar terms (Ragueneau, Vie, 151–52). 47. Ragueneau, Vie, 121. 48. Ragueneau, Vie, 117. The dynamics here are complex, as Catherine also implied that, by withholding himself, Bre´beuf was punishing her for her doubts regarding their mutual mission. 49. Ragueneau, Vie, 115. 50. Ragueneau followed a similar strategy in stressing the similarities between Bre´beuf’s and Catherine’s lives, presenting Catherine as a sort of proto-martyr for her courage in coming to the dangerous colony and in refusing to leave: ‘‘A girl must have invincible courage and extraordinary strength to not be frightened amidst all of these dangers, and to love Canada even though it was in such a deplorable state’’ (Vie, 44). 51. Some Catholic theologians have presented the Virgin’s vicarious suffering as having its own redemptive value, as seen in the attempt to recognize the Virgin Mary as a ‘‘co-redemptrix.’’ 52. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). 53. This is not to say that Catherine’s experiences were devoid of any physical suffering. On the contrary, much of her demonic torment did have a corporeal component. See, for example, Ragueneau, Vie, 123. 54. The association of native people with the forces of darkness was not unique to New France, occurring also in New England. For a fascinating study of how Puritans linked diabolism to aboriginal groups, see Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Vintage Books, 1999).

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55. Ragueneau, Vie, 153–55. 56. Many other members of the colonial religious elite, including Marie de l’Incarnation, also perceived the earthquake as a divine chastisement (see Oury, Spiritual Journey, 204–15, and Marie de l’Incarnation, 688–89). Catherine continued to experience similar apocalyptic visions throughout 1663 and 1664 (see Ragueneau, Vie, 152–54). 57. Ragueneau, Vie, 153–55. 58. Ragueneau, Vie, 149–50. Catherine’s apparition reflected Margaret Mary Alacoque’s visions of the Sacred Heart. 59. Ragueneau, Vie, 121. The passivity of the phrasing here is due to Catherine’s perception that four strong, demonic arms helped her to scourge herself, leaving her back ‘‘wet with blood’’ (121). 60. Ragueneau, Vie, 48. It is Ragueneau who transposed this passage into the third person. 61. Thwaites reproduces a letter written by Marie de Saint-Bonaventure de Jesus, Catherine’s Mother Superior, for circulation in all the Augustinian Hospitalie`re communities on both sides of the Atlantic. 62. JR, 52: 65–67. 63. Jamet, Annales, 155–58, 236, 238, Oury, Marie de l’Incarnation, 815. 64. Ragueneau, Vie, 120. Making these novenas, or nine-day cycles of prayers around the anniversary of Bre´beuf’s death appears to have been something of a tradition with Catherine in the later years of her life (see Oury, Spiritual Journey, 218). 65. Other women, such as Marie de l’Incarnation, also enjoyed respect and power within the colony which was not predicated upon mysticism. Though Marie was also a mystic, her respect grew from her long experience in the colony, political savvy, and hard-headed practicality. There were thus other paths to power for colonial female religious than the one chosen by Catherine. 66. Ragueneau, Vie, 154. Chapter 10. The Unbounded Self 1. John Rutty, A Spiritual Diary and Soliloquies, 2 vols. (London: James Phillips, 1776), ‘‘Ate too much today’’; [19 1st month 1755] I: 36; ‘‘A shocking view’’ [13 1st month 1754] I: 9; ‘‘at a meeting’’ [8 1st month 1763] I: 10. 2. John Rutty, A Faithful Narrative of a Remarkable Visitation by a Physician (London: James Phillips, 1776). 3. Rutty, A Faithful Narrative, 3. 4. Rutty, A Faithful Narrative, 5. 5. Rutty, A Faithful Narrative, 8. 6. Rutty, A Faithful Narrative, 9–10. 7. John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley, Albert C. Outler, gen. ed., 26 vols. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984–2003), Journal, 5 (17): 446.

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Notes to Pages 209–213

8. A. Roger Ekirch, ‘‘Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-Industrial Slumber in the British Isles,’’ American Historical Review 106:2 (2001): 343–65. 9. Rhodri Hayward, ‘‘Policing Dreams: History and the Moral Uses of the Unconscious,’’ History Workshop Journal 49 (2000): 147. 10. Jennifer Ford, ‘‘Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Pains of Sleep,’’ History Workshop Journal 48 (1999): 169–86. 11. Michael MacDonald, ‘‘The Nightmare: The Painting and the Legend,’’ unpublished ms., University of Michigan, 2002. 12. On not being sure whether one has been dreaming or awake, see Ekirch ‘‘Sleep We Have Lost.’’ On the question of dreams coming from inside or outside, see David Shulman and Guy G. Strousma, introduction to Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming, ed. Shulman and Strousma (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3–13, esp. 6. On the general problem of inside-outside, see Leigh Eric Schmidt, Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 54–57. 13. A more extensive study of Methodist dreams appears in my book, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in Early Methodism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 219–60. On Quaker dreams, see Carla Gerona, Night Journeys: The Power of Dreams in Transatlantic Quaker Culture (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004). 14. On the bounded self, see Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006). 15. Joseph Addison, The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), no. 487, September 18, 1712, 4: 226–27. 16. John Newton, ‘‘On Dreaming,’’ Olney Hymns in Three Books (London: Thomas Tegg, 1824), 2: 184. 17. Daniel Defoe, An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions: Being an Account of What they are, and what they are not; Whence they come, and Whence they come not (London, 1727), 209–10. 18. Susan L. Manning, ‘‘Enlightenment’s Dark Dreams: Two Fictions of Henry Mackenzie and Charles Brockden Brown,’’ Eighteenth-Century Life 21:3 (1997): 39–56, esp. 53. 19. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1st American ed. (Philadelphia, 1798), s.v. ‘‘Dreams,’’ 6:119–20. 20. William Smellie, The Philosophy of Natural History (Edinburgh: Charles Elliot, 1790), 375–76. 21. On John Newton, see D. Bruce Hindmarsh, John Newton and the English Evangelical Tradition (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1996) esp. 119–20 on his Calvinist theology. 22. John Newton, An Authentic Narrative of Some of the Remarkable and Interesting Particulars in the Life of [John Newton], 3rd ed. (1764; London: S. Drapier, T. Hitch, P. Hill, 1765), 35–41.

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23. Newton, An Authentic Narrative, quoted in D. Bruce Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 270. 24. William Cowper, Poems, quoted in James King, William Cowper: A Biography (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1986), 89. 25. Elizabeth Carter, The Rambler, 100, quoted in James King and Charles Ryskamp, eds., The Letters and Prose Writings of William Cowper, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984) 3:13–14, n. 26. William Cowper to Lady Hesketh, January 14, 1787, Letters and Prose Writings of William Cowper, 3: 12–15, esp. 14. 27. William Cowper to William Hayley, July 29, 1792, King and Ryskamp, Letters of Cowper, 4: 160. 28. Cowper to Samuel Teedon, November 16–17, 1792, King and Ryskamp, Letters of Cowper, 4: 237. 29. Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative, 267. 30. Cowper to Lieutenant General Cowper, September 10, 1793, King and Ryskamp, Letters of Cowper, 4: 396. 31. Frank Whaling, ed., John and Charles Wesley: Selected Prayers, Hymns, Journal Notes, Sermons, Letters and Treatises (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), 193. 32. See, for example, the Memoir of Mary Taft, 2 vols. (London: author, 1803), 2: 69. 33. Wesley, Works, quoted in Ann Taves, Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), 53. 34. Gerona, Night Journeys, 28–29, 66–69. 35. Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative. 36. Henry Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (1989; Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992), 425. ‘‘The majority [of dreams or visions] occurred in those not habitually subject to special mystical experiences. They rather seem to have been induced by the special stress of the struggle for conversion and perfection or their achievement.’’ 37. Journal of Abiah Darby, 1744–69, 17, mss. Friends Historical Library, London. 38. Francis Stamper’s dream, 1695, J.T. no. 507, mss. vol. 348, Friends Historical Library. 39. Cf. Mack, Heart Religion, 228, 239. 40. John Killam to Margaret Fell, York Castle, June 9, 1655, Swarthmore mss. 4/88, Friends Historical Library. 41. Mrs. Fletcher to Mrs. Crosby, May 28, 1800, mss, Methodist Collection, 1306–5-3:04, Methodist Library, Drew University, Madison, N.J. 42. Mack, Heart Religion, 239. 43. Thomas Jackson, ed., The Lives of the Early Methodist Preachers Chiefly Written by Themselves, 4 vols. (1871; Stoke-on-Trent: Tentmaker, ), 3: 178.

