Sui fenomeni di possessione nei conventi medievali

Anche nei casi descritti da Rodewyk, le pazienti agiscono in modo da attirare su di sé l’attenzione degli ecclesiastici. Se questa attenzione e questo interesse sono stati realmente risvegliati, le pazienti fanno per la prima volta l’esperienza di qualcuno che le prende sul serio, di qualcuno che si prende cura di loro. Come il moderno psicoterapeuta, l’esorcista diventa la persona con la quale si entra in stretta relazione e sulla quale la paziente trasferisce i suoi sentimenti. Egli diventa il suo liberatore ed acquista il ruolo del padre. È anche possibile che, per l’azione dell’esorcista, lo stato della paziente si deteriori. È infatti una caratteristica di questa specie di malattie che il malato si esibisca tanto più quanto più ci si prende cura di lui. Come nei casi già descritti da Blumhardt, l’esorcista non può più tirarsi indietro, perché il legame tra lui e la paziente può diventare talmente profondo che ogni tentativo in questo senso porta a dei disturbi anche fisici della paziente.

H. Haag, La credenza nel diavolo,

 Mondadori 1976, pp. 225-226

The Clergyman Effect

Una paziente ruba (per poi mangiare) il colletto romano di padre Karras

Regan ringrazia
(rispettivamente, una delle prime ed una delle ultime scene de L'esorcista, 1973)

TWS

Pope in night vision

Innocenzo X in visione notturna :
TWS dal dipinto di D.Velázquez

Father Mike's homily in "Chi-raq"

Fr. Mike Corridan (John Cusack) delivering a homily during Patty's funeral

from Spike Lee's Chi-raq (2015)

.awesome.

TWS
che non ce l'avrebbe mai fatta senza...
C0C0nu#3R 
 ♥

Michelle Trachtenberg as an altar girl

Michelle Trachtenberg in Gossip Girl s05e13, G.G. 

TWS

(picture found on i.dailymail.co.uk - merci)

Croce e chiesa

Croce all'esterno della chiesa di Gesù buon pastore, via Riccardo di Giusto, 33100 Udine (UD)

TWS

The daily, awful sacrifice

It was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic communion; and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great attraction for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of the sense as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to symbolize. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement, and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered dalmatic, slowly and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled latern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the panis cælestis, the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the Host into the chalice, and smiting his breast for his sins. The fuming censers, that the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers, had their subtle fascination for him. As he passed out, he used to look with wonder at the black confessionals, and long to sit in the dim shadow of one of them and listen to men and women whispering through the worn grating the true story of their lives.

pp. 153-154

He had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeed he had for everything connected with the service of the Church. In the long cedar chests that lined the west gallery of his house he had stored away many rare and beautiful specimens of what is really the raiment of the Bride of Christ, who must wear purple and jewels and fine linen that she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by the suffering that she seeks for, and wounded by self-inflicted pain. He possesed a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask, figured with a repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in six-petalled formal blossoms, beyond which on either side was the pine-apple device wrought in seed-pearls. The orphreys were divided into panels representing scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the coronation of the Virgin was figured in coloured silks upon the hood. This was Italian work of the fifteenth century. Another cope was of green velvet, embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus leaves, from which spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which were picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals. The morse bore a seraph's head in gold-thread raised work. The orphreys were woven in a diaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom was St. Sebastian. He had chasubles, also, of amber-coloured silk, and blue silk and gold brocade, and yellow silk damask and cloth of gold, figured with representations of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ, and embroidered with lions and peacocks and other emblems; dalmatics of white satin and pink silk damask, decorated with tulips and dolphins and fleur-de-lys; altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen; and many corporals, chalice-veils, and sudaria. In the mystic offices to which such thing were put, there was something that quickened his imagination.

pp. 160-161

from O. Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, chapter 11,

 Giunti, Milano 2003