L’anatomie de la prière. Primauté et ambivalence du cœur dans l’expérience spirituelle selon le discours médical (Espagne, milieu xvie-milieu xviie siècle)

Abstract

The article demonstrates that Spanish spiritual literature from the mid sixteenth to mid seventeenth century relied on the diffusion of medical and philosophical knowledge in order to develop its vision of the effects of prayer. The author uses as source material a re-reading of the most widely circulated spiritual treatises and accounts of ecstasy by Discalced Carmelites, both in manuscripts and printed books. This material shows that grace flows through physical pathways in the body and reveals a physiology of prayer, centered on the heart, which clarifies devotional practices and the conception of the body by members of contemporary religious orders, highly polarized by the opposition of the flesh and spirit, but distanced from any dualism.