Religion

Abstract

Chapter 2, ‘Religion’, provides an account of mystical ecstasy in the period under investigation, pointing to its ambiguous status and the ways it embodied a modern and disquieting form of religious experience. It shows how the disorderly traits associated with ecstatic phenomena led the Catholic establishment to adopt an ambivalent attitude towards them. It highlights that such an ambivalence was particularly evident in Italy, where the transition to the liberal State and the dismantling of the Church’s political authority, urged it to reshape or forge afresh a strong religious collective identity in opposition to the new secularizing identity brought about by unification. The chapter analyses excerpts of writings by Italian clerical authorities such as Giuseppe Maria Berardinelli, Andrea Gigli, and Francesco Salis Seewis, to reveal the Catholic Church’s attempts to maintain control over ecstatic states and their interpretation by distinguishing between a divine, Church-approved ecstasy and disorderly manifestations of the phenomenon, which required occult and medical interpretations. Finally, the chapter presents the cases of Gemma Galgani, Palma Mattarelli, and Davide Lazzaretti as emblematic cases of ecstatic dis-order, drawing attention to the Church’s ambivalent attitude towards mysticism and ecstatic phenomena, as well as to the troubling and uncontrollable nature of the latter.