Nauseating Things: Disgust, Morality, and Salvation in the Early Modern Hispanic World

This paper argues that the sensation of disgust was utilized by the early modern Catholic church as a tool both for achieving salvation and for galvanizing adherence to social and ecclesiastical norms. In the first part of the paper, I discuss representations of sacrificial violence in the early modern period. Catholic pictures of the sacrificed bodies of martyrs, presented on platters as if ready to be consumed, could provoke in their audience an initial reaction of revulsion. It was up to the viewer to forcibly adjust this reaction to one of veneration, imitating in this the behavior of saints like Catherine of Siena who experienced—and managed to overcome—her disgust at a patient’s wounds. Early modern audiences were expected to perform an analogous act of suppressing instinct in favor of salvation.

This session builds on new research and scholarship conducted as a Marilynn Thoma Fellow, and I consider new research on inquisitorial cases and public trials in which moral disgust at unorthodox actions—in particular the profanation of images—was invoked with didactic purposes. The experiencing and performing of such disgust was a fundamental part of the theatrics of the public inquisitorial trial.