Saint Catherine Of Genoa

Writing the Mystic Body: Sexuality and Textuality in the ecriture-feminine of Saint Catherine of Genoa Author(s): Anna Antonopoulos Source: Hypatia, Vol. 6, No. 3, Feminism and the Body (Autumn, 1991), pp. 185-207 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3809847 Accessed: 13/03/2009 21:19 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=iupress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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Writingthe MysticBody:Sexualityand of Textualityin the ecriture-feminine SaintCatherineof Genoa ANNA ANTONOPOULOS

aboutthebodyinmedievalwomen'smystical Thispaperlooksto evolvea discourse the via an experience understanding of lifeandworkof SaintCatherineof Genoaas ecriture-feminine.DrawinguponCatherine'sresolutionof binarismthroughthe articulation of of sexualityandtextuality,I arguethatthefemalemystic'sexperience the bodyas site of strugglehelpsmovebeyondanalysisof a binaryexperienceto a politicsof speakingthebodydirectly.

And perhapsHe has chosen herbody to inscribeHis will, even if she is less able to read the inscription,poorer in language, "crazier"in her speech ... (Irigaray1985a, 198) The body,in particularthe sexuallyspecific body,has recently emergedas a viable and important pathway into understandingwomen's attempts to transformand transfigurehistoricalconditionsof confinement and constraint (Bynum 1987, 1990; Bell 1985; Bordo 1989). In theories of ecriture-feminine feministshave sought to rethink the female body outside its binaryrepresentation and to develop textual alternatives to the traditional oppositions dividing mind from body, reason from passion, culturefrom nature, and self from other (Moi 1985; Irigaray1985a). It is with these two axes of feminist of Catherine philosophyin mind that I proposeto discussthe ecriture-feminine of Genoa-a medievalfemalemysticfor whom the circumstanceof "holding" a female body meant no less than corporealdeath itself. I will argue that not only locating Catherine'smysticismwithin notions of ecriture-feminine towarda historicopoliticaldiscourseof the pushestheoriesof ecriture-feminine Hypatiavol. 6, no. 3 (Fall 1991) ? by Anna Antonopoulos

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body but also articulatesher experiencewith the contemporarypoliticization of discoursetheory. I. Introduction Catherineof Genoa lived and died at the turn of the fifteenth century.At the time when men were burning women at the stake for witchcraft, the testimony of Catherine'slife story is that of a woman burningherself up for God. Struckby what is referredto as a "supernatural malady,"and showingno visible of Catherine and consumed,cauterizedto other, lay spent signs illness, the bone by a fireof which therewasno outwardsign. Herbody,retrievedfrom the tomb eight months afterher death, was found "yellowas saffron"except aroundthe heart, "wherethe skin was red, a sign of the love it had borne" (Catherine 1979, 147). Charged with its own peculiar blend of awe and fear, the image of the burningwoman characteristicof medieval witch burningsand female persecutionsexpressesthe idea of the femalebodyas locusof demonicpower.In the worksof Catherineof Genoa, however,the imageof fire is used to expressthe opposite-that is, the burningfemalebody as locus of the divine. Catherine's life and especially her death find expression in the text of a "spiritual andPurgation psychology"passeddown to us in the formof two works,Purgatory andTheSpiritualDialogue.Transcribedby friendsand followers,this text of self standsout as the living testimonyof consummationin God, as a woman'sbody becomesthe symbolicpyreof transcendenceand union with the divine. In the context of a feminist critique of medieval asceticism as world rejection, the veneration of Catherine'speculiarannihilation could be construedas the discursivefoil for the abominationand obliterationof the female body by a dualistic and misogynousreligious tradition. According to this argument,the apparentloss of subjecthoodand dissolutionof the mind/body, subject/objectoppositions characteristicof the mystical experience hold a peculiarappealfor women, whose verysubjecthood(both textual and sexual) has been denied and repressed.However,my argumentis different.In keeping with a current move to refute the standardpicture of medieval women as constrainedon every side by a misogynythat they internalizedas self-hatred or masochism, I want to locate Catherine's image-laden death within a theoreticalframeworkthat looksuponmedievalasceticismas "thepossibilities providedby fleshliness"andthe body,ratherthan a flightfromit (Bynum1987, 6). For Catherine was not the only one in her time to experience transcendence in and throughbodily metaphors.A characteristicspiritualityemerged in the Middle Ages in which bodily manipulationand its symbolismbecame a standardpart of what Foucaultcalls a religious "technologyof the flesh" (Foucault 1980, 121), one in which the uses of the flesh, its pleasuresand displeasures,were aimedat communionwith and fulfillmentin God.1Indeed,

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medievalpracticesof sexual abstinenceand starvationhave made the experience of bodily fire, along with hunger,into two of the most pervasiveimages andvehicles of mysticalexperience(Bynum1987, 184). Yet,while by now our understandingof the significanceof food in the religiousregulationof the body has been greatlyadvancedby medievalscholarship(Bell 1985;Bynum 1987), there is still relatively little work on the images of fire. Consequently,the singularityof Catherine'sdeath is left unnoticed.2 Although the imagesof fire and hungerareboth presentin representations of Catherine'sasceticpractices,it is the imageof the bodyon fire,as the above descriptionof Catherine'smysticalcauterizationsuggests,that constitutesthe chief symbol through which her own spiritualityis forged. Alongside the "flamingheart"of Saint Teresaof Avila (Irigaray1985a, 201) and the "living flame of love" of Saint John of the Cross (John 1962), Catherine'sburning flesh becomes the dominantmotif for the medievalmystic'sdesireand fulfillment in the encounter with God.2I will arguethat Catherine, a lay saint in her own right,claims a centralplace in termsof the productionand reproduction of the image of fire in religiouswomen'sdiscourse.In raisingpyro-rather than gastro-centeredsymbolismof spiritualexpression, her death and the discoursesurroundingit admitto a prototypeof (female) religiousexperience that cannot usefullybe absorbedby a discussionof the motif of food. Nor can it be unproblematicallyabsorbedinto a discussionof the transformativevalue of the body and bodily experience in women's(and men's) spirituality,or of the unambiguoususes of the body in the manipulationand control of social and religiousconditions. Like the symbolicpractice of eating Christ'sflesh, that of absorbingit sexually expressesthe symbolic significance of divine penetrationin bodily experience.However,nobody is known to have died of taking the Eucharist.If starvationpracticesled to death, it would not be in such direct articulationof religiousprinciples.The experienceof eating God's flesh is symbolicallymediated; experiencing his love is not. In the latter, woman'sbody becomes the site of an articulationthat fails to blend into a discussion of the former. As a discourse of spirituality,the discourse of Catherine'sbizarreself-immolationadmitsto a dual articulationof sexual and textual considerations,a disturbingconfluence of discourseand deed. Thus Catherine'scase remainsenigmaticand begselucidation-as exemplaryof not only the eroticizationof piety but also of its sometimesunequivocallyfinal, irreversible,and apparentlymurderousresults. In what follows, therefore,my approachis two-pronged:first, I want to examine the significanceof the burningfemale body in termsof the mystical psychologyof Catherineof Genoa, andsecond,I wantto look at its significance in terms of what it meant to medieval women to experience their bodies as erotic symbolsof transcendence.Thus I will use a rathercircuitousroute to argue that Catherine'sexperience of her body, preservedin the image of a consumingfire of love, also servesto unmaskand explorean alternativeto the