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44. Hester Roe, ‘‘A Short Account of Ye Experience of HAR Written by Herself,’’ Cork, August 31, 1789, 179, diaries box R, John Rylands Library. 45. ‘‘The Purport of Samuel Fothergill’s Dream, Which He Related in a Solemn & Affeting Manner, to Near Eighty Friends in a Large Room at the Crown Inn . . . the 15th of the Ninth Month 1760,’’ Port. mss. 14/3, Friends Historical Library. 46. John Woolman, Journal, quoted in Michael L. Birkel, ‘‘John Woolman on the Cross,’’ in Michael L. Birkel and John W. Newman, eds., The Lamb’s War: Essays to Honor Hugh Barbour ([Richmond, Ind.]: Earlham College Press, 1992), p. 91. 47. Woolman, Journal, quoted in Birkel, ‘‘John Woolman on the Cross.’’ 91. 48. ‘‘The purport of Samuel Fothergill’s dream, which he related in a solemn & affeting manner, to near eighty friends in a large room at the Crown Inn . . . the 15th of the ninth month 1760,’’ Port. Mss. 14/3, Friends Historical Library. 49. Rutty, A Faithful Narrative, 9–10. 50. Rutty, Spiritual Diary, 26 9th month 1754. 51. William Smellie, Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Correspondence of William Smellie, 2 vols. (1811; New York: Garland, 1974), II: 186–87, 191. 52. Mary Shackleton Leadbeater, The Leadbeater Papers, 2 vols. ([Dublin: Richard Davis Webb, 1772]; 2nd ed. London: Bell and Daldy, 1862) I: Annals of Ballitore, 86–87. 53. Journal of Mary Leadbeater, Dublin, S26 2nd mo. [1792] fols. 11–13. 54. Journal of Mary Leadbeater, 9293, Journal 1769–70: 24 5th mo. f. 41, 45, 2 12th mo. fol. 97, 21 12th mo. 1791, fol. 101. 55. Journal of Mary Leadbeater, 30 12th mo. 1797 fol. 31, 29 8th mo. 1800. 56. ‘‘An Account of Sarah Lawrence Many Years a Servant or Adopted Daughter Rather of Mr. & Mrs. Fletcher, Written by Mrs. Fletcher,’’ 374, Fletcher/Tooth Collection, box 24, John Rylands Library. 57. ‘‘You must permit me . . . to be melancholy now and then . . . for that sable thread is so intertwined with the very thread of my existence as to be inseparable from it; at least while I exist in the body. . . . I was occasionally sad even in the days when I believed that God himself lov’e me.’’ Cowper to Hayley, June 7–8, 1792, King and Ryskamp, Letters of Cowper, 4: 101. 58. William Cowper, hymn no. 36, ‘‘Welcome Cross,’’ quoted in King, William Cowper, 85. 59. Smellie, Memoirs , I: 216–17. 60. Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self. See also Mechal Sobel, Teach Me Dreams: The Search for Self in the Revolutionary Era (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), 3–5. Sobel posits a premodern ‘‘we-self’’ that was transformed into an agentive individual during the eighteenth century. Chapter 11. Visions of Handsome Lake 1. Halliday Jackson, ‘‘A Short History of My Sojourning in the Wilderness,’’ ed. Anthony F. C. Wallace as ‘‘Halliday Jackson’s Journal to the Seneca Indians, 1798–

Notes to Pages 226–229

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1800,’’ Pennsylvania History 19:2 (April 1952): 117–47, and 19:3 (July 1952): 325–49 (hereafter cited as ‘‘Jackson’s Journal, 1798–1800’’), quotation on 146. 2. Gordon S. Wood, ‘‘Evangelical America and Early Mormonism,’’ 179–97 in Religion in American History: A Reader, ed. Jon Butler and Harry S. Stout (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), quotation on 180. 3. ‘‘Jackson’s Journal, 1798–1800,’’ 126, 133, 145. The Senecas are one of the constituent nations of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, which also include the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Tuscaroras. The history of the Iroquois and their league is rich and complex; see especially Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Knopf, 1970); Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992); Matthew Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European Encounters in Early America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993); and William N. Fenton, The Great Law and the Longhouse: A Political History of the Iroquois Confederacy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998). 4. I examine these themes more systematically in Matthew Dennis, Seneca Possessed: Indians, Witches, and Power in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). 5. Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1950), 9. The Second Great Awakening was a diverse movement, with variations by denomination, theology, liturgy, region, and social context. Considering Seneca revitalization in terms of the Awakening does not therefore unduly attenuate its definition. The Awakening lacks a single, comprehensive history, but see esp. William G. McLouglin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607–1977 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 98–140; Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989); Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990); and Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans, 1992), 165–244, and America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 159–421. The best local study of the Awakening in New York remains Cross’s Burned-Over District; but see also Michael Barkun, Crucible of the Millennium: The Burned-Over District of New York in the 1840s (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1986); and David L. Rowe, Thunder and Trumpets: Millerites and Dissenting Religion in Upstate New York, 1800–1850 (Chico, Calif.: Scholar’s Press, 1985). 6. ‘‘Jackson’s Journal, 1798–1800,’’ 141, 345. 7. ‘‘Jackson’s Journal, 1798–1800,’’ 341–42, 344, 146–47. On Handsome Lake and his new religion, as codified by his followers, see Arthur C. Parker, ‘‘The Code of Handsome Lake, the Seneca Prophet,’’ New York State Museum Bulletin 163 (1913):

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repr. as bk. 2 in William N. Fenton, ed., Parker on the Iroquois (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1968), esp. 9–13. 8. ‘‘Jackson’s Journal, 1798–1800,’’ 344. 9. Reuben Gold Thwaites, trans. and ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 73 vols. (Cleveland: Burrow Brothers, 1896–1901), 54:95 (1898); and Wallace, Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 61, 75. 10. Halliday Jackson, Sketch of the Manners, Customs, Religion and Government of the Seneca Indians in 1800 (Philadelphia: Marcus T. C. Gould, 1830), 28. 11. Wallace, Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 71–73, quotation on 67. 12. Wallace, Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 68–69. 13. Wallace, Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 73. 14. Parker, ‘‘Code of Handsome Lake,’’ 27–30. Page citations of Parker are to the Fenton reprint. 15. Parker, ‘‘Code of Handsome Lake,’’ 66–68, quotation on 68. Handsome Lake’s prophesying, divine conversations, and communion with the dead might now seem outlandish, but they were no more eccentric than contemporaneous Swedenborgians, Mesmerists, Mormons, spiritualists, and other enthusiast Christians who spoke with God or had ‘‘se´ances’’ with the deceased; see Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith, 234–35. Christ’s supposed lament notwithstanding, the prophet did not reject all ‘‘the ways of the white man’’ but, rather, a mindless assimilation; he favored the selective adaptation of white or Christian beliefs and practices. 16. ‘‘Visions of Connudiu’’ and ‘‘Henry Simmons’ Version,’’ in ‘‘Jackson’s Journal, 1798–1800,’’ 342–43, 346–48. Wallace, Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 242–48, provides a summary analysis of the second vision of Handsome Lake. 17. Parker, ‘‘Code of Handsome Lake,’’ 71–74. 18. Parker, ‘‘Code of Handsome Lake,’’ 71–74. See Quaker proscriptions against gaming and idleness in George S. Snyderman, ed., ‘‘Halliday Jackson’s Journal of a Visit Paid to the Indians of New York (1806),’’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 101:6 (December 1957): 565–88, quotation on 577. 19. Parker, ‘‘Code of Handsome Lake,’’ 71–74, witch punishment quotation on 71–72; and Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith, 236–37. 20. Parker, ‘‘Code of Handsome Lake,’’ 72–73. 21. Parker, ‘‘Code of Handsome Lake,’’ 72. As Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639–1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), demonstrates in another, not too distant context, legal codes and practices can reconcile the punishment of men as well as women with patriarchy, male privilege, and the double standard. See also Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). Rape was generally infrequent among Indians, including the Iroquois; see Block, Rape and Sexual Power, 223–30, which offers an informed discussion, with important qualifications. 22. Susan Juster, ‘‘ ‘Neither Male nor Female’: Jemima Wilkinson and the Politics of Gender in Post-Revolutionary America,’’ 357–79 in Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial

