Download PDF | Jerome Kroll, Bernard Bachrach - The Mystic Mind_ The Psychology of Medieval Mystics and Ascetics-Routledge (2005).
289 Pages
PREFACE
This book has been an interdisciplinary endeavor and, as such, the authors have benefited from many rich discussions, insights, and critiques of colleagues and friends. In particular, we would like to thank the late Roger De Ganck, Chaplain to Our Lady of the Redwoods Monastery for his close friendship, support, and loving conversations. We also thank the late former Abbess Myriam Dardennes and the Cistercian community of Our Lady of the Redwoods Monastery for opening their hearts and their community to us. We have been enriched by discussions with Professor Noel Dermot O’Donoghue of Edinburgh University, Professor Columba Stewart of St. Johns University in Collegeville, Minnesota, Dara Malloy and Tess Harper of the Aran Islands, and the Reverend Marcus Losack of Ceile De in Glendalough, Ireland. Mary Schaffer, Curator of the Arca Artium Research Collection of St. John’s University, Collegeville, was most generous of her time and expertise in locating medieval illustrations and supplying textual background for the images that grace this book.
Discussions with professors Luke Demaitre and Stanley Jackson provided us with insight and clarity into the history of medicine in the Middle Ages. At the University of Minnesota, our colleagues gave us their expertise in various physiological and psychological areas: absorption and altered states of consciousness (Auke Tellegen), pain (Donald Simone), sleep (Mark Mahowald and Tom Hurwitz), and fasting and starvation (James Mitchell). Paul Thuras and Joel Hechtner provided the statistical analyses for our studies. We thank our editors in the history section at Routledge, Vicky Peters and Jane Blackwell, for their help and insights in keeping the project on track, as well as Professor Ursula King of the University of Bristol, England and an anonymous reviewer for their thoughtful critiques of earlier drafts of the manuscript that propelled us into more judicious revisions.
We especially appreciate the computer expertise and patience of John Hopwood at the University of Minnesota, who convinced us that there were system solutions other than throwing the equipment (and, with it, the electronic manuscript) out the window. We also thank Jennifer Summer Armstrong for unstinting data entry services and Mary DeWitt, Janet Holland, Janet Bockenstedt and Gloria Wolf for clerical and administrative support.
Finally, JK wishes to express his deep thanks to Kathleen Carey for her continuous support, encouragement, and critical and perceptive readings of the manuscript.
INTRODUCTION
Defining the questions1 Recurring figures throughout medieval history, ones that attracted and still attract more attention than the actual numbers would justify, are the religious mystic and heroic ascetic. Capturing local and, at times, national and international notoriety, mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), Francis of Assisi (1181–1226), and Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) and heroic ascetics such as Simeon Stylites the elder (c.388–459) and younger (521–597), Peter of Luxembourg (1369– 1387), and Catherine of Siena (1347–1380) served as exemplars of Christian pursuit of the divine and rejection of worldly values. Simultaneously, some of these holy persons also became objects of suspicion and ridicule because of their public displays of excessive holiness and self-injurious practices. Benedict of Aniane (c.745–821), who in his later years was Charlemagne’s architect of monastic reform, was criticized for the ferociousness of his earlier selfinflicted injuries.
Christina Mirabilis (1150–1224) was considered mad because of her excessive asceticism, and Juliana of Mont Cornillon (1193–1258) drew the ire of her sister nuns for her debilitating fasts. Francis of Assisi was considered a half-wit because of his uncompromising voluntary poverty and Brother Giles of Assisi (d.1262), who went into trance states at the mere mention of the word “Paradise,” was taunted by children who shouted “paradise” over and over again. Flora of Beaulieu (1309–1347) was not only ridiculed as a hypocrite by the sisters of her priory for her religious devotions, but was further humiliated when outsiders were invited to the priory to stare at and mimic her. The high visibility of such mystics and ascetics has made it difficult to gain an accurate estimate and sober appraisal of their prevalence and influence in medieval expressions of piety. Questions about the psychology of intense mysticism and heroic asceticism have similarly been affected by the religious partisanship and emotionality that arise when one considers in detail the other-worldliness of the mystics and the mortifications and physical damage some ascetics have inflicted upon themselves.