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traditionalconceptions of the (female) body in Westernreligiosity-one in which the body is experienced not in dualistic terms but as the site of a transformationof meaning.3Furthermore,I want to show how this transformation is present in both the religiousas well as the domestic and sexual domains.Without overlookingthe fact that the regulationof the femalebody is historicallyboundup with the control of femalesexuality(Turner1984, 3), I want to show how in the service of a technology of the self this experience of the bodyfunctionsboth in resistanceto and in collusionwith conditionsof constraint. There are, however, two methodological difficultiesencountered at the outset. The first is that Catherine'stext, the theoreticaland discursivebackdrop of her self-annihilation,has essentiallybeen committed to writing by others.4While individualizedreligiousexperiencegains political significance in the context of a historicalsetting, here the roles of community,confessor, and reporterare so entwined that the female body becomes a site of struggle for competingdiscourses.5Thus an effective sortingenterpriseis farfromeasy and presents its own cluster of methodologicalcomplexities (Bynum 1987, 7-8). The second methodologicaldifficultyis that in Catherine'scase her body becomes the site of an inscriptionin which the liberationof the body meets with its annihilation. Given a male tradition of hagiographicwriting, it becomes increasinglydifficult to distinguishmale and female vantage points when it comes to a case as radicalin its metaphorsas this-a case in which the imageand the imagedno longerclaim a separatestake.Steeped as it is in the Catherine'sdeathcouldeasily languageof "possession"andthe "supernatural," be construed as either the target of a misogynistclerical tradition6or the feminine internalizationof that tradition.While recent feminist scholarship has done much to retrievestoriesaboutwomen and to describewomen'spiety, it has concentratedon the negativestereotypingof women'ssexualityandtheir lack of sacerdotalauthority(Bynum 1987, 29; Bell 1985, 86). Thus the male theologizationof femalemysticismthat investsthe femalebodywith the status of the divine takes on the sinister aspect of a reverse formation in which burningwitches and burningsaintsareinterchangeable(Bell 1985, 211, n. 19; Bynum 1987, 23). It is to this degreethat the applicationof theoriesof ecriture-feminineto the life and death of Catherineof Genoa can be doublyproductive.As a discourse and a voice,7ecriture-femininepresentsa veryfruitfulperspectiveforsortingout the imagesof woman and the body from the experiencesby women of their bodies,for it does so not only in referenceto the differingvantagepoints from which men and womenviewed these mattersin late medievalreligionbut also in referenceto their particulareconomiesof desire.While at this stage it may appearsomewhatarbitraryand methodologicallypresupposedto applynotions of ecriture-feminineto a discourseandan oraltraditionthat has been committed to writingby others,my object is to rescuethe problematicsof religiouswomen

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achieving meaning throughbodily experiencefrom a hagiographictradition constructed almost entirely by males.8Thus my appeal to ecriture-feminine allowsus to "payattention to what women saidand did, avoidingthe assumption that they simply internalizedthe rhetoricof theologians, confessors,or husbands"(Bynum 1987, 29). Foras "theonly place in the historyof the West in which womanspeaksand acts so publicly"(Irigaray1985a, 191), the female mystic's discourse demonstrateswhat in a different context Jane Gallop describesas "a surprising,vulgarpolitical efficacy"(Gallop 1988, 95). Catherine'smysticalpsychologyis expressedin what can be characterized as three majortenets: a tripartiteconcept of self, the self's dualisticmode of being in the world, and its transcendentalform of being in God. Weaving togethersoul-bodydialoguewith themes of self-love, self-hate,and transcendence andfulfillmentin God, these tenets formthe basisof an ecriturein which the imageof the burningfemalebodygainssignificanceas an effectivepolitical discourse.Read in the context of historicalconditions, Catherine'sindividualized experience of the body can be seen to mediate between conflictual tendencieswithin religiousas well as domesticconditions. In the articulation of the textual and the sexual body, the corporealsignification of her death enacts the female mystic'sattemptsto transformconditions of social, sexual, and religiousconstraint.Thus Catherine'secrituredemonstratesthe sense in which the mystic'sexperience of the body helps move beyond analysisof a binaryexperience to a politics that speaksthe body directly.As the gateway to investigation of the historical and political articulationsof desire in language,her ecritureanswersto the call within feminist theoreticalpracticefor an "effectivepolitical discourse"about the body.In providingalternativesfor reconceptualizingthe alleged"mysticismof the body"that Beauvoirandothers (Dallery 1989, 53) have attributedto Frenchfeminist theories, it also raises in contemporaryfeminist questions about the politics of ecriture-fiminine reconceptualizationsof the body.9 In the first two sections that follow I will look at each of these tenets andPurgationand individuallythrougha close readingof the texts of Purgatory The SpiritualDialogue.I will then discusshow Catherine'sexperience of the body as site of strugglehelps move beyond analysisof binaryexperience. By way of conclusion I will discuss the implications of this in terms of the problematicof speakingthe bodydirectlywithin contemporaryfeministtheory and criticism. II. A SpiritualText of Self: God, Soul, Body Catherine'sconcept of self is developedin both Purgatory andPurgationand The SpiritualDialogue.It is a tripartiteconcept composedof God (the self as God), the Soul (the self assoul), and the Body(the self as body). In this section I will examine each of these independently;in the following section I will

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examine their relationshipin Catherine'srepresentationof the self'sbeing in the worldand its being in God. God The self as God is a notion primarilydeveloped in Purgatoryand Purgation (PP) and echoed in parts 1 and 2 of The SpiritualDialogue(SD). God, in Catherine'sview, is the elemental and primarysourceof self, "the pure state fromwhich it firstissued"(PP 79), as well as the state to which it will return: "Once strippedof all its imperfections,the soul rests in God, and with no characteristicsof its own" (PP 80). Followinga processof purgationand the strippingaway of the lower self in us, "ourbeing is thenGod" (PP 80; italics added). This God, a "divine essence so pure and light-filled" (PP 78), has in Catherine'stext three outstandingproperties.Two of these are Goodnessand Joy: "The briefestvision of God far surpassesany human joy" (PP 78), and 'when a soul is close to its first creation . . . the instinct for beatitudeasserts itself"(PP 73). In addition,God has the thirdpropertyof Love. God's"flaming love" is a theme that runsthroughall of Catherine'sworks/textas well as her life. The "pure"Love of God, "intense and fiery,"is not only that through which the other partshave issued(SD 108) but also that throughwhich they will be left behind:"And I see raysof lighming dartingfromthat divine love to the creatureso intense and fiery as to annihilate not the body alone but, were it possible, the soul" (PP 79). But beforethat happens,they must come to be, and so I turnnow to a discussionof the two other partsof the self in the text of Catherine'smysticalpsychology-the Soul and the Body. The Soul The nature of the Soul, or Spirit, is primarilydeveloped in the first and secondpartsof the SpiritualDialogue,whereit appearsunderthe title of "Spirit" in the latter.It has three attributesor propertiesin the formof instinct, need, and free agency.These are an instinct for God, a need for spiritualactivities, and volition, or powerof the will. The "instinct for God" is one that, accordingto the text of Purgatoryand Purgation,is implantedin the Soul upon its creation (PP 76): "The soul in its creation is pureand simple ... and endowedwith a certain instinct for God" (PP 73). This, the text of TheSpiritual Dialogueadds,is the "instinctforinfinite joy"(SD 103). However,as the "distancebetweenthe soulandGod"increases, God, once the subjectof self, now becomesits object. Thus a second property of the Soul is its need for the contemplationof things divine. In The Spiritual Dialoguethe object of the Soul'sneed is the spiritualequivalentto the material objects of the Body'sneeds. Describingitself as "invisible,"its joy, a joy in