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in Early America, ed. Robert Blair St. George (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), esp. 360, 364, 372. 23. Merle H. Deardorff and George S. Snyderman, eds., ‘‘A Nineteenth-Century Journal of a Visit to the Indians of New York’’ [by John Philips, 1806], Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 100:6 (December 1956): 582–612, quotation on 604. 24. See Anthony F. C. Wallace, ‘‘Origins of the Longhouse Religion,’’ 442–48 in Northeast, ed. Bruce G. Trigger, vol. 15 (1978) of Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, gen. ed., 20 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978– ) (hereafter HBNAI). The Seneca ethnologist Arthur C. Parker noted, early in the twentieth century, that Senecas believed in ‘‘one Great and Supreme Being, who was their creator and preserver.’’ ‘‘To him, however,’’ Parker wrote, ‘‘they do not attribute the creation of the world. He is merely its protector, and sustainer’’ (misc. MS essay fragment, ‘‘Religion’’ [Freeman no. 530], in the Parker Collection, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia). On the evaluations of the prophet by Kirkland and Doctor Peter, see Walter Pilkington, ed., The Journals of Samuel Kirkland: Eighteenth-Century Missionary to the Iroquois, Government Agent, Father of Hamilton College (Clinton, N.Y.: Hamilton College, 1980), 412–13, entries from July 20 and August 3, 1806. 25. Dean Snow, The Iroquois (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 158–60. On Handsome Lake’s modification of the Iroquois traditional rites, see, for example, William N. Fenton, The Iroquois Eagle Dance: An Offshoot of the Calumet Dance, Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 156 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1953), esp. 32–33, 78–79, 102–4, 107, 143–44, 153. 26. On Seneca dreams, see especially Wallace, Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 59–75; and Carla Gerona, Night Journeys: The Power of Dreams in Transatlantic Quaker Culture (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004). In referring to Handsome Lake’s dreams as ‘‘visions,’’ I am not making a distinction between the two (at least during his first ‘‘vision’’ he was asleep, or in a coma-like state). See Elisabeth Tooker, Native American Spirituality of the Eastern Woodlands (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 89–90. 27. Gerona, Night Journeys, 9, 18, quotation on 3; and Wallace, Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 59–75. And see Harold Blau, ‘‘Dream Guessing: A Comparative Analysis,’’ Ethnohistory 10 (1963): 233–49; and Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace, 112–13. 28. Gerona, Night Journeys, 207–10, 224–25; and Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith, 222–23, 238–39, 242–43. 29. Henry Simmons’s manuscript journal quoted in Wallace, Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 23. Simmons similarly endorsed the dreams of a Seneca man that seemed to recapitulate Handsome Lake’s vision, including the hellish punishments for drunkards, philanderers, wife beaters, and so forth. Simmons concluded, ‘‘the dream was true’’ and its message was confession of sin, repentance, and reform, as it was for Handsome Lake (225). For a similar argument about the empowering nature of divine

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Notes to Pages 238–241

communication, in this case through the visitation of angels (sometimes during dreams), see Elizabeth Reis, ‘‘Immortal Messengers: Angels, Gender, and Power in Early America,’’ 163–75 in Mortal Remains: Death in Early America, eds. Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003). 30. Karim Michel Tiro, ‘‘The People of the Standing Stone: The Oneida Indian Nation from Revolution through Removal, 1765–1840’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1999), 181–82; and Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (New York: Knopf, 2006), 380. On Hiawatha and the Peacemaker, see Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace, esp. 76–115. 31. Tooker, Native American Spirituality, 69; and Wallace, ‘‘Origins of the Longhouse Religion,’’ 445, and, more extensively, Death and Rebirth of the Seneca. 32. On the crisis of alcohol use, which inspired the prophet’s vision and reform, see Parker, ‘‘Code of Handsome Lake,’’ 9–10, 20–23. On alcohol among Native people, see generally Peter C. Mancall, Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995). For an example of Six Nations’ efforts to ban liquor, see petition to the legislature of New York, n.d. [between March 1798 and January 1800], Colonial and Early Statehood Records, microfilm A1823, ‘‘Petitions, Correspondence, and Reports Relating to Indians, 1783–1831,’’ 40:323–25, New York State Archives (hereafter NYSA), Albany, N.Y. 33. Parker, ‘‘Code of Handsome Lake,’’ 9, writes that Handsome Lake’s success as a temperance reformer ‘‘came not from an appeal to reason but to religious instinct.’’ ‘‘Jackson’s Journal, 1798–1800,’’ 343; see also Simmons’s account in ‘‘Jackson’s Journal, 1798–1800,’’ 347–48; petition to the legislature of New York, n.d., microfilm A1823, 40:323–25, NYSA. See also ‘‘Account of a Visit Made by Penrose Wiley, John Letchworth, Anne Mifflin, Mary Bell & Co. to the Seneca Indians, Settled on Allegany River,’’ October 1803, Special Collections, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.; in this account, by visiting Quakers, their temperance message had resonance because it echoed Handsome Lake: ‘‘What has been said agrees with what our Prophet has told us, therefore it must be true. He has told us that we should live in peace and goodwill, and that if we drank Whiskey we should never go to Heaven.’’ Most nativist movements since the eighteenth century—from the Delaware prophet Neolin to the Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa—had rejected alcohol; see, for example, Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 180, 228. On white Americans’ alcoholic consumption and its implications, see W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), esp. 10. 34. ‘‘Jackson’s Journal, 1798–1800,’’ 347–48, 143 (Jackson’s biblical reference is unclear, but it might refer to Gal. 5:6); and Parker, ‘‘Code of Handsome Lake,’’ 41. In the spring of 1799, before Handsome Lake’s visions, the Quaker missionaryschoolteacher Henry Simmons condemned ‘‘Dancing Frolicks’’ as ‘‘the Devil’s works’’ in Cornplanter’s village. A council agreed to abandon such dancing, ‘‘for some of them

Notes to Pages 241–244

299

thought it must be wicked, because they had Learned it of white people, as well as that of drinking Rum and Whisky & getting Drunk, which they knew was Evil.’’ Still, their ceremonial dances would continue. Simmons’s journal quoted in Wallace, Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 231. According to Parker, ‘‘Code of Handsome Lake,’’ 73, n. 1, the Indians ‘‘detest the ‘fiddle’ and ‘fiddle dances’ as things of great evil and assert that they produce as much wickedness as drunkenness.’’ 35. Simmons in ‘‘Jackson’s Journal, 1798–1800,’’ 349. The ‘‘old Chief’’ refers here to Cornplanter, who in the immediate aftermath of the sick man’s vision was Handsome Lake’s chief spokesman. 36. Cross, Burned-Over District, 3. 37. Unlike Wilkinson, Handsome Lake’s visionary work was relatively mainstream within his own society (and perhaps more broadly). 38. See, for example, ‘‘Account of a Visit to the Seneca Indians.’’ 39. Elisabeth Tooker, ‘‘Iroquois Since 1820,’’ HBNAI 15:452. The Code of Handsome Lake was first formally recorded by Ely S. Parker in 1845 and recorded again in 1848. 40. See Annemarie Shimony, ‘‘Iroquois Religion and Women in Historical Perspective,’’ 397–418 in Women, Religion, and Social Change, ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Ellison Banks Findly (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), quotation on 415. Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1977), is a classic statement of this phenomenon.

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Selected Bibliography

Andries, Lise. ‘‘L’interpre´tation populaire des songes.’’ Revue des Sciences Humaines 211 (1988): 49–64. Armstrong, Nancy, and Leonard Tennenhouse. ‘‘The Interior Difference: A Brief Genealogy of Dreams, 1650–1717.’’ ‘‘The Politics of Difference,’’ special issue of Eighteenth-Century Studies 23: 4 (Summer 1990): 458–78. Bitel, Lisa. ‘‘In Visu Noctis: Dreams in European Hagiography and Histories, 450– 900.’’ History of Religions 31:1 (1991): 39–59. Brown, Peter, ed. Reading Dreams: The Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Burke, Peter. ‘‘The Cultural History of Dreams.’’ Pp. 23–42 in Varieties of Cultural History. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997. Campbell, Mary Baine. ‘‘Dreaming, Motion, Meaning.’’ Pp. 15–30 in Reading the Early Modern Dream: The Terrors of the Night, ed. Katharine Hodgkin, Michelle O’Callaghan, and Susan Wiseman. London: Routledge, 2008. ———. ‘‘The Dreaming Body: Cartesian Psychology, Enlightenment Anthropology, and the Jesuits in Nouvelle France, Pp. 239–51 in The Anthropology of the Enlightenment, ed. Larry Wolff and Marco Cipollini. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. Christian, William A., Jr. Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981. Clark, Stuart. Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Dacome, Lucia. ‘‘ ‘To What Purpose Does It Think’: Dreams, Sick Bodies and Confused Minds in the Age of Reason.’’ History of Psychiatry 15:4 (2004): 395–416. Dauvois, Nathalie, and Jean-Philippe Grosperrin, eds. Songes et songeurs, XIIIe–XVIIIe sie`cle. Saint-Nicholas, Quebec: Presses de l’Universite´ Laval, 2003. Dennis, Matthew. Seneca Possessed: Indians, Witches, and Power in the Early American Republic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Deslandres, Dominique. ‘‘Dreams Clash: The War over Authorized Interpretation in Seventeenth-Century French Missions.’’ Pp. 143–53 in Empires of God: Religious Encounters in the Early Modern Atlantic, ed. Linda Gregerson and Susan Juster. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

