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Chapter 4: The Peasant Who Went to Hell: Dreams and Visions in Early Modern Spain
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Chapter The Peasant Who Went to Hell Dreams and Visions in Early Modern Spain luı́s r. corteguera In 1621, a Capuchin friar named Francesc de Canet read a copy of the trial before the Barcelona tribunal of the Inquisition of a peasant named Pere Porter, who claimed to have visited hell, where he found formerly powerful men, both lay and religious.1 Intrigued that the Inquisition had found Porter innocent of any wrongdoing, Francesc de Canet went to the town of Tordera, about forty miles north of Barcelona, to meet Porter. Except for a small correction, the man confirmed the statements in his trial deposition: ‘‘And so I, Fra Francesc . . . knowing the truth, was determined to copy it down for the greater honor and glory of our Lord God.’’2 So begins The Journey to Hell of Pere Porter, which claims to be the true account of his dreamlike experience. Was Porter’s voyage a dream? As we will see, the text claims that the experience was true and real, although many persons who heard the story firsthand assumed that Porter must have dreamed, or imagined, everything. Visiting hell was not the only dreamlike aspect of his story. So was the fact that the outlandish claims came from a peasant, who until then had been respected by his neighbors. The things Porter said about powerful men, which ordinary people usually avoided discussing in public, did not seem possible coming from the mouth of a simple peasant. Yet when witnesses concluded Porter was mad for insisting on the truth of his experience, a surprising turn of events made everyone wonder who was right. The story mixes fact and fiction in ways that frustrate a straightforward explanation about the precise nature of Poter’s experience. Whereas Porter The Peasant Who Went to Hell 89 was an actual person, Francesc de Canet was probably a pseudonym for an unknown author. Consequently, the date of composition given by Canet, 1621, is uncertain. The story circulated exclusively in manuscript form until the late nineteenth century. The two earliest manuscripts, presumed to date before 1621, do not mention Francesc de Canet.3 Besides the doubts about its author, key pieces of evidence—most notably, the Inquisition trial cited by Canet as the document where he first learned about Porter’s underworld travel—are missing and presumed lost.4 Since 1874, several print editions have drawn scholarly interest in the truth and purpose of Porter’s account. It turned out that several individuals Porter saw in hell were prominent historical figures, suggesting the story was primarily a political satire.5 At the same time, the naı̈veté of the tale and its unpolished style were thought to belong to a folk literature drawn to magical beliefs that appealed to popular audiences in Spain and Spanish America.6 Then in 1999, Josep Maria Pons i Guri published documents confirming the existence of Pere Porter, suggesting that, rather than fiction, Porter’s hellish vision may have been the result of extreme hunger or mental illness.7 Such doubts about the veracity of Journey to Hell and about whether Porter’s experience was a dream point to the larger and more fruitful subject of early modern representations of dreams and dreamlike experiences. As we will see, Porter’s story contains elements typical of fictional, nonfictional , and religious dream texts. Besides complicating any effort to determine the nature of his experience, this mix of elements reminds us of the diversity of early modern genres presenting dreams as miracles, prodigies, curiosities, or satires. At the same time, narratives might describe as dreamlike situations that defied the natural order—physical, social, or political— leaving it to readers to decide whether they were actual dreams or the result of invisible forces, credulity, illness, or deceit. A deeper examination of Porter’s account therefore offers an opportunity to study a broad spectrum of early modern ideas about dreams and dream texts. In discussing contemporary responses to Porter’s tale, I will consider two kinds of early modern audiences. The first audience consists of Porter’s neighbors, who heard his unbelievable claims directly from him. Journey to Hell records their reactions, which despite the doubts about the veracity of the text, provide a credible gauge to contemporary opinion about the merits of Porter’s story. The second type of audience consists of those who learned about Porter’s voyage from its written account. The story circulated in numerous manuscript copies dating...