Patients and Passions. Catholic Views on Pain 19th c.

The still rather young history of pain is more and more critical about the finalist historiography postulating an increasing secularization and medicalisation of pain in the modern era. In the nineteenth century, so the narrative goes, pain lost its status as a gift of God, turned into something that needed to be avoided and became more and more controlled thanks to medical progress as e.g. the invention of anaesthetics. Against such a backdrop numerous religious practices of nineteenth- century Catholicism appear like anachronistic remnants of medieval, pain-idealising traditions and cults like Christs Passion, at odds with secular and medical perspectives. However, the starting point of our project is that this narrative of contrast does not adequately capture the history of Catholic views on pain. Whilst there was a relatively small elite group that did indeed cultivate this idealization of passion, other Catholic initiatives, like charity organisations, hospitals and religious orders focusing on health care, engaged in activities that aimed to relieve the suffering of others. In our project we will address settings and cases where both the positive and the negative view on pain existed at the same time. We will study this coexistence and interaction by focusing on different groups of people in what the contemporaries called holy Tyrol: we will focus on stigmatics, the personification of the revitalisation of Catholicism and discussed as exceptional medical cases, and on the patients of local physicians, of the mental hospital in Hall that opened in 1830 and on those of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, a female religious order active in health care. We will examine what Catholics saw as emotional and/or physical pain, how they interpreted pain and whether or not these interpretations were influenced by new medical findings, and how they responded to pain with practices of pain relief, meditation (on the passion) or even the cultivation of pain. In this way the sharp differentiation between religious and medical views in the nineteenth century can be reviewed and the history of Catholic pain will regain some of its complexity. Finally, by historicising pain and the reactions to (other peoples) suffering we can address questions about compassion and sympathy, present-day questions about whose suffering we are able to see and with whom we can sympathize.

In the still rather young historiography of pain it has been hard to avoid the grand narrative of the "secularisation" of pain in the modern era, in which nineteenth-century Catholics are primarily presented as the heirs of medieval pain-loving traditions who became increasingly at odds with secular, medical views on the diagnosis and treatment of pain. However, pain was not only perceived as a gift from God. A more complex view is needed since only a small elite of Catholics cultivated pain and numerous Catholic initiatives aimed at diminishing pain (Catholic hospitals, charity organisations). Therefore, this project has studied cases and locations where the Catholic idealisation of and attempts to diminish pain circulated at the same time and its research members looked at interaction and co-existence of two perspectives. Our focus was primarily on Tyrol as it was labelled the "Holy Land" in the nineteenth century and thus formed an excellent starting point for a history of Catholic pain. At research institutions in Antwerp and Innsbruck, we studied groups of people who can be regarded as 'typical' for Catholic trends of the time. The Flemish research group examined the stigmatics who personified the revitalization of a popular Catholicism and were subjected to medical examinations. The Austrian project focused on (Catholic) patients of local physicians or hospitals and on the medical engagement of female religious congregations (booming at the time). We thereby traced (1) what Catholics saw as pain (emotional and physical), (2) how they interpreted it, and (3) how they interacted with pain (practices of pain relief, the contemplation and cultivation of pain). The results show that the sharp differentiation between religious and medical views in the nineteenth century must be interrogated.