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Dumora, Florence. L’oeuvre nocturne: Songe et repre´sentation au XVIIe sie`cle. Paris: Honore´ Champion, 2005. Dutton, Paul Edward. The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire. Regents Studies in Medieval Culture. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Ekirch, A. Roger. At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. ———. ‘‘Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-industrial Slumber in the British Isles.’’ American Historical Review 106:2 (2001): 343–65. Gantet, Claire. Der Traum in der Fru¨hen Neuzeit: Ansa¨tze zu einer kulturellen Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2010. ———. ‘‘Le reˆve dans l’Allemagne du XVIe sie`cle: Appropriations me´dicales et recouvrements confessionnels.’’ Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 65/1 (2010), 39–62. Gautier, Jean-Luc, ed. ‘‘Reˆver en France au XVII sie`cle.’’ Revue des Sciences Humaines 211 (July–September 1988). Gerona, Carla. ‘‘Imagining Peace in Quaker and Native American Dream Stories.’’ Pp. 41–62 in Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania, 1682–1800, ed. Daniel Richter and William Pencak. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. ———. Night Journeys: The Power of Dreams in Transatlantic Quaker Culture. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004. Ginzburg, Carlo. The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. Hartmann, Ernest. The Nature and Functions of Dreaming. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Hobson, J. Allan. Dreaming: An Introduction to Sleep. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Hodgkin, Katharine, Michelle O’Callaghan, and Susan Wiseman, eds. Reading the Early Modern Dream: The Terrors of the Night. Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture 7. London: Routledge, 2008. Irwin, Lee. The Dream Seekers: Native American Visionary Traditions of the Great Plains. The Civilization of the American Indian Series. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. Jorda´n Arroyo, Marı´a V. Son˜ar la historia: Riesgo, creatividad y religio´n en las profecı´as de Lucrecia de Leo´n. Madrid: Siglo XXI, 2007. Juster, Susan. Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Kagan, Richard L. Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Kruger, Steven F. Dreaming in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Le Goff, Jacques. ‘‘Dreams in Culture and Collective Psychology of the Medieval West.’’ Pp. 201–4 in Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

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———. The Medieval Imagination, trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Levin, Carole. Dreaming the English Renaissance: Politics and Desire in Court and Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Levin, David Michael. Sites of Vision: The Discursive Construction of Sight in the History of Philosophy. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1997. Lima, Luı´s Felipe Silve´rio. Impe´rio dos sonhos: Narrativas profe´ticas, sebastianimo e messianismo brigantino. Sa˜o Paulo: Alameda Editorial, 2010. Lindberg, David C. Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Mack, Phyllis. Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in Early Methodism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ———. Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Miller, Patricia Cox. Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997. Moreira, Isabel. Dreams, Visions, and Spiritual Authority in Merovingian Gaul. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000. Niccoli, Ottavia. Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990. Osborne, Roger. The Dreamer of the Calle de San Salvador. London: Jonathan Cape, 2001. Parman, Susan. Dream and Culture: An Anthropological Study of the Western Intellectual Tradition. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1991. Patton, Kimberley. ‘‘ ‘A Great and Strange Correction’: Intentionality, Locality, and Epiphany in the Category of Dream Incubation.’’ History of Religions 43:3 (2004): 194–223. Petrovich, V. C. Connaissance et reˆve(rie) dans le discours des lumie`res. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. Pick, Daniel, and Lyndal Roper, eds. Dreams and History: The Interpretation of Dreams from Ancient Greece to Modern Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, 2004. Price, S. R. F. ‘‘The Future of Dreams: From Freud to Artemidorus.’’ Past and Present 113 (November 1986): 3–37. Rivie`re, Janine. ‘‘ ‘Visions of the Night’: The Reform of Popular Dreams in Early Modern England.’’ Parergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies 20:1 (2003): 109–38. Schmitt, Jean Claude. Le corps, les rites, les reˆves, le temps: Essais d’anthropologie me´die´vale. Paris: Gallimard, 2001. Shulman, David, and Guy G. Strousma, eds. Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Sluhovsky, Moshe. Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

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Sobel, Mechal. Teach Me Dreams: The Search for Self in the Revolutionary Era. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000. Taves, Ann. Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. Tedlock, Barbara, ed. Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; 2nd ed. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1992. Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England. New York, Scribner’s, 1971. Wallace, Anthony F. C. ‘‘Dreams and the Wishes of the Soul: A Type of Psychoanalytic Theory Among the Seventeenth-Century Iroquois.’’ American Anthropologist, n.s., 60:2 (1958): 234–48.

Contributors

Emma Anderson holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Harvard University and has taught since 2005 at the bilingual University of/Universite´ d’Ottawa. She is the author of The Betrayal of Faith: The Tragic Journey of a Colonial Native Convert (Harvard University Press, 2007), which is also available in a French-language edition (les Presses de l’Universite´ Laval, 2009). The work won honors from the American Academy of Religion, the Society of French Colonial History, and the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Anderson’s forthcoming book explores the dynamic historical evolution of the Catholic cult of the North American martyrs, eight Jesuits missionaries who died violently in the midseventeenth century. Mary Baine Campbell is the author of The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing 400–1600 (Cornell University Press, 1988) and Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe (Cornell University Press, 1999), as well as many articles, essays, and works of poetry. A member of the faculty of the English Department at Brandeis University, she is currently writing a book on early modern dreams in the Atlantic World. Luı´s R. Corteguera is Associate Professor of History at the University of Kansas and the author of For the Common Good: Popular Politics in Barcelona, 1580–1640 (Cornell University Press, 2002), and Death by Effigy: A Tale from the Mexican Inquisition (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), and is co-editor of Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World (Ashgate, 2003). The Catalan translation of For the Common Good (Eumo, 2005) was finalist for the Premi Ciutat de Barcelona 2005. He has received fellowships from the ACLS, the Huntington Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Humanities Center.

306

Contributors

Matthew Dennis is Professor of History and Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon, and has research interests in colonial America and the early national United States, the history of American Indians, American colonialism, nationalism, and identity, the American landscape and environment, and public memory. His most recent book is Seneca Possessed: Indians, Witchcraft, and Power in the Early American Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). Carla Gerona teaches at the School of History, Technology, and Society of the Georgia Institute of Technology, offering courses in early American, Atlantic, and borderlands history. Her first book, Night Journeys: The Power of Dreams in Transatlantic Quaker Culture (University of Virginia Press, 2004), traced the ways in which an innovative religious group interpreted their dreams to shape their world. She is currently working on a study of the multi-ethnic borderland in Texas prior to its annexation by the United States. Marı´a V. Jorda´n is on the faculty of both the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Department of History at Yale University. The author of Son˜ar la historia. Riesgo, creatividad y religio´n en los suen˜os de Lucrecia de Leo´n (Siglo XXI, 2007), she has made many contributions to the literature on dreams in early modern Spain, Portugal, and Latin America. Luı´s Filipe Silve´rio Lima holds several degrees from the University of Sa˜o Paulo and is on the faculty in history at Federal University of Sa˜o Paulo. His recent research includes a funded project entitled, ‘‘The SeventeenthCentury Interpretations of the Dreams of Five Kingdoms: Sebastianists, Joa˜nists, and Fifth-Monarchy Men,’’ and a second project with the working title ‘‘Iconography of Dreams in Early Modern Europe and America.’’ Phyllis Mack is Professor of History and Women’s Studies at Rutgers University and the author of several books and many articles in the history of religious experience, including Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (University of California Press, 1992) and Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in Early Methodism (Cambridge University Press, 2008). Ann Marie Plane is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The author of Colonial Intimacies: Indian