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"thingsinvisible,"the Soul resolvesto spend time in contemplationof God's gifts,contemplatingthings like "itscreation,""allthe benefitsGod has given it," and "how it had been createdfor eternalbliss"(SD 94). In addition to the Soul's instinct for God and its need for contemplative spiritualactivity, however, there is the third attributeof the Soul that distinguishesit fromthe Body,and namely,its agency-freedom, or power,of the will. Developing this idea largelyin the second part of The SpiritualDialogue in the Spirit'sdialoguewith "HumanFrailty"(the Body), the text underscores the sense in which "reason,power,will, . . memory... are attributesof the Spiritor Soul" (SD 125). In a laterpassageon freedomand responsibility,the followingwordsare assignedto the speakerfor the Soul: I was the firstto sin and do so freely.The responsibilityfalls on me. In doing good, heaven and earth will come to my aid and neitherthe devil, the flesh,or the worldcan standin my way.If I commitevil, then I too will have no shortageof those willingto help me ... demons,the world,... the instinctto evil. (SD 126) It is thus that in the fight for supremacywagedbetween the Soul and the Body that TheSpiritualDialoguedescribes,it is agreedat the outset by Bodyand Soul together that it is the Soul that is "the strongerof the two" (SD 92). What remainsin favorof the Bodyis not "strength"of will andpower,butworldliness: "Iam at home here,"saysthe Bodyto the Soul, thus establishingits principal attribute,that of being in the world (SD 92). The Body Catherine'stext on the natureof the Body is largelydeveloped in the first part of The SpiritualDialogue,in which three attributesof the Body emerge. These are the terrestrialnatureof its needs, its "being-at-homein the world," and its "instinct"for terrestrialpleasures. Insofaras the terrestrialnatureof the Body'sbasicneeds is concerned,these comprisethe basic requirementsfor survival-food, drink, sleep, protection (SD 106)-and aredistinguishedfromthe Soul'sneeds forspiritualsustenance through contemplation. Together they reflect the second propertyof the natureof the Body,its being-at-homein the world,which standsagainstthe Soul'sbid for supremacyon the groundsof its propertyof volition. "Trueyou are the strongerof the two," says the Body to the Soul, "but I am at home here."The significanceand powerof this affirmationaremademanifestin the opening lines of The SpiritualDialogue,in which the very termsof a relation betweenSoul and Bodyareset by the primacyof the latter'sphysical/terrestrial grounds:"Since I am subject to you," says the Body, "I will do as you wish; rememberthough, that without me, you cannot do as you wish" (SD 91). In

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other words,the Body may be just "an animal body, without reason,power, will or memory"(SD 125), but the Soul cannot live in the worldwithout it. In addition to the terrestrialnature of its needs and its characteristicof being-at-homein the world,the Bodyin these texts has one other characteristic that distinguishes it from the Soul, what Catherine often calls an "instinct"for terrestrialjoys. This so-called instinct is distinguishablefrom terrestrial"needs"and "appetites."Catherinewrites:"The Body'sneeds ... can be satisfied but its appetites are constantly renewed because . . . the capacityof the Bodyis forfinite things"(SD 103). In this regard,the "instinct" for terrestrialjoys in the Body is comparableto the "instinct"for God in the Soul, except that whereasthe formeris an "instinct"forthingsfinite, the latter is one for things infinite (SD 139). It is ultimatelythe conflict between these two "instinctual"tendenciesthat leadsthe self'sdualisticmode of being in the world. In the face of the ensuing strugglebetween these two modes of being in the world,the resolutionthat Catherinegives to this conflict is in the form of a transcendenceof binarismaltogether.The inscriptionof love upon the self'sbeing in God becomesthe carnalexpressionthat Catherinegives to her mystic body.Her body'smetamorphosisthroughfire and flamesbecomes the avatarof her transcendenceas she moves fromthe dualisticmode of being in the worldto the transcendentalbeing in God. III.The Mystic Body:Self-Love,Self-Hate, Transcendence We can discern two alternativeformsof being in the world in the text of Catherine'smysticalpsychologyof the self. Developed in the firstand second half of The SpiritualDialogue,respectively,these are what I call self-love and self-hate. Before turning to Catherine'sunusual experience of "transcendence," I will firstexamine her concept of the self'sdualisticformof being in the worldthat emergesfromher text. Self-Love In part one of The SpiritualDialogue,self-love is introducedto harmonize Body and Soul in the interestsof longevity and health. "Ifwe live according to ourneeds we can live happilytogether,"saysthe Bodyto the Soul (SD 97). For,the Body argues,"When the body is healthy, the powersof the soul are apt... when the body is sick, these powersare wanting"(SD 113). Thus, of each of the three component partsof the self, it is the Body,by virtue of its being-at-homein the world, that is given primacyin self-love. In the Body's affirmationof life, the Soul is also served:"When I, the Body,die, you will have no meansof addingto yourglory,"saysthe Bodyto the Soul in the interest of self-love (SD 113). But God is also served:"The preceptfollowing that of loving God... is that of loving ourneighbor.This love, in the temporalorder,

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begins with loving your body which you are to maintain alive and healthy underpain of sin" (SD 112). However,if throughself-love harmonyis achieved, it is achieved at a cost. And the cost is that of the atemporalorder,which is just as much a partof the self in Catherine'spsychologyas is the temporalone. In this respect,the second form of the self's being in the world must be understoodas a step in the resolutionof that conflict/tensionin the ultimateformof its being in God. But until that resolutionis achieved,this secondbeing in the world,which appears in the formof an asceticismand brutalworld-rejection,remainsan extremely negative portrayalof life on earth-one that, were it not constructedas part of a largermysticalpsychologyof the self, would stand out as the singly most undesirablestate (of being in the world) imaginable,and one, moreover,that has not exactly been sparedthe lot of womankindunderpatriarchy-that of self-hate. Self-Hate Self-hate as a mode of being in the world is described in the text of Catherine'sown life story,transcribedinto wordsin part two of The Spiritual Dialogue.Here Catherine begins her diatribeof apparent"despairand selfloathing"manifestedby a total and absoluterepudiationof the Body in all its facets. Passagessuch as "Do you not see that you are not beautiful,but are all spatteredwith mud?"(SD 115), "Ifindmyselfunbearable(SD 117), "Iamvile! Of what worth am I?"(SD 116), and an "obstinate,sensual soul" (SD 116) color the greaterpartof this self-portrait. The result is that Catherine becomes, in the words of her friends and followers,"anenemy of herself,"waging"waron the self-love that survivedin her" (SD 118). Denying herself the bare necessities of life, she does not eat, sleep or talk. She lies on a bed of thornsto cut down her hoursof sleep, seasons food that she likes with hepatic oil and groundagracio,and loses all taste for things either spiritual or earthly. Seeking only her own company, she is reportedto have "lookedconstantlyat the ground,never laughedor smiledor glanced at passersby"(SD 120). In a move to finally "crushall disordered pleasures"and "takeawayall things that gave ... [her]comfort"(SD 128-29], Catherinebeginsto administerto the poorandsick. Ifthe lice makehervomit, she takes handfuls of them in her mouth; if she reacts similarly to any foul-smellingsores, she rubsher nose in their pus (SD 131). Laterjoining a hospitalwhere"shebecamesubjectto those who runthe hospitalas if she were a servant,"Catherine,"emptyof any supportor refreshmentwithin,"becomes "completelyalienated"(SD 132) and can hope only "fora speedydeath"(SD 131)-a death that will releaseher fromthis abhorrentbeing in the worldand permither to find (being in) God. Forthis "self-hate",I will now argue,is the manifestationof only one wayof being-that is, a being in the temporalorder.