The religious quest for a mystical experience can be seen as one special category within an elemental human tendency to escape or transcend the ordinary state of consciousness. If consciousness is a fundamental and defining characteristic of the human condition, then the drive to escape or move beyond the cluttered and often unpleasant day-to-day state of consciousness to a variety of altered states, including mystical states, is an equally basic human trait. All societies recognize and bestow elevated status upon religious and mystical forms of altered states of consciousness and their immediate and long-term after-effects. Each society determines the specific conditions, induction techniques, rules, and particular types of altered states that constitute legitimate religious ritual and ceremony. Among these methods, sometimes used in combination, are various forms of meditation and prayer, chanting, whirling and dancing, drumming, fasting, social isolation, sleep deprivation, ingestion of alcohol and other drugs, and self-injurious behaviors. Societies also instruct and prepare novices and initiates regarding what types of experiences to expect when in different altered states of consciousness, and provide a rich vocabulary, usually metaphorical, to describe these experiences. In medieval Europe, altered states of consciousness, characterized as pathways to mystical union with God, were the ultimate goal of spiritually oriented persons.
This generalization must be refined by the understanding that what was entailed in union with God changed from the intellectualized Platonic notion held in the early Middle Ages to the personalized and emotional notion of mystical union with Jesus held in the later Middle Ages. Some medieval holy persons appear to have been able to achieve, through techniques of prayer and meditation, those forms of altered states that constitute a mystical experience. Many others were not, especially since Western Christianity during much of the Middle Ages did not have available, despite John Cassian’s (d.435) early influence, as strong a tradition of meditative practices as those found in Eastern religions (Hinduism and Buddhism), or even Eastern Orthodoxy, that could be methodically taught to novices and initiates. We are referring here to the absence of a body of prescriptive knowledge and techniques that could be formally taught as an orderly sequence of prayer and meditation that permits and guides practitioners progressively to clear their minds of worldly concerns and to focus, most usually, on the presence of Christ that resides within. Such techniques, when present, were relatively underdeveloped in the West prior to the eleventh century, when the major concerns of the ecclesiastical and governing segments of society were the ongoing conversion of the population to Christianity and the inculcation of a Christian world view into secular society. Given these limitations in the transmission of meditative techniques, some spiritually driven persons employed harsh self-injurious practices as a method of inducing altered states of consciousness. Mild to moderate self-denying and self-injurious behaviors as a form of ascetic discipline had the sanction of being compatible with and even expressive of the larger Christian world view of contemptus mundi.
However, there was fairly uniform official disapproval, although ambivalent popular responses, of the extreme measures which some heroic ascetics undertook. In addition to broad socio-cultural influences that affect attainment of altered states, individuals differ greatly in their ability, propensity, and motivation to experience altered states. As with all other human traits and dispositions that are distributed as dimensional properties across a population, variation among individuals in proneness to experience altered states of consciousness (such as absorption, transcendence, ease of entering into trance states, and suggestibility) most likely reflects differences in genetic disposition as well as differences in life experiences. For some individuals, altered states are achieved relatively easily. Others, however, including some who express strong desire to experience transcendental states, have great difficulty, if they are able at all, in reaching even moderate levels of altered states that a few gifted persons seem to achieve so effortlessly.