Contributors

307

Marriage in Early New England (Cornell University Press, 2000), she is currently at work on Invisible Worlds: Dreams, Cosmology, and Colonialism in Seventeenth-Century New England. Plane’s research focuses on colonial New England history, especially relations between Native Americans and English colonists in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; she holds a Ph.D. from Brandeis University and a Psy.D. in psychoanalytic clinical theory from the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. Andrew Redden holds a Ph.D. from the University of Bristol and is the author of Diabolism in Colonial Peru, 1560–1750 (Pickering & Chatto, 2008). He is currently Lecturer in Latin American History at the University of Liverpool and is completing a project with Fernando Cervantes that investigates the presence of angels and demons in the early modern Hispanic world, with a particular focus on the viceroyalties of New Spain (modern Mexico), Peru (including modern Bolivia and Chile) and New Granada (modern Colombia and Venezuela). He has recently begun a new ‘‘networked’’ project on ‘‘global martyrdom.’’ Janine Rivie`re is a candidate for the doctorate in history from the University of Toronto in the final stages of completing her degree. Her dissertation explores early modern English theories, beliefs, and experiences of dreams, setting these in the context of early modern religious and intellectual culture. Rivie`re was a member of a two-year workshop on visions and visionaries funded by the National Endowment of the Humanities, which brought together an international group of scholars from a variety of disciplines working on dreams, visions, and related phenomena in a variety of contexts. Leslie Tuttle is Associate Professor of History at the University of Kansas, where she teaches European history and the history of women and gender. She is the author of Conceiving the Old Regime: Pronatalism and the Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern France (Oxford University Press, 2010). She is currently working on a study of dream discourses in French sources from the late sixteenth through eighteenth centuries tentatively titled Dreaming in the Age of Reason. Anthony F. C. Wallace is University Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, at the University of Pennsylvania and author of several distinguished books

308

Contributors

and many articles. Known for his pioneering work in medical anthropology, particularly the history of revitalization movements, Wallace lives on the border of the Tuscarora Reservation in western New York, where he began his fieldwork over sixty years ago. He has made major contributions to several distinct subfields in history and anthropology, but in Native American studies he is perhaps best known for his work Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (1970).

Index

Achmet, 37, 257n14 Addison, Joseph, 211 Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius, 35, 36 Al-Hacen, 34, 251n3 Amerindian dream culture: in conversion process, 168–169, 180–183; and European dream belief, 25–26, 29, 169–170, 177, 183; Jesuit missionaries and, 26–27, 167–171, 180–183, 191–192, 229, 235, 288nn11, 22; in Jesuit Relations, 41–42, 167–169, 171, 176– 184, 286n35; role of dreams in, 19–21, 27, 29, 40–41, 167–169, 171, 175–179 Amyraut, Moyse, 39, 45, 254n23 Anabaptists, 12–13 anamorphosis, 46, 256n39 ancient dream guides, 10–11, 15, 35, 37–39, 253nn14, 15, 255n26 Andrea, Alfred, 282n58 Andreoni, Joa˜o Antonio, 104 Andries, Lise, 172 angels, 35, 41, 55, 156, 159, 160, 174, 175, 231, 233 animal spirits, 53, 58, 60–61, 68, 135, 144, 218– 219, 254n23 anthropological approach to dream theory, 16–20, 21. See also ethnography and dream study Aristotle, 37, 61, 64, 68, 110, 279n42 Arriaga, Pablo Jose´ de, 277n21, 281n55 Arricivita, Juan Domingo, 134–136, 142–143 Artemidorus, 10–11, 15, 37–39, 253nn14, 15, 255n26 Augustine, Saint, 136, 275n3 Avila, Francisco de, 151, 276n15 Bacon, Francis, 68 Bandarra, Gonc¸alo Anes, 105–106, 108, 110, 113, 115–116, 119

Barnes, Robert Bruce, 77, 109, 110, 113 Barr, Juliana, 137 Barrough, Philip, 67, 69 Baxter, Andrew, 64–65 Benavides, Alonso de, 129–130, 136–137 Benedict, Ruth, 16 Ben Israel, 107–109 Beradt, Charlotte, 255n26 Berkeley, George, 33 Bernard, Richard, 57 Bernardino de Mendoza, 73, 76 the Bible; book of Daniel and, 9, 24, 105–107, 110, 112–115, 117, 119; dreams and visions in, 39, 105–108, 171, 175–176, 246n18, 278; and dreams as divine prophecy, 9–10; in Handsome Lake visions, 236; mistrust of dreams voiced in, 10, 11, 147. See also Vieira, Antonio Bilinkoff, Jodi, 289n32, 290n42 Blackmore, Richard, 63 Blake, William, 34 Blankaart, Steven, 63 Bla´zquez Miguel, Juan, 74 Bond, John, 50, 61, 65–68, 70 Braganc¸a dynasty, 105–106, 109–110, 113. See also Vieira, Antonio Branch, Thomas, 65 Bre´beuf, Jean de; canonized martyrdom of, 185–187, 192–196, 198, 200, 203, 287n2, 288n21, 289n29; and cultural exchange of dream theories, 169; death of, 185, 191–192, 287n2; and Huron dream culture, 167, 171, 176–178, 182–184, 191–192, 286n35; Paul Ragueneau and, 191–194, 198, 290n50; relics of, 193–194, 199–200, 203, 289n29. See also Catherine de Saint-Augustin Bright, Timothie, 59–60 Brinton, Daniel, 18

310

Index

Bristol, Joan Cameron, 279n36 Broadside from Hell, 95, 102–103 Brown, Michael, 46, 149, 150 Bruele, Walter, 59 Buchan, William, 69, 209 Burkhart, Louise, 162, 282n65 Burned-Over District of New York, 227–229, 236–237, 241, 243–244. See also Iroquois Seneca Burton, Robert, 57, 60 Caciola, Nancy, 36 Caddo Ghost Dance, 143–144 Caddo Hasinais, 26, 125–126, 130, 137–146 Calvinists and dream theory, 12, 28–29, 96, 210–216, 223–224, 294n57 Campbell, Mary Baine, 183 Canet, Francesc de, 88–89, 97–100 cannibal dreams, 43 Cardano, Girolamo, 11, 39, 253n14 Casan˜as de Jesu´s Marı´a, Francisco, 130–133, 138–141 Catherine de Saint-Augustin; and Bre´beuf’s relics, 193–194, 199–200, 203; Canada as spiritual destiny of, 189–191, 288nn12, 15, 17; Christological visions of, 28, 186, 193– 196, 199–202, 204, 290nn46, 48, 291nn56, 58; cult of, 187, 287n3; death of, 202–203, 291n61; demonic infiltration of, 187, 195– 202, 289nn33, 40, 290nn43, 44, 291n59; Jesuit Relations influence on, 188–190; martyrdom of, 186–187, 193, 200–201, 203–204, 290nn50, 53; Paul Ragueneau as spiritual guide and biographer of, 191–193, 197–198, 287nn1, 3, 289nn28, 32, 289n40, 290nn42, 43, 50; power of, 203, 291n65; religious training of, 187–188, 287n8; and visionary encounter with Bre´beuf, 27–28, 185–187, 191, 193–204, 289nn28, 32, 35, 290nn43, 48, 291n64 Catholic Reformation, 3, 4–5, 12, 13, 39, 169– 172, 175, 180, 183 Catholic theology and spirituality; conversion process and, 153–156, 164–165; dream interpretation and theory in, 39, 42, 148– 152, 155–158, 167–169, 180, 182, 275nn3, 8, 277n16, 280n49; femininity and suffering in, 200, 290n51; in Hispanic America dream culture, 147–152, 277n16; Jesuit missionaries and, 128, 142–143, 158, 164–165;

and martyrdom, 199–200, 287n2, 290n51; and miracles in canonization process, 30, 254n20; passive spirituality and, 175; seventeenth-century mysticism of, 186; symbolic imagery in, 157–158, 160–162, 281n57, 282n65; and visual perception, 36 Cerrada, Emmanuel, 262n19 Cervantes, Miguel de, 81, 93, 100, 266n20 Chabanal, Noel, 287n2, 288n21, 289n28 Chauchetie`re, Claude, 255n30 Choque Casa, Cristo´bal. See Cristo´bal Choque Casa, dream sequence of Christ; in Antonio Vieira vision, 108, 113, 115– 119; in Bartolome´ Martı´n vision, 158–159, 163; in biblical dream references, 9; in Catherine de Saint-Augustin visions, 28, 186, 193–197, 199–202, 204, 290nn46, 48, 291nn56, 58; in Francisco Casan˜as de Jesu´s Marı´a visions, 131–133, 139; in Francisco Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n dream narrative, 154, 156–158, 279n37; in Handsome Lake visions, 231, 232, 235–236; in Miracle of Ourique, 107–108, 116–117; Nun of Lisbon and, 83 Cicero, 156–157, 279–280n42 circulatory and nervous system in nightmares, 50–51, 62–63, 66 Ciruelo, Pedro, 147–148, 275n2 Clark, Stuart, 170, 252nn9, 11 Cohen, Thomas, 119–120 Cohn, Norman, 77 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, vii-ix, xi-xiv, 209 Collier, Jeremy, 61 Collingwood, R. G., 18, 249n49 colonial context, dream interpretation in, 2–6, 13–14, 20–22, 25–28 conversion process, dreams in, 26–27, 41–45, 139–140, 148–149, 153–156, 159–160, 163–165, 178–183, 280n49, 283n73, 285n27 Coohan, Thomas, 69 Corneille, Thomas, 39 Cornplanter, 227–229, 233, 237–238, 299n35. See also Handsome Lake Covarrubia, Sebastia´n de, 94 Cowper, William, 210, 213–216, 218, 224, 294n57 Cristo´bal Choque Casa, dream sequence of, 150–154, 162–165, 276n15, 277nn16, 21, 282n66 Cross, Whitney R., 228, 241, 291n5