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According to Catherine'smysticalpsychology,however, this is not the only way of being. As I have alreadyshown, there is also the atemporalorderand its transcendentalbeing in God. Within that order,this displayof "self-hatred" is a maskeddisplayof Love-the pureLove of God. Trancendence As shown in my discussionof Catherine'sconcept of self, God is one of the self'svery forms:"Once strippedof all its imperfections,the soul restsin God, and with no characteristicsof its own.... Ourbeing is then God" (PP 80). In this state, in which both Body and Soul are transcendedin a motion "to annihilatenot the body alone, but... the soul"(PP 79), the Soul "transforms itself into God"and returns"to the pristinestateof its creation"(PP 81). I will now tur to the last of the majortenets of Catherine'smysticalpsychology,the self's transcendentalbeing in God, which also finds expression in her own unusualexperienceof the burningbody. In a mannerreminiscentof the harmonyachieved between the partsof the self in the form of being that is self-love, here too there is harmonyin what Catherinecalls the "the peace and restthat is God" (SD 103). Here, however, it is not self-love but what Catherinedescribesas the "pureLove of God"that promptsthe self not only to renouncethe temporalorderof the Bodybut also to seek the infinite one of God. "Illumined"by God'slove and its own instinct for God, the Soul recognizesthe inadequacyof the temporalorder,however harmoniouslythe partsof the self mayhave lived within it. Forthe finitudeof the (body in the) temporalorderis death, inevitable death in all partsof the self. In conjunction with the Soul'sultimate renunciationof self-love in part one of TheSpiritualDialogue,Catherinewrites:"... underthe guiseof the good and the necessaryyou [self-loveand the Body]led me to the brinkof eternal death" (SD 110). The inevitabilityof corporealdeath, maskedby the Body's discourseof longevity and health, is not the only factorin the renunciationof self-love.There is also the spiritualdeath that goeswith it. Reducedto "athing of this world,"losing its valued"instinctforGod"(SD 106), the Soul becomes "likean animalwillinglyled to slaughter"but is "fullyconsciousof the bodily and spiritualdeath confrontingit" (SD 107). In part three of The SpiritualDialogue,the death of Catherine herself is a testimonyof the route to this formof transcendentalbeing in God as well as of its final accomplishment.Compiledbyherfriendsandfollowers,this section describesCatherineherself,consumedto the last by the clinging flamesof the purelove of God as by "asupernaturalmalady.""No greatersufferingwas ever witnessed in a body to all appearancesso healthy" (SD 143). "Like the seraphim"Catherine'ssoul, the inscriptiongoes,"hadpenetratedinto essential fire"(SD 132-33). But the questionremains:"Ifthe firewe know convertsthe

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consumedthing into itself, leavingnothing but ashesbehind at the end, what shall we say of that essentialfire?"(SD 132-33). Indeed,what? IV.Sexuality and Textualityin Catherine'secriture-feminine In his introductionto the 1979 edition of The SpiritualDialogue,BenedictJ. Groeschelstates that "thereis no evidence to suggestthat CatherineAdorna waspsychotic"(Catherine 1979, 9). Citing Friedrichvon Hiigel'sTheMystical Elementof Religionas Studiedin SaintCatherineofGenoaandHerFriends(1908), a massivetwo-tome celebrationof the theological implicationsof Catherine's mysticalpsychology,Groeschel maintainsthat she was "a person strivingfor adjustmentof profoundinnerforces"(Catherine 1979, 9). Nevertheless,if we considerCatherine'smysticalpsychologyin the light of contemporarytheories of the psychopathologyof woman,we cannot help butbe struckby the parallels between this mysticalpsychologyand the negative self-imagesthat according to Mary Daly have "spawnedself-loathing and self-punishmentin women underpatriarchy"(Daly 1984, 57). While Daly has theorizedfemale masochism in termsof the requirementsof a male Judeo-ChristianGod (Daly 1984, 57-59), others (e.g., Beauvoir1965, 33) have gone furtherto touch upon its relation to the entire philosophical, sociocultural,and economic context within which the Westernfeminine condition unfolds. Transcendence,Erotomania,and Femininity In The SecondSex Simone de Beauvoir addressesthe "erotomania"that penetrates and permeates the mystic's discourse on God (Beauvoir 1965, 630-38). Assumingthat it is "the povertyof languagethat compelsthe mystic to borrowthis erotic vocabulary,"Beauvoirgoes on to suggestthat the mystic, borrowingthe wordsandphysicalattitudesof heterosexuallove, has "thesame behavior to offer God as what she displayswhen she offersherself to man" (Beauvoir 1965, 633). Nevertheless, Beauvoir would have us distinguish between the quest for "transcendence" and that for a "redemption of femininity"in mysticalerotomania(Beauvoir1965,634). "Whatdegradesthe hysteric,"she writes, "is not the fact that her body actively expressesher obsessions,but that she is obsessed"(Beauvoir1965, 633). In this way,it would theoreticallybe possibleto distinguishthe ecstatic phenomena of the erotomania of Saint Teresa(or of Saint John of the Cross) from that of secondary mystics,such as MarieAlacoque,Angela of Foligno,and CatherineEmmerich (Beauvoir1965, 634). In the lattercases, the mystics'practicesof self-annihilation and destructionof the flesh in the name of God'seternal love are, for Beauvoir,the expressionof woman'sambiguousrelation to the body, which requireshumiliation and sufferingin orderto transformthe body into glory:

