On the morning of 12 March 1686, in the parochial church of Sestri Levante, the priest Lelio Repetto fell to the ground and lost consciousness while celebrating mass. A large crowd of people witnessed this fall, apparently caused by an epileptic seizure. Witnesses questioned later stated that it happened right after the consecration of the Sacred Host, which broke into several pieces. When the responsible bishop of Brugnato heard of the incident, he suspended Repetto from saying mass on the grounds of his illness.

In this chapter, I use this specific case of alleged epilepsy and the ensuing legal case to analyse competing claims of speaking the truth about the human body. I will argue that we should distinguish between two different patterns of establishing this truth, one focusing on appearance and one on essence. The context is primarily a legal one but also one of cultural norms about the body. Through canon law norms and legal practice, the Catholic Church defined who could belong to the clergy by speaking about and controlling not just doctrine or education but also the physical body. The regulations on so-called bodily defects and canonical impediments or irregularities excluded persons with certain types of impairments and diseases, such as epilepsy, from clerical offices. Analysing the processes of negotiations over clerical status complements our understanding of the early modern Catholic Church, which placed great emphasis not only on clerical spirituality, doctrine, education, character, and behavior but on the bodies of its personnel as well. This analysis can also tell us about the types of knowledge and notions of truth used by various actors. Who speaks about truth, who could claim the truth about the body?