Index Culpepper, Nicholas, 68 cultural constructs in dream interpretation, 2–9, 19, 148–149, 165, 246n15 Curti, Merle, 18, 20, 249n53 Dacome, Lucia, 65, 69 Daniel, book of, 9, 24, 105–107, 110, 112–115, 117, 119 Dante, 93, 282n62 Daston, Lorraine, 98, 251n3, 253–254n19 Davies, Owen, 49, 51–53 Davis, Natalie Zemon, 98 de Ble´court, Willem, 49, 52 Debrun, Benoni, 254–255n26 Defoe, Daniel, 211 demonization of native peoples, 201, 290n54 demonology, 11–12, 23, 49, 51–52, 54–57, 64– 65, 67, 70–71, 181–183. See also Catherine de Saint-Augustin; witchcraft Descartes, Rene´, 1–2, 11, 34–36, 39, 169, 245n2, 251nn4, 8 Deslandres, Dominique, 284–285n27 Devereux, George, 16 divine intervention and political rebellion, 96–97 Dodds, E. R., 17–18, 249n49 Dom Antonio, 75, 76, 78–79, 81–86 Dom Sebastia˜o, 77, 78, 106, 263nn23, 25 Dorcey, George, 144 Drake, Francis. See Drake-Norris expedition Drake-Norris expedition, 72, 75–76, 79–82, 262nn10, 15 dream divination, 14, 27, 115, 147–149, 170, 171, 275n2 dream manuals and texts, 7, 20, 26–27, 37–39, 89, 108, 172, 253n14 dream reports, 6–8, 14, 20–21, 23–27, 115–116, 182, 249n51 dream research, modern, 6–8, 245n5, 246nn13, 14 dreams as subversive force, 46, 150, 158, 165 dream sharing, 7–8, 11–13, 168, 171, 181, 182, 246nn13 dream societies, 38–39, 254n20 dream theories in early modern Atlantic context, 9–15 du Bellay, Joachim, 35 Dumora, Florence, 46, 252n10 Eggan, Dorothy, 16–17 Elliott, John, 80

311

Encobertismo, 106, 110 Enlightenment age, 8, 14–15, 21, 22, 28–30, 34, 47, 207–225 Espinosa, Isidro Felix de, 133, 140–141 Espı´rito Santo, Arnaldo do, 120, 272n45 ethnography and dream study, 16–19, 22, 29, 143, 176–177, 246n13 Eudes, Jean, 186 evangelical movements and dreams and visions, 20–22, 29, 244 fantasy and reality in dreams, intersection of, 25, 58, 93–94, 99, 102–103, 147, 274–275n1 Ferrand, James, 56 Fifth Empire, 23, 104–110, 112–121. See also Vieira, Antonio Fontcuberta, Miguel, 138–139 Fothergill, Samuel, 220–221, 294n48 France, seventeenth-century dream theory of, 169–176 Franciscan missionaries, 125–126, 128–143, 145–146. See also Caddo Hasinais; Margil de Jesu´s, Antonio Francis Xavier, Saint, 110–112, 120 Frazer, James, 18 Fre´min, James, 229 Freud, Sigmund, 15–18, 21, 33, 37, 46, 47, 223, 248nn38, 39, 249n49, 255n26 Friends, Society of. See Quakers Fuseli, Henry, 209 Galenic medicine, 58, 60–64 Galileo, 252n11 Garcı´a-Arenal, Mercedes, 263n25 Gardiner, Edmund, 54, 60–61 Garnier, Charles, 287n2, 289n29 Gay, Peter, 249n49 Gender: in Catholic theology, 200, 290n46; in Handsome Lake’s visions, 233–234, 241– 242, 296n21; martyrdom and, 27–28, 200, 203, 204; nightmares and, 63; and visionaries, 126–127, 199, 204, 290n46, 291n65; and witchcraft, 233 Gerona, Carla, 20, 26, 236–237 Ginzburg, Carlo, 19–20, 284n12 Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe, 150, 153, 276n11 ‘‘hag-riding’’ tradition, 50–56. See also witchcraft

312

Index

Hall, David D., 20, 250n61 Hallowell, A. Irving, 16 hallucination, 35, 57, 66, 68, 253n17 Handsome Lake: brutalization of women in visions of, 233, 234; Code of, 227, 233–235, 242–244, 299n39; communion with the dead by, 231–232, 296n15; Cornplanter and, 227–229, 233, 237–238, 299n35; divine authority in visions of, 238–241; gender and patriarchy and, 233–234, 241–242, 296n21; moral reforms from revelations of, 227, 231–236, 238–241, 298n33, 299–300n34; and postcolonialism, 29, 227; and Quaker missionaries, 226–227, 230, 232–233, 235– 238, 240, 298–299nn33, 34; in Second Great Awakening, 29, 227–228, 241–244; as Seneca prophet, 228–231, 243–244, 295n5; views on, 235–238, 297n29; visions of, 29, 227–236, 297nn26, 29, 299n37 Hapsburg dynasty, 75, 78, 82–85, 106, 108 Hartmann, Ernest, 6 Harvey, William, 50 Hasinais. See Caddo Hasinais Haydock, Richard, 58 hechicera, 162–163, 282n66, 283n70 Heywood, Thomas, 55, 56 Hippocrates, 64 Hispanic America, dream-visions in early modern; case studies on, 148–164, 280n49; and dream divination, 147–148, 158, 275n2; and inquisitional prosecution, 150–151, 275n8, 277n16; reality v. imagination in, 147, 274–275n1; religious authority and, 147–152, 277n16; religious conversion process and, 148–149, 153–156, 159–160, 164–165; symbolism and, 156–162, 165, 280nn43, 44, 281nn51, 54, 55, 57, 282nn62, 65; and the Tercero Catechismo, 147, 148, 150. See also Cristo´bal Choque Casa, dream sequence of; Martı´n, Bartolome´, dream-vision of; Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Francisco, dream narrative of historiography of dreams 6–9, 15–24, 249n51 Hobbes, Thomas, 67 Huarochirı´ Manuscript, 150–152, 276n15 humoral imbalance in nightmares, 23, 50, 51, 58–63, 68–70 Huron peoples; Bre´beuf and, 167, 171, 176– 178, 182–183, 191–192, 286n35; dream culture of, 41–42, 171, 255n31; Iroquois

tensions with, 191, 292nn11, 23; Jesuit missionaries and, 191–192, 288nn11, 22; in Jesuit Relations, 168, 176–183. See also Wendat (Huron) peoples hypnagogia state, 49 hypnopompic state, 49 ‘‘Hypochondria,’’ 50–51, 63, 64, 70 ‘‘Hysteria,’’ 50–51, 63, 70 idolatry, 118, 151, 163–164, 171, 281n55 illuminist spirituality, 12–13, 171, 175, 275n8 the ‘‘incubus.’’ See nightmares, premodern notion of indigestion and dreams, 50–51, 57–61, 64, 69– 70, 205, 209, 224–225 inquisitorial persecution of dream-visions, 13, 24, 74–75, 109, 115–116, 120, 127, 150–151, 175, 275n8, 277n16 ‘‘interiorization’’ of dreams, 5, 8–9, 14, 28–30, 180, 209, 246n15–17, 248n42 Iroquois Seneca, 295n3; Christianity and, 234–235; deities and the supernatural and, 235–236, 297n24; dream practice of, 17, 41, 227–231, 236; gender and, 234, 242, 243; morality and religiosity among, 238–241; Quaker missionaries among, 226–227, 230, 232–233, 235–238, 240, 298nn33, 34; and Seneca revival, 229, 295n5; and witchcraft, 230–233, 241. See also Handsome Lake Isabel (Infanta), 83, 264n42 Jackson, Halliday, 226–227, 230, 239–240 Jama, Sophie, 38–39 James I, King, 56–57 Jesuit missionaries; and Amerindian dream practice, 26–27, 167–169, 171, 191–192, 229, 235, 288nn11, 22; and Catholicism and dreams, 168–169, 179, 180, 182; conversion process and, 26–27, 41–45, 47, 148–149, 153–154, 158, 163–165, 168–169, 174, 178–183, 280n49, 283n73, 285n27; and dream culture of seventeenth-century France, 25–26, 29, 169–176; and general confession, 163, 282n68; and Le Ballet des songes, 166–169, 171–172, 178, 282nn1, 2; opposition to, 188– 189; recruited from French Catholic elites, 172–173; ‘‘spiritual exercises’’ of, 173–175, 285n20; women among, 289n31. See also Jesuit Relations