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"The mystic will tortureher flesh to have the right to claim it; reducingit to abjection,she exalts it as the instrumentof salvation"(Beauvoir1965, 635). Thus what the majorityof female mystics,Saint Teresa's"minorsisters,"give us is "an essentiallyfeminine vision of the world and of salvation."For,she goes on, "it is not a transcendencethat they seek;it is the redemptionof their femininity"(Beauvoir1965, 634). But what about Catherine of Genoa? In Catherine'smysticalerotomania, transcendenceand femininity are united in death itself. Sharing with Saint Teresaof Avila and others in the imageryof God'sembraceof fire and flame, Catherine'sbody becomes the very text of this consummation.Unlike the stigmatathat appearon mystics'bodiesas the signsof a divine inscription,the annihilation of her body'slife on earth becomesboth the enactment and the vehicle of liberation.Thus what meansdo we have fordecidingwhetherit was transcendenceshe was seeking or the redemptionof her femininity?Are we to reject Catherine'spsychologyas the neuroticexpressionof woman'sambiguous relation to her body,or are we to accept it? And if so, as what?What is the concept of woman and of the body that her life and work,and especially her death, have to offerus? I would like to take the time to suggestsome possibilities.Forwe need not stay with Beauvoir'sdesexualizationof transcendencenor with Daly's neuroticizationof femininity.Eachof these positionsin its own wayparadoxically erasesand obliteratesboth the political and the historicalsignificanceof the femalemysticalexperience.While certainlyno othersareknown to have been consumed unto death by fire,10an adequate political discourse about Catherine's life and death would move beyond the sexual binarism of a redemptionof femininity.In so doing it wouldbringnew insightsto the rather extensive numberof mundanecases of medievalfemale "erotomania." Pathologyor Protest? In the context of the contemporaryquest for a historicopoliticaldiscourse aboutthe femalebody,a discourseadequateto what Bordocalls "the insidious and often contradictorypathwaysof modem social control" (Bordo 1989, 14-15), one might be tempted to align Catherine'smysticalexperience with what Bordodescribesas the "disciplineandnormalization"of the femalebody. In this respecta new axis emerges.In lieu of transcendenceand femininitywe have the axis of pathologyand protest.Accordingly,one might drawupon its connection with such gender-relatedandhistoricallylocalizeddisordersof the body ("female maladies")as neurasthenia,hysteria, anorexia nervosa, and agoraphobia(Bordo 1988; 1989, 14; 1990b,85)-all of which arecompatible with Catherine'ssymptomatology.Thus one might look upon the mystic's self-inflictedsubjectionas the social condition of "women's'docile bodies' "

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(Bordo 1990b, 95), a condition that workson behalf of the maintenanceand reproductionof patriarchalpowerrelations. However,where it is "muteness"that is the silent condition of existence of most other feminine pathologiesof the body (Bordo 1989, 21), in the case of the mystic it is ratherthe contrary.As Irigarayremindsus, "this is the only place in the historyof the West in which woman speaksand acts so publicly" (Irigaray1985a, 191). Thus the tension between the "psychologicalmeaning of the disorder,"which, to use Bordo'sanalysis,enacts fantasiesof protest,and the practical life of the disorderedbody that defeats rebellion and subverts protest (Bordo 1989, 25) finds a rather unique expression in the mystic's discourse.Without obviating the problematicof a "subversionof potential rebellion" (Bordo 1989, 15), I want nonetheless to use the instance of Catherine's ecritureto advance discussions about the "mechanism"that involves what Bordo insightfullydescribesas "a transformationof meaning throughwhich conditions that are 'objectively'constraining,enslaving, and even murderous,come to be experienced as liberating, transforming,lifegiving" (Bordo 1989, 15). This, Bordo explains, is often a mechanism that leadsto the "sufferer's" ideologicalconstructionof the femininityemblematic of the period in question, the symptomatologyhaving political meaning "within the varyingrules governingthe historicconstructionof gender,"and the symptomscharacteristicof the "normativefemininityof the era"(Bordo 1989, 16-17). Thus Catherine'scase allows us to study the culturalrepresentation of femininity in relation to the lives of bodies within a particular historicalperiod. Throughthe symptomatologyof its textual corps/corpus,it permitspolitical theorizationsabout"erotomania,"the mundanecounterpart of female mysticism,as a "pathologyof 'protest'" (Bordo 1988, 105). In the approximationof the textual body'snarrativeto that of the sexual body, a unique and historic expression of (writing) the female body emerges that anticipatesthe discourseof Irigarayand others.12 With these reflections in mind, I now want to brieflyoutline how in the case of the ecriture-feminine of Catherineof Genoa, a political discourseof the body is achieved. I will do so by firstconsideringthis discoursein the context of two historicalfactors:the patriarchaltheologizationof (female) mysticism on the one hand and the domesticationof piety on the other.While both these factorsrefer to the religiousuniverse of the Middle Ages, they nonetheless ouline two contexts within which Catherine'smysticismachieves a political dimension-the religious(proper)and the domestic.Thus I will argue,following Irigaray,that by accepting to live/writeher female sexuality in the autoerotic text of the mystical body through corporealdeath itself, Catherine's eludes the speculareconomy of a "hom(m)osexualGod" (Moi work/ecriture 1985, 137) and therebyachieves a "feminization"of transcendenceproper,a transcendencethat is specific to her own libidinaldrivesand one that opens up a transient (and domestic) spacewherein her own pleasurecan unfold.13

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Writingthe Mystic Body:The ReligiousContext If we consider Catherine'swork (ecriture) in the context of the Christian community'sglorificationof femininity in which individualmales would put themselvesin the role of the "bride,"Catherine'stranscendencecontests her era'sphallomorphic"feminization"of piety. With the imageryof the female recipient of God's caressing love, the relation between the transcendent creatorand his mortalcreation is portrayedby the religious/eroticmysticism of medieval piety in terms derived originallyfrom erotic poetry (Clark and Richardson1977, 9). However,becauseit is Catherine'sexperience and not only her symbols14that are female, a unity of discourseis achieved between the textual and the sexualbody.Femininity,or the "holding"of a femalebody, becomes a preconditionof transcendencein Catherine'smysticalpsychology and its resolution.Thus the famousand emphaticaffirmation"in Dio e il mio essere, il mio ME" (Catherine 1962, 171), translatedas "my ME is God" (Nugent 1984, 185), is a statementaccordedto Catherineherself (Catherine 1979, 30). Read alongside other statements such as "the proper center of everyone is God himself" and "mybeing is God not by simple participation butby truetransformationof mybeing,"it suggeststhat femininityin this sense is achieved in its fullestonly with her death.Figurativelyexpressingthe death of patriarchaldualisms,it is a deathin which resolutionis codedin the language of burningsexual ecstasy.For it is necessarilyher own sexual experience and its historicconditionsof existence that culminatedhere, in this firesymbolized not by a male religious deity as much as by the imageryof female sexual response. Farfrombeing "obsessed,"Catherinenot only expressesher obsessionsbut gives them transcendentalmeaning; that is, she constructs her own nondualistictext of that transcendence.In the inscriptionof femalesexuality,and female autoeroticism,onto the logic of "being-in-God,"her sex/textuality offersa respite from just those constraintsthat within her own era Western patriarchalmysticism(as much aspatriarchalsocial life) imposed.On the basis of a concept of the desiringbody as divine, the female body becomes the site of a "vulvomorphic"logic (Gallop 1988, 96). Its inscriptionof death in the languageof female desire eludes the symbolicdichotomies of the dominant theological tradition in accordancewith which notions of God, mind, and power are male whereassoul, flesh, and weaknessare female.15In this way it also dislodges the theologization of (female) mysticism from its privileged station as the teleological economy of a masculineGod desiringhis Son and defeats the "hom(m)osexualeconomy" (Moi 1985, 137) of medieval mysticism. In this respect the emblematic maleness of her God in no way weakens Catherine'sachievement;on the contrary,in giving it a concrete formwithin the rulesgoverningthe historicalconstructionof gender,it is only reaffirmed.