To be “earthbound” when the premier value of one’s group, such as a fourteenthcentury Rhineland monastic community, is literally to soar with the angels, is to be placed at great psychological and moral disadvantage, both introspectively and socially. The thick-boundaried person, one who cannot easily shift into other levels of reality but who nevertheless desires and is encouraged to experience an altered (mystical) state, has several options. One is to help the process along by whatever means are culturally and personally available (such as sleep deprivation, severe fasting, or mortification of the flesh). Alternatively, one may pursue several other patterns, including outright faking such states, or imitating the behaviors of genuine mystics until one can talk oneself into believing that one is really experiencing ecstatic states, or accepting the fact that one’s pathway to holiness is not the mystical journey, but rather some combination of moderate asceticism and charitable and administrative works. The role of God’s grace as the critical factor in achieving a mystical state, such that human endeavor and merit are irrelevant, inserts itself into these discussions, but in practical terms, the very notion of holiness in later medieval society usually entailed, whatever the theoretical role of grace, an intense personal pursuit of closeness with Christ.
Critics, both medieval and modern, of heroic asceticism have asserted that altered states achieved via self-injury are not bona fide mystical states, and that the heroic ascetic mistakes perversity for holiness. This controversy is part of the larger question of the role of any trance-inducing technique other than prayer and meditation in the formation of a mystical state. We are not here suggesting that self-injurious behaviors are a particularly effective or doctrinally correct way to achieve a mystical state, or that what is achieved is similar to mystical states reached through other methods, but only that religiously committed individuals have in fact used such ascetic behaviors as a method of trance induction. As a corollary observation, use of alcohol and plant medicinals to produce an altered state of consciousness, a legitimate method of religious trance induction in cultures worldwide with minimal political stratification, was criticized and discouraged in medieval Europe, and any altered states thus achieved were not considered authentic mystical states. In present Western society, alcohol and drugs have been the statistically preferred and socially acceptable methods of altering one’s waking state of consciousness for secular purposes. But ingestion of these substances remains, as in medieval times, generally devalued and proscribed as methods of trance induction in mainstream Christian religious contexts, despite some attempts in the 1960s to experiment with hallucinogens as inducers of transcendental states. Heroic asceticism too is considered, by both religious and professional consensus, a suspect and relatively deviant method of legitimate mystical quest.
Prayer and meditation are the preferred routes to pursuit of closeness to God in present Western society, but this has created an awkward situation because knowledge and teaching of meditative techniques, such as were developed in medieval Europe and by the sixteenthcentury Spanish mystics, notably Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556) and John of the Cross (1542–1591), have languished in the face of the scientific revolution and the Protestant Reformation. Reflecting the relative poverty of a tradition of meditative practices in the Western world up to the present time, there has been increased attention recently to Eastern forms and techniques of meditation as means of achieving a more “genuine” altered state of consciousness, one that depends neither upon alcohol and drugs nor self-injurious behaviors. Interestingly enough, the field of psychiatry/psychotherapy has developed a very recent, but intense interest in one category of altered state of consciousness known as dissociative episodes and its extreme expression, multiple personality. One school of modern psychological theory links the propensity to develop dissociative states to experiences of sexual abuse in childhood, although the validity and significance of these findings are fiercely debated. It appears that, in many cases, dissociative episodes with rich and non-credible imagery have been induced in patients by overly zealous therapists, a finding that speaks to the suggestibility and imagination of many persons who readily dissociate. Childhood sexual abuse is also strongly associated in most studies with self-injurious behaviors in adulthood.
Thus, the conjunction of self-injurious behaviors and altered states of consciousness, seen prominently in some medieval mystics, appears in some twentieth-century young adults, but, in keeping with the predominantly secular approach to understanding behaviors considered deviant, the convergence is explained in modern times in terms of altered states of consciousness as posttraumatic stress responses to childhood sexual abuse rather than as spiritually directed behavior in search of union with God. Explicitly, we are not suggesting that there is any relationship between asceticism and mysticism in medieval Europe and the experience of childhood sexual abuse. There are other reasons, nevertheless, for comparing the apparent increase in self-injurious behaviors and its conjunction with altered states of consciousness in the later Middle Ages and in the latter half of the twentieth century.