Index Jesuit Relations; Amerindian dream culture in, 41–42, 167–169, 171, 176–184, 286n35; Catherine de Saint-Augustin and, 188–190; changing rhetoric of, 188–190; ‘‘dreams are only dreams’’ philosophy in, 177–180, 183; European readership of, 27, 172–173, 176, 188 Joa˜o (prince), 112, 113 Joa˜o IV, King, 106, 108–110 Jogues, Isaac, 189–190, 287n2, 289n28 Jones, Ernest, 16 jongleurs, 44, 45, 47–48 Joseph, Saint, 9, 110, 159, 290n46 Josselin, Ralph, 20 Journey to Hell of Pere Porter, 23, 88–103, 264n1, 265nn2, 4, 8, 268n55 Jumanos, 129–130, 137–138, 141–142 Juster, Susan, 20–21, 234 Kagan, Richard, 74, 127, 261n7 Kepler, Johannes, 33–34, 47 Kirkland, Samuel, 236, 238 Kramer, Heinrich, 56 La Corun˜a, invasion of. See Drake-Norris expedition; Lucrecia de Leo´n Lalemant, Gabriel, 287n2, 289n29 Lalemant, Je´roˆme, 181–182 Lalemant, Louis, 186 Laqueur, Thomas, 67 Lavater, Pierre, 39 Leadbeater, Mary Shackleton, 222 Le Ballet des songes, 166–169, 171–172, 178, 283nn1, 2 Lee, Ann, 237 Le Goff, Jacques, 7, 19 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 34 Le Jeune, Paul, 40, 42–45, 169, 176–181, 254n24, 255n31. See also Jesuit Relations Le Loyer, Pierre, 57 Le Mercier, Franc¸ois, 167–168, 176, 181, 182 Lincoln, J. S., 16, 18 Llina´s de Jesus Marı´a, Antonio, 130–131, 136–137 Locke, John, 15, 34, 38–39, 42, 47, 64, 69, 255n26 Lowes, Livingston, viii-ix Loyola, Ignatius, 153–154, 159, 173–176, 181, 275n8, 282n58, 285n27

313

Lucrecia de Leo´n, dreams of; and 1589 invasion of Portugal, 72–85, 263n28; Infanta Isabel and, 83, 264n42; inquisitorial prosecution of, 13, 23, 126–127; Nun of Lisbon and, 83–86, 264n49; Philip II in, 13, 23, 74– 77, 80–87, 96, 126–127, 264n51; political visions in, 23, 25; transcriptions of, 74, 261n1, 264n49 Luis de Granada, 78, 83 Luis de Leo´n, 275n8 Macrobius, 10–11, 35, 255n26 Mageo, Jeannette Marie, 16 Mannheim, Bruce, 150, 153, 256n37 Manning, Susan L., 211–212 the ‘‘mare.’’ See nightmares, premodern notion of Margaret Mary Alacoque, 204, 291n58 Margil de Jesu´s, Antonio, 134–136, 139, 141– 143, 145–146 Marı´a de A´greda, 26, 129–131, 134, 136–138, 141–142 Marie de l’Incarnation, 255n30, 288n21, 289nn33, 40, 291nn56, 65 Marı´a da Visitac¸a˜o (Nun of Lisbon), 83–86, 264n49 Martı´n, Bartolome´, dream-vision of, 158–165, 281nn50, 51, 54 martyrdom; of Catherine de Saint-Augustin, 186–187, 192–193, 197, 200–201, 203–204, 290nn50, 53; in Catholic theology, 199– 200, 287n2, 290n51; and gender, 27–28, 200, 203, 204; Isaac Jogues and, 189–190; of Jean de Bre´beuf, 185–187, 192–196, 198–200, 203, 287n2, 288n21, 289n29; Jesuit language of, 192–193; violent deaths perceived as, 287n2 Massanet, Damia´n, 136–138 mechanical model of ‘‘vision,’’ 22, 33–36, 47. See also visual perception, understandings of medical theories, dreams and; circulatory and nervous system in, 50–51, 62–63, 66; dangers of excess in, 66–70; humoral imbalance in, 23, 50, 51, 58–63, 68–70; ‘‘Hypochondria’’ in, 50–51, 63, 64, 70; ‘‘Hysteria’’ in, 50–51, 63, 70; indigestion in, 50–51, 57–61, 64, 69–70, 205, 209, 224–225; melancholia in, 39, 40, 58–60, 166, 214,

314

Index

medical theories (continued ) 294n57; and nightmares, 22–23, 49–55, 57– 66, 68–71, 205, 224–225 melancholia, 39, 40, 58–60, 166, 214, 294n57 mentalite´ approach to dreams, 19–21 Mercure Galant, 168 Methodism and dream theory, 15, 28–29, 210, 216–220, 223, 224, 237, 293n36 Milhou, Alain, 78 Miller, William, 232 Miracle of Ourique, 107–108, 112, 116–119 miracles; canonization process and, 39, 258n20; dreams and visions perceived as, 89, 90, 96–98, 101–102, 131–133; in HispanoCatholic worldview, 156, 280n43; in Jesuit Relations, 188; and Miracle of Ourique, 107–108, 112, 116–119; religious authority and, 142–143 modernization of dream interpretation, 8–9, 221–223, 225, 294n60 Montagnais peoples, 41–44, 168, 176–180, 183, 255nn30, 31 Montaigne, Michel de, 11 Mooney, James, 143–144 Moore, Marianne, 256n34 Morgan, Lewis Henry, 18 Muhana, Adma, 114 Napier, Richard, 53–54 Nashe, Thomas, 35, 36 Native American dream traditions, 13–15, 18, 25–26, 128, 227. See also Amerindian dream culture; Handsome Lake; shamanic practice, Native American natural theory of dreams, 57, 60, 64–65, 69 Nebuchadnezzar, King, 9, 24, 105–107, 110– 114, 116, 117 news stories, dreams as, 98–100 New Testament, 9 Newton, John, 210–216, 224 Nicot, Jean, 34–35 The Nightmare (Fuseli), 209 nightmares, premodern notions of; dangers of excess and, 66–70; demonology in, 23, 49, 51–57, 64–65, 67, 70–71, 181–183; dreams v. reality in, 50, 51, 54, 55, 57–59, 70–71; gender and, 63; ‘‘hag-riding’’ tradition in, 50–56; medical theories in, 22–23, 49–55, 57–66, 68–71, 205, 224–225; melancholy in,