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In the ideological construction of the characteristicsof normative sexual relations, the symptomatologyof a consumingfire of love lends itself to the possibilityof transformingsexual, domestic, as well as religiousconditions of constraint. The Politics of Sexuality and Textuality:The Domestic Context In herspiritualpsychology,Catherinereiteratesthemesof mind-bodydialogue, self-love and self-hate,and fulfillmentin God that typify medieval women's "characteristic" spiritualityand its discourse.Althoughperhapsalone in givingit such systematicvoice, her discourseis also representativeof the (Neoplatonic) spiritualtraditionof her times.However,what is distinctiveaboutCatherineis of herdeathanditspositionin the particulardiscursive the unusualcircumstances context of her work.In the domesticcontext,this makesit difficultto reasonas an effective meansof takingcontrol. It is here that the paradigmof writingthe body expressedin Catherine'secriture-femininesuggestsnew possibilitiesfor developinga theoreticaldiscourseaboutfemalemysticism.Forit addressesthe eroticdimensionof women'sspiritualityasnot only a meansof controlbut also as an experience.16In this way it rescuesthe eroticizationof the female body froma presumedposition of ambivalenceandcontextualizeswomen'smystical experiencehistoricallyand politicallywithin a new mechanismof subversion and protest. Insofaras Catherine'smysticism(her life, her works,and her death) renders the imageof bodily fire into the distinctive motif of the desirefor consummation in God, the particularpathologyof protestthat it expressesextends into the articulation of female desire itself. Thus her experience suggests the existence of a "mechanism"through which changes were rung upon the possibilitiesprovidedbythe bodyin termsof sexualaswell asreligiousconstraints. If we considerthe conflictbetweenself-loveand self-hateto which Catherine's mysticalpsychologygives voice, we can detect how this mechanismbecomes inextricablylinked with what Bordocalls "dilemmasconcerning the management of desire"(Bordo 1990b, 105). The female mysticalexperience of the eroticizedbody on fire unfolds for Catherinein the context of an Italianclimateof reformin which issuesof piety become inextricablylinked with domesticity and sexuality.As theologians werebusyexpandingthe notions of Christianroleswithin society and making a religiousplace for the laity, Catherine, along with other medieval women, could pursuea religiouslife without ever leaving home (Bynum 1987, 222). In this way women could find in spiritualitythe means to affect not only religiousbut also domesticand sexual conditions of constraint(Bynum 1987, 237-39). Thus for women of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries "lay spirituality"became the standardmeans of escapingmaritalconditions they did not desire. The number of marriedsaints suggeststhat it was not the

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absence but the presence of a prospective bridegroom(or husband) that activatedthe desireforperpetualchastity.While there is considerablecontroversyabout the chronologicaldetails of Catherine'slife (Bynum 1987, 181), scholarsagreethat a forcedmarriageat age sixteen to a wastefuland dissolute noblemanbroughtCatherineto a stateof severeaccidiaand withdrawalwithin five years.It was followingher husband'sbankruptcyand upon learningabout his mistressand illegitimate child that she threw herself into the care of the sick and into identification with their suffering.However, besides being an effectivemeansof escapefromfamily,enforcedvirginityandsexualabstinence were also a positive religiousideal as women became models of piety in their own right (Bynum 1987, 277). This double articulationof female desire is particularlytrue of Catherine herself, for the spirituallife offered both an escape from marriageas well as its redefinition. Like other husbandswho followed their wife's lead in spiritual issues (Bynum 1987, 220, 221), Catherine'shusbandagreedto a chaste marriageand eventuallyjoined her in voluntarypovertyand the hospitalworkin which they spent the rest of their lives (Bynum 1987, 181). Read in conjunction with the text of her spiritualpsychology,Catherine's individualizedexperience of the body can be seen to mediate between the conflictual tendencies that medieval women experienced in their domestic lives. The conflict between Catherine's"self-love"and "self-hate,"far from reflectinga mind/bodydualism,expressesthe social and historicaldimension of dilemmasin the domestic managementof medieval women'sdesire. The conflicting"instinctualtendencies"betweenthe desiresof the mind and those of the body that permeateCatherine'stext of self enact the historicalconditions that bring women to choose between rejecting the world orderthat is given and therebyshapingtheir own experiencesor submittingto the ones at hand. While these competingpossibilitiesand their opposingdiscourses"fit" the discursivemold of a dualisticmysticaltradition,they equallyelude it. In the tripartiteorderof the self that Catherine'sspiritualtext provides,the face of God becomes the palimpsestupon which resolutionis inscribed. Thus if Catherine'slife expressesa "dilemma"concerningthe management of desire, Catherine's death, the complete corporeal embodiment of her consummation,becomes the site at which this dilemma is resolved. Via a transformationof meaning in which death itself is experiencedas life-giving, the ecstatic consummationof Catherine'sbody in God expressesthe sense in which her symbolism defeats the equation of sexual ecstasy with sexual dualism. In this way, it also expressesthe sense in which female mystical self-annihilation (along with less radicalforms of self-abnegation)effects a politicsof experiencingthe bodydirectly(since in no waycan we presumethat in this case it is a questionof controllingit). Catherine'secrituremustbe lookedupon in the context of a periodin which the religiousmotif of bodily states induced by the deprivationof coitus and

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experiencedas burningflashesandhot sensationsof the eroticizedfemaleflesh was widespread.In this context, it suggeststhat a new ambivalence about marriageand sexuality had emergedin the fifteenth century (Bynum 1987, 20-21).17In a less extreme way, the radiantexultation that medieval women arereported,in their own as well as others'accounts(Beauvoir1965, 559-560, 632), to have experiencedby the presumedlove of an imaginarylover functions both in collusion with and in oppositionto the culturalconditions that producethem. Togetherwith attacks on the body and persistentself-abasements, these erotic sensationsand ecstaticpeaksappearnot as the internalization of a dualistic and misogynousreligioustradition.Rather,these various corporealexpressionsof women'sreligiosityreflect the contradictoryexperiences of their social and their sexual bodies. Whether in resistanceto or in collusion with the circumstancesof constraint,the body and corporealsignification become the site at which medievalwomen transformedtheir conditions and liberated,even if momentarily,their desires. Chartingthe stagesof woman'scoming into her own, the psychologyand ecriture of Catherine of Genoa must also be looked upon as a milestone in writing the autoeroticismof the female body. In the spirit of a speech that would speak the female body directly,the ecriture-f6minine of Catherine of Genoa is not just the writing of a nonphallomorphicspiritualtext; it is also perhapsone of the firstto constructa sexuality,one that is not predicatedupon the embodimentof a "hom(m)osexualeconomy"of desire-an economy that, certainlyuntil the end of the Enlightenment,continued to identify conception/coitus as the only avenue of feminine pleasureand sexual desire.18 While in no way looking to essentialize,neither do we want to marginalize what stands out in the annals of religiouswriting as one of perhapsmany undiscoveredretreatsfrom the imperialeconomy of patriarchalwriting and culture.Given the place of female mysticismin the historicalcontext of her own era, the case of Catherineoffersup a lot more than the call to "speakthe body"in answerto a socialpoliticsof control.Forasa decadeof feministtheory of the body has amplydemonstrated,this is no unproblematiccall. V. Mysticismof the Bodyand the Mystic Body In the grassrootspolitics of today'sstakes, the body has emerged as a recurrenttheme in feminist writing.Contemporaryfeminists have begun to explorealternativesto traditionalmind-centeredapproaches,envisioningthe body'srole in intellectual insight and insistingupon the centralityof the body in the reproductionand transformationof culture. Much of this feminist attemptto revisionand (re)writethe bodycenterson a move to emphasizethe potentialalterityof woman'ssexualityas a sourceofnonphallic metaphorsthat challenge the binaryoppositionsdividing mind from body, reasonfrom passion, cultureform nature,and self from other, forgingthe programmaticcall