First, we have an opportunity to study directly the physiology and psychology of modern self-injurers, which we obviously cannot do with medieval persons. Although the psychology might turn out, or be postulated, as very different between medieval and modern experiences, the opposite would be true for the physiology. Human physiology, and the major effects of physiological changes caused by self-injurious practices upon psychological functioning, has not changed much if at all in one millennium. It is possible, however, that motivation and a positive emotional state when engaged in self-injurious behaviors might in turn influence the physiological effects of these behaviors in medieval practitioners as compared to modern self-injurers. Further, there may be similarities in the formal characteristics of the pattern of social diffusion of such self-injurious behaviors within susceptible populations. In both medieval and modern times, there appears to be a contagiousness in how the phenomena of self-injurious behaviors and altered states of consciousness spread among culturally primed or susceptible groups, and in how society, at times, reinforces self-injurious behaviors by providing and endorsing meaningful explanations and responses to such behaviors.
The significance of social support for self-injurious behavior and altered states of consciousness in both periods is noteworthy. This is especially important because there has also been, in each society, considerable opposition to the practice of self-injurious behaviors and suspiciousness about the development of dramatic forms of altered states of consciousness. Critics of the practice of self-injurious behaviors and the development of altered states in medieval and modern times have perceived these behaviors as either outright manipulations of public sentiment or as evidence of deep psychological disturbances. At the same time, social institutions have encouraged in various ways the very actions that they claim to condemn. For example, special status in terms of exemption from work productivity and acknowledgment that temporary caretaking may be required are found in medieval monastic and modern secular institutions for those who display altered states of consciousness and self-injurious behaviors. In addition, in some circles, there has been a certain cachet or mystique in those modern self-injurers labeled Borderline Personality Disorder or, in the case of anorexia nervosa, Hunger Artists. Attempts to apply modern psychological understanding to the behaviors of the major heroic ascetic figures, and to the hundreds of lesser known ascetics who have earned either their own religious biographies or occasional mention in other medieval source material, are exceptionally controversial.
Criticism and defense of the use of the methods and insights of behavioral sciences in regard to medieval patterns of behavior have been colored by the basic attitudes of belief or skepticism with which historians and others have approached the topic. Levels of explanation concerning why certain medieval persons injured themselves have ranged from psychoanalytic investigations, which predictably consider extreme asceticism as examples of psychopathology, to hagiographically tinged studies that perceive ascetic excesses as understandable responses of intensely God-driven individuals. Historians have traditionally examined and explained the phenomena of excessive self-injurious behaviors among religiously committed individuals in terms of culturally shaped spiritual motivations. These include the attempt of ascetics to make themselves worthy of sustaining a personal relationship with God, although discussion of the intellectual framework within which God might appreciate such behavior is highly problematic. Further, an enduring body of thought, both medieval and modern, identifies efforts to mortify the flesh with the purpose of subduing its demands, particularly in areas of sexual desire, gluttony, and creature comforts. We emphasize here that the traditional notion of moderate asceticism as a form of self-discipline which places body and soul in moral balance is a somewhat different species of behavior than the heroic asceticism to which we refer.
Recently, a new generation of social-minded scholars have described and explained aspects of female asceticism, especially that which appears related to an asceticism of food refusal (anorexia), in terms of feminine protest against a male-dominated ecclesiastical hierarchy that tried to constrict the forms by which deep spiritual sentiments may be expressed. There are other models of explanation of various sorts of human behavior available that traditionally have not formed part of the working apparatus of those who study and write about medieval religious persons. Despite the widely recognized fact that the condition of the body affects the working of the mind, a large body of scholarly thought dismisses out of hand the value of modern medical and biological research as important tools in helping us to understand medieval spiritual phenomena and, in particular, self-injurious behaviors. This stance is very curious in light of extensive modern medical research and clinical experience in regard to human and non-human self-injurious behaviors. At the present time, behavioral scientists have amassed considerable data about the physiological and psychological antecedents and effects of self-injurious behaviors, the personality characteristics of self-injurers, and the personal and social circumstances under which such behaviors proliferate and find social meaning and coherence.
