Satan, the so-called Prince of Darkness, has been in the headlines this month and I would like to discuss two recent news stories, beginning with ...
I: The Case of Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione and La Lettera del Diavolo
A mysterious letter from 1676, previously believed to be nonsensical, has finally had its diabolical contents deciphered by scientists using code-breaking software found - appropriately enough - on the dark web.
I: The Case of Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione and La Lettera del Diavolo
A mysterious letter from 1676, previously believed to be nonsensical, has finally had its diabolical contents deciphered by scientists using code-breaking software found - appropriately enough - on the dark web.
Written shortly after entering the Benedictine convent in Palma di Montechiaro aged fifteen, Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione claimed that her hands were possessed by Satan and that he, not she, should be regarded as its true author. Unable to make (horned) head or (pointed) tail of the letter's contents, her fellow nuns believed her story and - rather surprisingly - put the letter on display, where it remained, unfathomed and seemingly unfathomable, for 340 years.
Until, that is, a team from the Ludum Science Centre in Catania, finally succeeded in translating parts of the text. Unfortunately, it seems that Satan didn't have anything unexpected to tell us on this occasion. He dismisses the divine forces of goodness as burdensome, like dead weights around the neck of mankind and says that morality is a dysfunctional system that benefits no one. He also contrasts God's promise of salvation with the freedom to sin that he offers.
Mostly, however, the letter remains incomprehensible and prone to logical inconsistency, mixing as it does several languages, even those said to be incompatible, into a kind of textual babble that only the wicked might find pleasurable. Whether this is evidence of the Devil's presence, or shows that Sister Maria suffered from some kind of mental disorder, is not for me to say ...
To read part two of this post on the case of Dilara Findikoglu, click here.
Fascinating article, but I would have enjoyed reading a riskier conclusion ventured by the author, rather than his decidedly coy fence-sitting. (If it's not 'for him' to comment on his own piece, who is it for, and why?)
ReplyDeleteIt certainly seems the speculative diagnosis of schizophrenia in some quarters is lazy at best, as well as - retroactively applied as it is to a document a couple of centuries before modern psychiatry - both anachronistic and clinically unverifiable. It's the kind of thing that gets both occultists and the mentally ill a bad name! Or perhaps this afflicted nun was both 'mad' and 'bad'...
To throw in my own Faustian coin, it's hardly surprising that a satanic text - if demoniacal it be - would at the very least be prone to breach such quaintly rational demands for 'logical consistency', presumably. ('In the beginning, the Word (Logos) was God' is the opening line of the Bible, if memory serves.) Banality, repetition and a propensity for polyvocal provocation have long been associated with the strategies and personae of the Adversary. The devil doesn't just speak in forked tongue - he speaks in many tongues! It's Christians who like to stand in the safe white light of clarity, sanctity and univocal meaning.
To get down off my own fence, a nun is, more often than not, a more purified spiritual vessel than most. So, if the teenage Sister Maria said she was possessed (and her sisterhood believed her), I'd be willing to venture she quite possibly was, whether her text is a nonsensical idiolect or a revelation of evil. (It could quite conceivably be both.)
You quoted the Gospel of John, not Genesis.
DeleteI suppose the answer is it's for someone such as your good self to comment; that is to say, someone with much more knowledge and experience in the fields of demonology, possession and mental illness.
ReplyDeleteYou're absolutely right to spot what I was hinting at re: language, logic, evil and the pleasure of the text; I was thinking of Barthes on babble and inconsistency.