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to rethink the body outside its binaryrepresentation(Lloyd 1984; Jacobus, Keller,andShuttleworth1990;BordoandJaggar1989). It is within the context of this contemporarymove to rethink and rewritethe body that writing the mysticbody gains particularvalue and importance.As "the only place in the historyof the West in which womanspeaksand acts so publicly"the mystic's discoursepresentsone of themost fully realizedinstancesof ecriture-feminine. In the case of Catherine of Genoa, the particulararticulationof the lived conditions of the body and its representationin the text of her mystical psychologyallow us to move beyond a simple and essentialistcelebrationof the bodyas the locusprincipusof woman'ssexual/textualsubjecthood19-what as a "mysticismof the has been termedby the denouncersof ecriture-feminine It allows us instead to view it in the context of its 53). 1989, body"(Dallery historical conditions of for Thus, example, we might emergence. particular with the Catherine's of ecriture-feminine's writing mysticbody usefullycompare alleged"mysticismof the body,"which no longerprojectsa male sexualOther but subsumespluralityand differencewithin its vulvomorphiclogic. In this way,the mystic'sdiscoursecan suturethe gapsbetween the cultural and the lived conditions of the body;in representationsof an dcriture-feminine other words,it can allow us to see how the body might be reconceptualized from within feminist practice as the site of an ongoing strugglebetween the possibilityof self-representation(fromwithin the discourseof a femalesexual economy) and the phallomorphicpowersof social control that exclude and/or suppressit. This, it seems to me, can answerthe presentneed for what Susan Bordocalls an "effectivepolitical discourseabout the body,"one that is not only adequate to the analysis of paradoxicalpatterns of social control of women'sbodies,but is alsopossiblefromwithin a feministintellectualperspective, inhabiting those spaces and "repealingthe silences" that accordingto Dalleryemergewithin feministtheoryitself as we discoverthat there exists no such"fixed,univocal,ahistoricalwoman'sbodyasreferent"(Dallery1989, 63). To look, therefore,uponCatherine'sdeathassignificantonly bywayof analogy with "thedeath of womanunderpatriarchy"wouldbe a mistake.So too would it be to look upon it as the "birthof woman"outside of it. As Jane Gallop ruefullyremindsus, "the politics of experience is inevitably a conservative politics,for it cannot help but conservetraditionalideologicalconstructswhich arenot recognizedas suchbut aretakenforthe 'real'" (Gallop 1988,99). What I have proposedhere is something quite different.As an ecriturefeminineand a politics of ecriture-feminine,Catherine'sgeographyof the mystical imaginarytracesitself againstthe contoursof sexualbarriers,constructed as it is within a tradition that excludes, represses,oppresses,but even more importantlyconditions, women'ssexual response.In the context of its own era, it nonetheless reflects the need to disturb,even partiallyor temporarily, those fronts, to push against the establishedbounds while questioning the llusionsof its referentialdefinitionsfromwithin as well as fromwithout that

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tradition.20Forwhile the mystic'sexperienceno longerformsthe foundations upon which today'sconstructionof genderdepends,its political meaning,as a discoursethat tracesthe boundariesbetweentextualityand sexuality,"lived" experienceand representation,upon the face of the femalebody,it is as much symptomatologicalas it is characteristicof the worldthat women today wish to review,understand,rethink,remake.

NOTES A shorterversion of this paperwas presentedin a session entitled "Sacrificeand Critique:Postmodemityand its ReligiousSubtext,"jointly sponsoredby the Canadian Society for Hermeneuticsand Postmoder Thought and the PostmodemTheory and Religion InterestGroup,LearnedSocieties Conference,Queen'sUniversity,Kingston, Ontario, May 1991. The paper owes its formationto a series of circumstancesand scholarlyinputs.Mythanksto Sr.PrudenceAllen, R.S.M.,who engagedmyphilosophical interestin medievalfemalemysticsandguidedme in myfirstencounterwith Catherine's life and works.Thanks also to the Hypatiarefereesfor insightfulcommentsthat have helped develop the historical dimension of the paper and to its editors who have contributedthoughtfulimprovementsof style. FinallyI wish to thank David Allison, whoseenthusiasmand supportforthe paperhave shown me waysto take it further. 1. Michel Foucaultdiscussesthe sense in which a "technologyof the self" and "practicesof the self" placedthe body in the serviceof the moralidealsof self-mastery in Greekand Romanantiquity(Foucault1986, 11, 13). With the rise of a discourseon sexualityitself,a "technologyof sex"laterdevelopsin which the body is partof a more complexsystemof subjugationand resistance(Foucault1980, 115). 2. Both Bynum's(1987) andBell's(1985) studiesof the religioussignificanceof food contain sections on Catherine.While Bynumnotes that fire, as well as hunger,is a dominantimagefor desireand encounterwith God in Catherine'scase (Bynum 1987, 184), no attempt is made to disentanglethese two images.Consequently,the imageof fire is collapsedwith that of food, and the significanceof Catherine'sindividualized experienceis blurred. 3. JacquesLacan(1982) discussesat greatlength the significanceof sexualecstasy in Bemini'sstatueof SaintTeresain termsof psychoanalyticaccountsof femalesexuality. He writes:"youonly have to go and look at Bernini'sstatuein Rome to understandthat she is coming" (Lacan 1982, 147). In interpretingthis "God face" as supportedby femininejouissance(sexual ecstasy),Lacanlays the foundationfor a theory of female sexualitythat is "beyondthe phallus"(Lacan 1982, 145) and therebyanticipatessome of the moreprovocativethesesof 6criture-feminine. 4. In HolyFeastandHolyFast:TheReligious Significance of Foodto MedievalWomen, valueof food imagesin medievalwomen'sspirituality Bynumdiscussesthe transformative (Bynum1987, 25ff). 5. There remainsconsiderablescholarlycontroversyover the authorshipof the spiritualworksattributedto Catherineof Genoa (Bell 1985, 161;Bynum1987). 6. Male biographersromanticizedand sentimentalizedfemalevirtueby describing it in heightenedand erotic imagery(Bynum1987, 29). Accordingto Bynum,if we wish to understandwhat it meantto medievalwomento be symbolsof transcendencewe must

