The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 2 (of 2)Hügel, Friedrich, Freiherr von
Religion
The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 2 (of 2)
Hügel, Friedrich, Freiherr von
Catherine, of Genoa, Saint, 1447-1510
Indeed her (otherwise unbroken) attitude is one, both of quiet
conviction that physic cannot help her, and of gentle readiness to let
the physicians try whatever they may think worth the trying: so with
the cupping-glasses, and the various examinations and physickings.
Especially is this disposition clear in her short dialogue with Boerio,
where, in answer to his assertion that she ought to beware of giving
scandal to all the world by saying that her infirmity had no need of
remedies, and that she ought to look upon such an attitude as “a kind
of hypocrisy,” she declares: “I am sorry if any one is scandalized
because of me; and I am ready to use any remedy for infirmity,
supposing that it can be found.”[19]
2. _Her preoccupation with the spiritual suggestions afforded by the
phenomena._
It would, indeed, be a grave misreading of her whole character
and habits of mind to think of her as at all engrossed in her
psycho-physical states as such, and as having ever formally considered
and decided that they must either come directly from God or be
amenable to medicine. On the contrary, she is too habitually absorbed
in the consideration and contemplation of certain great spiritual
doctrines and realities, to have the leisure or inclination for any
such questions.--Indeed it is this very absorption in those spiritual
realities which has ended by suggesting, with an extraordinary
readiness, frequency and vividness, through her mind to her senses,
and by these back to her mind, certain psycho-physical images and
illustrations for those very doctrines, until her whole psycho-physical
organism has been, all but entirely, modified and moulded into an apt
instrument and manifestation for and of that world unseen.
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