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ABSTRACT
This essay is concerned with the way theologians account for the moral significance of extraordinary and exceptional moments in the history of Christian faith and practice. A particular interest is how contemporary models and presumptions about the exceptionality of impairment and illness (i.e., disability, broadly construed) can distort the understanding of the theological and practical responses to impairment and illness that are found in Christian history. That methodological question is explored through the story of Fr. Juan Gilabert-Jofre, O. de. M., and the history of the first psychiatric hospital founded in Europe, at the beginning of the 15th century—Hospital D'Innocents, Folls e Orats. When it comes to extraordinary and exceptional events in Christian history, it is a mistake to presume that the principle actors were “extraordinary” and “exceptional” persons. The problem is most acute when we transpose the memory of exemplary Christian responses to impairment, illness, and injury into lofty stories of virtually unattainable moral heroics. Through a reading of Jofre's moral formation as a Mercedarian priest, theologians are reminded that the moral witness of Christian exemplars always begins in the crucible of ordinary faith, shaped and oriented through mundane and unexceptional formation into the seemingly insignificant rhythms of moral goodness.
Notes
1. The legacy of Jofre and the history of the hospital have been the subject of much debate since the mid-20th century. My account of Jofre, the hospital, and the relevant historiographical issues has benefitted most directly from Griñán (Citation1996), Huertas (Citation2001), Roig (Citation1996), and Blanco (Citation1998a).
2. For an extended theological discussion of impairment, illness, and injury in relation to Christian theological anthropology see Romero (Citation2017).
3. This quasi-moralistic mode of theological reflection on historical texts and events can be described in different terms. Namely, the aim is to enter into studious conversation with Christians from the past about what it means to live a holy and virtuous life. This formulation coheres with what Alasdair MacIntyre describes as tradition disciplined and tradition generating moral inquiry (MacIntyre, 1988, Citation1990). Among other things, such an enterprise requires that we take the theological and practical commitments of our historical interlocutors seriously—which may involve argument, of course. But whatever agreements or disagreements persist, if the aim is conversation oriented towards our own growth in understanding, it is intellectually dishonest to treat those individuals' most cherished beliefs and traditions as the incidental prelude to the exceptional events that form the story of our self-narrated history (Aers, Citation2004).
4. To paraphrase the historian Donald Creighton (Citation1972), history is the record of an encounter between character and circumstance. So conceived, we cannot learn the lessons of what is historically exceptional if we ignore the everyday practices and beliefs that formed the character of historical figures—for it is only by way of a particular moral formation that a person meets his or her circumstances with ordinary goodness (or banal malevolence), thereby enacting the exceptional events of the story called history.
5. This understanding of the “universal call to holiness” is one of the key teachings of the Vatican II document Lumen gentium, promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1964 (§§ 39–42): namely, it is the view that all Christians are called to be saints. On these terms, holiness is understood as the most basic gift of the Holy Spirit, capacitating and sustaining the lifelong growth of ordinary women and men in the love of Jesus Christ (caritas). Although freedom from sin is part of this growth, the principle claim is that Christian holiness is not an elite status of superhuman moral purity, but a journey that unfolds in the everyday and mundane aspects of ordinary life.
6. “Persecución irracional y tanto más cruel cuanto más inocentes, impotentes e irresponsables son las víctimas.”
7. At that time, the Roman Catholic Church was suffering the severe internal turmoil and curial divisions of the so-called Western Schism (1378–1417). The Kingdom of Aragon, were Valencia was located, had aligned itself with the Avignon line of antipopes. Thus, when the time came for Jofre and his cohorts to secure the necessary ecclesiastical approval, the unusual circumstances required that they seek out authorization from the infamous Pedro Martínez de Luna (antipope Benedict XIII). De Luna is best known for the anti-Semitic declaration Etsi doctoribus gentium (1415) and for his resolute refusal to work towards the reunification of the Roman Church. On the life of de Luna, see Puig (Citation1920) and Glasfurd, (Citation1965). De Luna issued the order authorizing the establishment of the hospital (February 26, 1410), commending the institution to the intercessory patronage of Los Santos Inocentes (Esteban, Citation2009).
8. Op. cit., “Llibre del Spital dels Innocents de la Ciutat de Valencia,” Archivo de la Diputación de Valencia.
9. I have in mind here the “ship of fools” from Foucault's Madness and Civilization. In positing the analogy between the “medieval leper” and the “enlightenment madman,” Foucault invented a history to support his theory. Specifically, the idea that there was once a practice of filling boats with insane people and other social outcasts—the ship of fools—which were subsequently set adrift in the sea. It is a point of historical fact that no such practice ever took place as Foucault describes it (Maher, Citation1982). In a more recent essay, Elizabeth Bredberg (Citation1999) argued that after Foucault, most theorizers of disability perpetuated Foucault's historical misconceptions; Bredberg lamented that these contemporary scholars have emulated Foucault's grand-narrative style of accounting for disability in history—all to the neglect of particular, local histories that undermine Foucault's historical thesis.
10. That is to say, the martyr status of these murdered children was affirmed and defended even though the children could not possibly have understood why they were suffering, nor could they possibly have chosen to suffer or to be killed.
11. “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great.”
12. How, exactly, a living human being with a profound cognitive impairment or a debilitating mental illness actively knows and loves God is the obvious next question. Unfortunately, that question is beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice it to say, however, there are a number of implications that follow from Christianity's central anthropological claims about human nature, our creaturely dignity, and how our grace-mediated-destiny relates to the constitutive limitations and postlapsarian wounds of the human being. Thomas Aquinas's way of thinking is particularly helpful in that regard.
13. For the founding and late medieval character of the Mercedarians, see Gazulla (Citation1985), Blanco (Citation1998b), and Taylor (Citation2000).
14. For an extended discussion of moral formation and the virtue mercy, understood by way of St Thomas Aquinas and Pope Saint John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis Splendor, see Romero (Citation2013).
15. Blanco (Citation1998a) wrote, “Pero Fray Juan Gilabert, miembro destacado y santo de una Orden Religiosa mariana por excelencia desde su fundación, cual era la Orden de Santa María de la Merced de los cautivos, no podía dejar a los más desvalidos y desamparados de los seres humanos, marginados por la locura, a sus “innocents,” sin el amparo de la Madre de Dios y de los hombres: la Virgen María.”
16. Although a normative theological question could be raised about the merit attained through suffering that is not deliberately chosen, that was not a question that concerned Fr. Jofre. Nevertheless, the association of hospital of Valencia with the moral heritage of the Holy Innocent Martyrs does shine a light on modern pretensions about who does and does not get be counted as a follower of Jesus; and it certainly exposes the shameful and condescending prejudice that so many of us hold about what counts as holiness and virtue: there are mountains on the ocean floor, hidden beneath the waves, that only God can see.