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"payattention to what women said and did, avoidingthe assumptionthat they simply internalizedthe rhetoricof theologians,confessors,or husbands"(Bynum1987, 29). 7. By 1500 the modelof the femalesaint,expressedboth in popularvenerationand in officialcanonization,wasthe mirrorimageof society'snotion of the witch, as each was thought to be "possessed"be it by God or the Devil (Bynum 1987, 23). Accordingto Bynum, the similarityof witch and saint in the eyes of the theologians and male suggeststhat the saintwasas threateningas the witchto clericalauthorities hagiographers (Bynum 1987, 23). In this context the veneration of woman can be interpretedas evidence of a clericaltraditionthat looks upon womanas a threateningbeing-a being whosesignificanceis to be obliterated. 8. TorilMoi theorizesthe relationof writingandvoice in theoriesof ecriture-feminine. She arguesthat the speakingwomanis her voice by way of corporealsignificationthat becomesthe "enactmentof liberation"ratherthan its merevehicle (Moi 1985, 114, 125). 9. CarolineBynumdiscussesthe significancefor feministresearchof the fact that most of our informationon late medievalwomen'sreligiositycomes frommale biographersand chroniclersin termsof its effect on our understandingof the significanceof late medievalwomen'spiety and religiousexperience(Bynum1987, 28ff.). 10. The problematicnatureof such a simple,ahistoricalcelebrationand the dangers of fallingwithin the "essentialisttrap"have been amplydemonstratedby Bordo(1989), Moi (1985), and Dallery(1989). 11. The closest to have come to this is Saint Teresaof Avila, whose vision of the flamingheart(quotedin Irigaray1985a,201, n. 2), togetherwith SaintJohnof the Cross (TheLivingFlameof Love)describesthe mystic'slove of God in imagesof fireandflames. 12. The notion of ecriture-fiminine as the submergedtext of femalesubjectivityand sexuality is developed primarilyby Luce Irigaray(1981, 1985b) and Helene Cixous (CixouxandClement 1988) as "aspeechanalogousto the femalebody,that wouldspeak the femalebodydirectly"(Gallop 1988,93). It takesas its inspirationthe synechdochical connection betweenthe vulvulareconomyof the femalegenitaliaand the speakinglips, therebydisplacingnot only the phallomorphiceconomy of male genitaliabut also its concomitantbinarismbetweenthe clitoris(as supposedsite of femaleautoeroticism)and the female vagina (site of reproductivesexuality).As an alternativeto binarythought and a figurativereconceptualizationof the femalebody,women'sspeakinglips/ecriturefemininemetonymicallysuggestplurality,multiplicity,and the dissolutionof bounds. 13. In her essay "La mysterique,"in whose neologistic title are fused the female LuceIrigaray(1985a) presentsa powerfulargumentfor looking mystic/hysteric/mystery, her utterabjectionbeforethe divine as uponthe mystic'sself-abasementand surrender, partand parcelof the femininecondition in which she wasbroughtup (Moi 1985, 137). Herargumentis that this perspectiveallowsfemininityto discoveritselfpreciselythrough the deepestacceptanceof patriarchalsubjection.Put differently,femalemysticism,like femalehysteria,offerswomana real, if limited,possibilityof discoveringaspectsof her pleasurethat cannot be subsumedundera malelibidinaleconomybut arespecificto her own libidinaldrives. Irigaray'sexampledoes not extend beyond the instance of Saint Teresa'svision of the flamingheart (Irigaray1985a,201, n. 2). While a discourseon the bodyis presentin the workofTeresaof Avila(Allen 1987)thatcontrastswith the classical Platonic/Augustinian/Cartesian binaryprinciples,that discourseis not elaboratedby Irigaraywithin the frameworkof a specificallymysticalpsychology.Consequently,no reallyhistoricalinstanceof writingthe mysticbodyhas been presentedin keepingwith Irigaray's perspective.

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14. Consider,for instance, the female symbolismthat pervadesSaint John of the Cross'seroticizationof piety (John1962). Predatinghim by at leasta centuryin time, the mysticalpsychologyof Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510) is believed to have been a decidedinfluence(alongwith the Song of Songs)on the worksof SaintJohnof the Cross (1541-1591). His work The LivingFlameof Love,consideredto be the most profound expositionof spirituallife in the historyof mysticism,is a workthat finds inspirationin andPurgation and TheSpiritual Catherine'sPurgatory Dialogue(Catherine1979, 38). 15. Bynum correctlynotes that while women'sspiritualityand sense of self were influencedby the symbolicdichotomiesof the dominanttheologicaltradition,women's imagesand metaphorstook a shapeof theirown "obliqueto a maletraditionof spiritual writingin which the male/femaledichotomywas a symbolfor manyother oppositions" (Bynum1987, 294). 16. Bynumarguesthat medievalreligiositywasa nondualisticone in which corporeal privationis a markof the desireto experienceratherthan to control the body (Bynum 1987,216,245). 17. The dangersof childbirthandthe medievaldiscourseon the brutalityof marriage notwithstanding,the fact that marriagewasa "life-threatening" undertakingin the eyes of medievalwomen is not a considerationto be underestimated(Bynum1987, 266). 18. ThomasLaqueur(1986, 1), cited in Jacobus(1990, 26, n. 1) maintainsthat it was not beforethe end of the centuryof Enlightenmentthat female orgasmwas medically disjoinedfromgeneration.Jacobus(1990) presentsan argumentfor looking upon this of conceptionsof a unified,coherent, disjunctionas symptomaticof the "disordering" femininesubject.She arguesthat this is antitheticalto the theologicalimperativethat in contemporarydebateson artificialfertilizationandreproductionwishesto reappropriate femininityunderthe aspectof maternity. 19.SusanSuleiman'sessay"(Re)Writingthe Body:The PoliticsandPoeticsof Female Eroticism"(Suleiman 1986) has been addressedby Bordo (1989) in particularas an instanceof this typeof oversimplification. However,Bordodoesnot fullyclarifythe sense in which we might still retain a valuation of the representationsof a female textual imaginarywithin historical conditions of emergence.Indeed, her focus on woman's textualmutenessin manifestationsof disordersof the bodyprecludessuchan evaluation. Instead,one mightturnto the essayby Arleen Dallery"ThePoliticsof Writingthe Body: ecriture-feminine" (Dallery1989) in which the attemptto rescuethe politics of ecriturefemininefrom some of the oftentimesexcessive rhetoricagainstessentialism(see also Bordo1990a) offersup new venuesfor politicalredress. 20. JaneGalloppresentsan interestingtheorizationof criture-feminine asthe antidote to the phallomorphic"referentialillusion"in heressay"LipService"(Gallop 1988).This essay has also appearedunder the title "Quandnos levres s'ecrivent:Irigaray'sBody Politic" (Gallop 1983) and worksagainst any unproblematicnotion of the "real"in alternativeas much as traditionalnotions of woman'ssexualbody.

REFERENCES Allen, Prudence.1987.Soul, bodyand transcendencein Teresaof Avila. TorontoJournal of Theology3(2): 252-66. Beauvoir,Simone de. 1965. Thesecondsex.H. M. Parshley,trans.New York:Bantam. Bell, RudolphM. 1985. Holyanorexia.Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress.

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