title: [Sex, morals and medicine in Counter Reformation Spain. An unpublished report on pollution by the Jesuit Miguel Pérez (1550-1605)].
abstract: The religious movement known as the Counter Reformation did not impede the development, within the heart of Roman Catholic Europe, of a notable diversity of ideologies--even in political settings (e.g., in the Spain of Philip II) that have been repeatedly cited as centers of intellectual ultraconservativism--and as regards the domain of sexual morality, a particularly controversial topic within Catholic theology after the eleventh century. The previously unpublished document we describe is a clear example of this lack of unanimity. It contains the theological and moral opinions of the Jesuit Miguel Pérez (1550-1605) regarding a case which was probably studied by many Castilian theologians during the final third of the sixteenth century: the proliferation of pollutions in persons of both sexes. Against traditional Catholic morality, Miguel Pérez sought to exempt from moral responsibility those persons affected, by medicalizing this problem, and by citing the doctrine of moral probabilism.
authors.affiliation: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bajáen Español
mesh_terms: D002410:Catholicism / Q000266:history*; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D012071:Religion and Sex; D012725:Sexual Behavior / Q000266:history*; D013030:Spain
vernacular_title: Sexo, moral y medicina en la España de la contrarreforma. Un informe inédito del jesuita Miguel Pérez (1550-1605) sobre la polución.