The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 2 (of 2) — John Shaqi
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 already on July 23, 1484, she is lying
“infirm in bed, in her room in the Women’s quarter of the Hospital,
oppressed with bodily infirmity.”[13]
2. _Abnormal sensations, impressions and moods._
Her attendants are all puzzled by the multitude and intensity, the
mobility and the self-contradictory character of the psycho-physical
manifestations. Perhaps already before 1497 “she would press thorny
rose-twigs in both her hands, and this without any pain”; and so
late as about three weeks before her death “she remained paralyzed
(_manca_),” and no doubt anaesthetic “in one (the right) hand and in
one finger of the other hand.”--Probably again before 1497 “her body
could not,” at times, “be moved from the sitting posture without the
application of force.” In February or March 1510 “she could not move
out of her bed”; in August, “on some occasions she could not move
the lips or the tongue, or the arms or legs, unless helped to do
so,--especially on the left side,--and this would, at times, last three
or four hours.”--In December 1509 “she suffered from great cold,” as
part of her peculiar condition; on September 4, 1510, “she suffered
from great cold in the right arm.”[14]
On other occasions she is, on the contrary, intensely hyper-aesthetic.
Some time in February or March 1510, “for a day and a night, her flesh
could not be touched, because of the great pain that such touching
caused her.” At the end of August “she was so sensitive, that it was
impossible to touch her very bedclothes or the bedstead, or a single
hair on her head, because in such case she would cry out as though she
had been grievously wounded.”--These states seem to have been usually
accompanied by sensations of great heat: for on the former occasion
“she seemed like a creature placed in a great flame of fire”; whilst on
the latter “she had her tongue and lips so inflamed, that they seemed
as though actual fire.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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