58–60; the ‘‘other’’ in, 52, 70; sex and sexuality in, 51–52, 54–57, 70–71; supernatural theories and witchcraft in, 23, 49–59, 65, 66, 70 Nu´n˜ez de Pineda y Bascun˜a´n, Francisco, dream narrative of, 147, 154–158, 162, 277nn30, 31, 278n32–34, 279nn35–37, 40, 280nn42, 44, 46; Nun of Lisbon, 83–86, 264n49 Oneidas, 236, 238, 295n3 Onondaga Iroquois, 167–168, 295n3 Oury, Guy-Marie, 287n4, 289nn33, 35 Ovalle, Alonso de, 280n43 Owen, Alex, 23 Paiva, Jose´ Pedro, 263n23 Parker, Arthur C., 297n24, 298n33 Parsons, Elsie Clews, 144–145 passivity in eighteenth-century religious dream theory, 210, 212–214, 216–217, 219 Philip II, King; and Dom Antonio’s separatist plan, 75, 76, 78–79, 81–86, 263n22; in Lucrecia de Leo´n dreams, 13, 23, 74–78, 80–87, 96, 126–127, 264n51; Nun of Lisbon and, 83–86; and Portuguese invasion of 1589, 79–85; prophetic critics of, 76–78, 87; Sebastianists and, 263n23; and sixteenthcentury political culture, 73, 80–81, 85–86, 95, 106 Philip III, King, 94–95, 106, 108 Philip IV, King, 106, 108, 129 physiology and dreams. See medical theories, dreams and Piedrola, Miguel de, 85, 96 Po-Chia, Hsia, 149, 282nn58, 61 poetry, dreams in, 35, 252n10 political subversion in dreams and visions, 46, 96–97, 256n40 Pons i Guri, Josep Maria, 89, 265nn2, 8, 268n55 Porter, Pere. See Journey to Hell of Pere Porter Portugal, 1589 invasion of, 72–85, 263n28. See also Lucretia de Leo´n, dreams of Priestley, Joseph, xi-xiv ‘‘primitive’’ peoples, dream culture among New World, 19–21, 27, 29, 40–41, 45, 175, 183 prodigious histories, 24, 90, 98 Protestant Reformation, 12, 132

Index psychoanalytic approach to dream interpretation, 16, 17, 21, 33. See also Freud, Sigmund psychology and dreams, 210, 254n26 ‘‘public’’ dreams, 43, 255n26 Pujades, Jeroni, 101–102, 268n55 Quakers; dream culture of, 13, 20, 28–29, 210, 216–223; and dreams and modernity, 236– 237; God in nightmares of, 218–219; and Handsome Lake’s prophecies, 238–239; human agency and passivity among, 216, 217, 219–220, 223; internalization of religious experience among, 223–224; as Seneca missionaries, 226–227, 230, 232–233, 235–238, 240, 298nn33, 34; and temperance, 298nn33, 34 Quevedo, Francisco de, 93, 95, 102–103 Radcliffe, John, 63 Ragueneau, Paul; Bre´beuf and, 191–194, 198, 290n50; as Catherine de Saint-Augustin biographer and spiritual guide, 191–193, 197–198, 287nn1, 3, 289nn28, 32, 289n40, 290nn42, 43, 50; as Jesuit leader, 41–42, 45, 191–194, 289n27; and martyrdom in New France, 192–193. See also Catherine de Saint-Augustin Reeves, Marjorie, 77 Reformation era, dreams and, 3–5, 170–172 Renaudot, The´ophraste, 40, 254n20 Restoration of 1640, 106, 108 The Return of Martin Guerre, 98 Ricci, Matteo, 282n58 Rivers, W. H. R., 18 Ro´heim, Ge´za, 16, 248n42 Rutty, John, 207–209, 221–222 Salem witchcraft trials, 36–37. See also witchcraft Salomon, Frank, 150–152, 276n15, 277n21 Santiago, Saint, 92, 93, 97, 127–129, 139, 281n51 Scarry, Elaine, 200 Schaub, Jean-Fre´de´ric, 263n23 Schmitt, Jean-Claude, 19 Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe, 18 Scot, Reginald, 55 Scribonius, Wilhelm, 59 Sebastianism, 106, 113, 263n23 Second Great Awakening; as diverse movement, 228, 295n5; Handsome Lake and, 29,

315

227–228, 241–244; New York’s BurnedOver District during, 227–229, 236, 237, 241, 243–244; Senecas and, 29, 243–244, 295n5 Senecas. See Iroquois Seneca Serrano de Vargas y Uren˜a, Juan, 99 Serra˜o, Joaquim Verı´ssimo, 81 sex and sexuality; and dangers of excess, 67; in premodern notions of nightmares, 51– 52, 54–57, 70–71; witchcraft and, 55 shamanic practice, Native American, 2, 4, 14, 43–45, 177–178, 180–181, 255n30 Silverman, Kaja, 251n2 Simmons, Henry, 226–229, 237–238, 240, 241, 297n29, 298n34 Simmons, Marc, 128 skepticism, dreams and, 11, 34–36, 45, 101– 102, 142–143, 171, 252nn4, 8, 9, 11 sleeping vision, 5, 34–35. See also visual perception, understandings of ‘‘sleep paralysis,’’ 49. See also nightmares, premodern notion of Smellie, William, 212, 222, 224–225 Smith, Joseph, 237 Sobel, Mechal, 20–21, 294n60 Society of Jesus, 104, 119, 192, 275n8, 282n58. See also Jesuit missionaries sociopolitical dreams and visions. See Journey to Hell of Pere Porter; Lucrecia de Leo´n, dreams of; Vieira, Antonio Spanish conquistadors, dreams and visions of, 127–128 Spanish theology, dreams and visions in, 132–134 Spearing, A. C., 246n17 Spectator, 52–53, 210–211 Sprenger, Jacob, 56 Suares, Jose´, 104 supernatural theories in premodern notion of nightmares, 23, 49–58, 65, 66, 70 superstition and dreams, 27, 65, 67, 147, 151, 170–172, 178, 222, 284n12 Swayne, Joel, 226, 227, 240 Swedenborg, Emmanuel, 209, 296n15 ‘‘symptomatic’’ v. ‘‘visitation’’ dreams, 230 Taves, Ann, 20–21 Tedlock, Barbara, 7, 246n14 Tekakwitha, Catherine, 255n30 Tercero Catechismo, 147, 148, 150

316

Index

Teresa de A´vila, 127, 275n8 Thiers, Jean-Baptiste, 170, 171 Thomas, Keith, 19, 77, 96 Thwaites, Reuben Gold, 283n3, 291n61 Tooker, Elisabeth, 238–239 Trovas of Bandarra, 105–106, 113, 115–116 Tryon, Thomas, 54, 68 underworld travel in dreams, 92–93, 95. See also Journey to Hell of Pere Porter van Diemerbroeck, Isbrand, 68 Vico, Giambattista, 33 Vieira, Antonio, 276n45; Clavis Prophetarum, 112, 118, 120; and the dream report in early modern Europe, 24–25; Fifth Empire vision of, 23, 104–110, 112–121; History of the Future, 112–117; inquisition of, 24, 115–116; Livro anteprimeiro da Historia do Futuro, 105, 112, 113, 115–118; ‘‘Representations,’’ 114–119; sermons of, 24, 109, 112–113, 270nn15, 22, 271n23 Virgin Mary, 20, 127, 128, 129, 133, 152, 156, 157, 195, 281n51, 290n51 visual perception, understandings of, 22, 33– 48, 251nn2, 3, 252n11, 253n17–19, 254n26, 259nn39, 42 Vulson de la Colombie`re, Marc, 172

Walkington, Thomas, 56, 61, 67 Wallace, Anthony F. C., 16, 17, 29, 168, 229– 231, 239 Walsham, Alexandra, 23 Wendat (Huron) peoples, 191–193, 292nn11, 22, 23, 288n26 Wesley, John, 15, 208, 217, 233 Weyer, Johan, 45, 256n3 White, Richard, 137–138 Whytt, Robert, 64 Wilkinson, Jemima, 232, 234, 237, 241–242, 299n37 Will de Chaparro, Martina, 281n54 Willis, Thomas, 54, 61 witchcraft; the church and, 47–48; in dream historiography, 20; in eighteenth-century dream theory, 218–219; and Franciscan missionaries, 133–134, 140, 141, 145–146; and gender, 233; ‘‘hag-riding’’ tradition and, 50–56; and premodern notions of nightmares, 23, 49–59, 66, 70; and prosecution of suspected witches, 11–12, 36–37; in Seneca dream culture, 230, 231, 232, 233, 241. See also demonology Wood, Gordon S., 226 Woodman, Philip, 62 Woolman, John, 220–221

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank the staff at the University of Pennsylvania Press for their many contributions to the completion of this volume, and we offer a special thanks to our unfailingly supportive editor, Peter Agree. We also extend our thanks to the two anonymous readers of the collection and to University of Pennsylvania Press editorial board member Michael Zuckerman for their comments, critiques, and reactions to the volume. Their responses allowed us a chance to refine our thinking about dreams and visions, the early modern period, and the Atlantic world, in ways that we trust have benefited the volume as a whole. We extend heartfelt appreciation to the volume’s contributors, whose patience and dedication has sustained this project over more years than we imagined at the outset. A special acknowledgment goes to Francis Dutra, whose help with the translation of one essay stands as a model of the scholarly collaboration and generosity that made this volume possible. Frank’s contribution to this project reminds us how much our achievements as scholars depend upon the generous support of our colleagues. Finally, we thank our families, for their love and understanding.