ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the boundary between official and unofficial understandings of demonology. One of the richest historical sources is the exhaustive trial records led by the Spanish Inquisition in its attempt to discover as much as possible about certain individuals suspected of heterodox beliefs and practices. One of these relaciones describes a possessed woman who “had all the demons of hell, except one, who was lame, who had stayed behind to guard hell.” This “guardian of hell” appears in an account of the adventures of Friar Juan Girona, an old man of seventy-three years old, “short sized, bulky, with swarthy face and no teeth,” who appeared in the Valencian town of Torreblanca in 1671, travelling from the convent of Our Lady of Carmen, in Villarreal, 50 kilometres away. As with the mystic’s word, the possessed person’s demonic discourse is more than a discourse: it is a transgression.
