Charismatic Healers on Iberian Soil: An Autopsy of a Mythical Complex of Early Modern Spain

Abstract

The saludadores, charismatic healers specialised in the curing of hydrophobia, represent one of the most exceptional mythical complexes of the Iberian Peninsula. The myth emerged abruptly in the last decades of the fifteenth century. The evidence suggests that the complex of the Iberian saludador refers to an archaic substratum of Mediterranean beliefs, related to the immunity to poisonous animals attributed to certain ethnic groups or charismatic healers. In the western Mediterranean, at some later moment, the belief fused with the cult of the saints, thus acquiring its original traits. This combination with Christian mythology endowed the saludador healers with some characteristics typical of European folk possession-systems. Once the belief in the Iberian saludadores' complex was firmly in place at the beginning of the sixteenth century, many local cunning-men succumbed to the temptation of trying to incorporate the mythical subject of the saludador. By assuming some of the most spectacular features of the mythical subject, they sought to legitimise the various services they rendered to the rural communities.

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