Access to the vase brought a thunderclap of realization. “Previously enigmatic scenes and objects in classic Maya art” suddenly made sense. Furst and Coe give the example of a small clay figurine, found in a tomb, of a squatting man reaching back as though to wipe himself. Experts had been puzzled. Why would family members bury a loved one with the Maya equivalent of Manneken Pis? Now it was clear. The man was on a ritual bender. Images on the vase no doubt also helped crack the enigma of what had appeared to be rustic, hand-hewn turkey basters—hollow bones with animal or fish bladders attached at one end—turning up at archaeological digs all over South and Central America. “South American Indians,” observe Furst and Coe, “were the first people known to use native rubber-tree sap for bulbed enema syringes.”
Is it not possible that the images on the vase depict a simple laxative procedure? Furst and Coe address this, insisting that only partakers of the “Old World enema” were concerned with constipation. (Sometimes to excess. The authors note that Louis XIV had more than two thousand clysters during his reign, sometimes “receiving court functionaries and foreign dignitaries during the procedure.” The Louis passion for the syringe can be traced through the lineage as far back as XI, who had enemas administered to his dogs.) The southern route has advantages as well for administering poisons. Bypassing the taste buds—and the court taster, if such an entity actually existed—allowed murderers to get away with a higher dose. Some historians believe the Roman emperor Claudius was killed in this manner, at the behest of his fourth wife, the fetching and far younger Agrippina. Ostensibly the motive was political. Agrippina was in a rush to install her son from a previous marriage as Rome’s emperor. There was also this, courtesy of Suetonius: “His laughter was unseemly and his anger still more disgusting, for he would foam at the mouth and trickle at the nose; he stammered besides and his head was very shaky.” And this, from the September 5, 1942, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association: “The emperor Claudius . . . suffered from flatulence.”*
By far the oddest reverse delivery on record is the holy-water enema. The first reference I came upon, a passing mention in an art journal, suggested that the holy-water clyster was a routine weapon in the exorcist’s arsenal. This made a certain amount of sense: Why sprinkle the possessed with holy water when you can pump it right up inside them? Seeking to verify the practice, I e-mailed the public relations office of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the stateside headquarters of the Catholic Church. Naturally this went unheeded. Returning to the art journal, I consulted the article’s references, ordered a copy of the cited paper, and hired a translator, as it had been published in an Italian medical journal.
The holy-water enema, by this account, was an isolated case, involving Jeanne des Anges, the mother superior of an Ursuline convent in Loudun, France, in the early 1600s. Des Anges claimed that the parish priest, a raffish, high-ranking charmer named Urbain Grandier, was appearing to her in her dreams, caressing her and attempting to seduce her. He seemed to be having some measure of success, as the contemplative quiet of the convent was being shattered by the mother superior’s nightly shrieks of sexual frenzy. An exorcism was promptly ordered.
Why would one administer the blessed liquid rectally instead of simply having the possessed drink a glass of it? One explanation is that the original Roman Catholic rite for the Blessing of the Holy Water included adding salt to the water. Regardless of the origins of the practice, this had the effect of rendering it undrinkable.*
Here’s the other reason: “After many days in which the priest tried to dispel the devil, he learned from the possessed mother superior that the devil had barricaded himself inside . . .” Here my translator stopped. She leaned closer to the photocopied pages and traced the words with her finger. “. . . il posteriore della superiora. Inside her butt!”
Sensing that the situation had progressed beyond his expertise or comfort level, the exorcist called for outside help in the form of a pharmacist, “Signor Adam,” and his traveling syringe. (Enemas in those days were the purview of pharmacists and comprised a sizable percentage of their income.) Mr. Adam “filled up the syringe with holy water and gave the miracle clyster to the mother superior, with his usual skill.” Two minutes later the devil had vamoosed.
Books about the Loudun fracas, including a 1634 translation of an account by “an eyewitness,” include no mention of Mr. Adam or rectal exorcism, but they do serve to flesh out the story. Grandier was convicted of sorcery and burned at the stake, and most sources agree he’d been framed by des Anges, acting in cahoots with a rival priest. The “possessions” continued for several years after the execution, spreading to sixteen other nuns and turning the convent into a local tourist attraction, and understandably so: “They . . . made use of expressions so indecent as to shame the most debauched of men, while their acts, both in exposing themselves and inviting lewd behavior . . . would have astonished the inmates of the lowest brothels in the country.”
In the words of my translator Rafaella, responding to the material I had engaged her to read, “I am sorry, but nuns should be allowed to have sex.” Or at least an occasional holy-water enema.