Castañega and Ciruelo: written culture at the threshold of the anti-superstitious discourse in sixteenth-century Spain

Abstract

In the midst of the moral and religious crises, political instabilities and experiential uncertainties of the beginning of the Early Modern Period, the anti-superstitious discourse was manifested in Spain linked to demonology, resulting in the "satanization" of opponents of the instituted power. At the dawn of the 16th century, they gave rise to the "anti-superstitious treatises", a literary genre which transited between what was desirable to be disclosed and what was not, because it disseminated, paradoxically, what it fought: the "superstitions", magical practices through which the Devil would control over the faithful.This project seeks to investigate and analyze the materiality of two works belonging to the aforementioned genre: the Tratado de las supersticiones y hechicerías (1529), by Martín de Castañega, and the Reprobación de las supersticiones y hechicerías (1538), by Pedro Sánchez Ciruelo, aiming to describe their production process and circulation. In addition, it seeks to understand how the "authors", whose distinct trajectories aim at the founding relationships of an authentic and new genre which, nevertheless, brings together literary structures of erstwhile, in terms of both form and content. Among the possible paths to be followed, it aims to study the trajectory of these works, as well as their raw materials', and how they are articulated to their production context, even being able to "translate" it in its many dimensions. In this way, it can be said that our main objective is to demonstrate which dimensions are these and what they reveal about the constitution and the modifications suffered by its surviving copies in the present. Finally, we hope that, in the light of the History of Written Culture, this issue can be better addressed.