[Humans want to have it normal. Catholic clearing-up in handling devil features and other forms of deviation].
Using the exemplary case of the former monk Jacob Endorfer, this essay investigates the encounter with social norms, deviations, and the construction of madness in the cloister environment at the end of the 18th century. The perceptions of self and others are shown to exhibit strong differences. While for Endorfer it is a matter of his immutable bodily infirmity and the intrusion of supernatural powers, his immediate environment demands of him the application of the Enlightenment concept of continual self-improvement. However, not until the controversy concerning the issue of the obligation of medical care of the one-time monk do his inability to adjust and the insistence on his own otherness really lead to the necessity of defining a threshold of divergence. The category of gender plays a role to the extent that the Catholic Enlightenment propagates a new image of the priest whereby social homogeneity is required of this male group.
Weikl
Katharina
K
Charité - Institut für Geschichte der Medizin, Berlin.
D002410:Catholicism / Q000266:history*; D002977:Clergy / Q000266:history*; D005858:Germany; D049671:History, 18th Century; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000266:history*; D012945:Social Values