Mysticism the Behaviors of St.

Mysticism

The behaviors of St. Catherine, St. Christina and other mystics are, to our modern sensibilities, strange or even shocking. Analyze the sources with reference to their authors and audiences. What made medieval Europeans accept the described behavior as praiseworthy when we might think it insane?

What modern observers might diagnose as physical or mental illness, medieval observers looked upon with wonderment. According to Catherine Bynum: "Wonder was a recognition of the singularity and significance of the thing encountered...[it] was a response to something novel and bizarre that seemed both to exceed explanation and to indicate that there might be reason significant' -- not necessarily cause behind it." Miracles happened for a reason in the logic of the divine, and by defying worldly reason, a higher form of reason was made manifest. Only modern observers demand a scientific paradigm of rationality that subsumes all experiences, says Anne-Marie Korte, in her explication of the predominance of miracle stories in medieval life, rather the medieval believers accepted the rational nature of the material world, but also accepted that the non-rational could make itself manifest within the rational.

Korte notes that women tend to predominate in these stories, and some scholars have speculated that this is because unschooled women of the day were less "concerned about (the conventions of) rationality and therefore" are "to be more inclined...to speak about their experiences in terms of miracles," or the transcendence of rationality. Korte sees this interpretation as problematic, given that women, like all marginal groups speak in a kind of double voice, reflecting not simply their own perceptions, but also have their perceptions and their narratives shaped by the perspectives of others who see women as inherently more subjective and less rational. In other words, men as the dominant shapers of cultural narratives may have been looking for mysticism in the experiences of women, even while some men approved of the proof of miracles as a divine spirit they characterized as male. Many medieval female narratives are only available to us through the shaping annotations and chronicled lives of male confessors, like Raymond of Capua's description of St. Catherine of Siena's life.

Where the medievals go 'looking' for miracles, moderns tend to go looking for illness. In our contemporary culture illness is not proof of piety, and rejection of the body and suffering as Christ suffered but as something in need of a 'cure.' St. Christina explicitly calls her suffering a gift that she gladly accepts to help free the tormented sinners from Purgatory: "by the example of your suffering: and your way of life, you will incite living men to turn to me and to turn aside from their sins,'" she is told in an early vision, for "when you will have done all these things, then you shall turn to me and will have earned a reward of such profit,'" the physical suffering she endures will seem meaningless. St. Christina, "without hesitation" answered she "wanted to return under the conditions which were proposed to me."

St. Christina's physical suffering will cure the spirits of the suffering sinners, and thus her suffering is a gift and a blessing, not something to be rejected in her cultural terms, although in our own conception of mental health, to actively seek out illness and self-harm is pathological. The fact that St. Christina can endure crawling into fiery ovens and remain unharmed is evidence that God is with her, and her physical endurance in the face of cold and other sensations people might call bodily misery is testimony to her lightness of spirit.