In a similar manner, there has been considerable study during the past few decades into the psychological and neurophysiological characteristics of trance states and other altered states of consciousness. This information too is available for use in an examination of the conditions under which mystical experiences occur in the social context of the modern world and, by extension, of medieval European as well as non-Western societies. The primary questions that we wish to consider in this book relate to the connections between mysticism and heroic asceticism. How are we to understand the intentional and harsh self-injurious behaviors of some religiously committed individuals during the Middle Ages? How do self-injurious behaviors relate, if at all, to experiences that, during the Middle Ages, were considered mystical in nature? Were they separate phenomena that reflected an underlying unity of personality and intense religious drive, or were the two expressions also linked by some causal interaction between asceticism and the occurrence of mystical states? In order to approach this topic, two preliminary questions about the population of medieval self-injurers and mystics must first be addressed. The first, simply, is “Who were they?” What are the identifying and defining characteristics of this population? Are they primarily male or female, young or old, early or late medieval, religious or lay persons? The second question asks, “What types of self-injurious behaviors did the medieval ascetics engage in?” What methods were used? Meaningful answers to these broad questions must take into account the strong likelihood that the heroic self-injurers do not form a homogeneous group, either psychologically or by reason of the temporal, cultural, and regional differences in the thousand-year period designated as the Middle Ages.
There is no single “typical” medieval self-injurer. We will address throughout this book the historiographical concerns about the definition of concepts such as consciousness, the problems of identification and case-finding of heroic ascetics and mystics from the larger body of medieval holy persons, the question of exaggeration or suppression of reports of asceticism, and the limitations upon making generalizations about the Middle Ages. Once the population of medieval self-injurers and mystics is identified and important methodological concerns are addressed, we can proceed toward inquiries about explanation and understanding. One major thesis of this book is that an explication of the physiological effects of self-injurious behaviors will help us to understand why heroic asceticism was practiced by some religiously motivated persons in the Middle Ages. This is certainly not to claim that the key to an understanding of medieval asceticism and its relationship to mysticism lies exclusively in an examination of physiological mechanisms leading to and resulting from the effects of habitual self-injurious behaviors. Nor is it even to claim that the physiological level of inquiry and hypothesis is more important causally than social, psychological, religious, or spiritual factors.
This is not a contest or a competition. Understandings and explanations that we develop from modern biological studies are meant to be complementary to the traditional social, cultural, and religious levels of explanation of why medieval ascetics engaged in self-injurious practices and why asceticism was, for some, the pathway to mysticism. The three categories of self-injurious behaviors most commonly mentioned in hagiographical accounts of medieval ascetics are laceration of the flesh, starvation, and sleep deprivation. Each of these categories of self-injurious behaviors separately brings about a predictable sequence of physiological and psychological consequences. The effects of these separate ascetic practices are cumulative when practiced by the same individual, especially over an extended period of time. More importantly for a consideration of the relationship of asceticism to mysticism, one generalized effect of heroic self-injurious behavior is to bring about an altered state of consciousness that, in a religious setting, can be either the entrance into or the full development of a mental state that is subjectively apprehended as a mystical experience. Part of the task in examining phenomena from one discipline utilizing the methodology of another is to develop a vocabulary of exchange.
It is important that this not be done as a sleight of hand, for in redefining objects and events under scrutiny, one may opportunistically strengthen the basis of an otherwise weak argument. For example, since self-injurious behaviors (SIB) are considered in most secular circles today prima facie evidence of some sort of mental illness, our very use of this modern term or, worse yet, its medical acronym SIB, with its clear pathological connotations, might be seen as both betraying our bias and even as an attempt to prejudice the reader into assuming certain attitudes toward medieval asceticism. Therefore, we take mental and moral pains to point out that, in examining for the moment asceticism and mysticism from a biological framework, ascetic practices are labeled self-injurious behaviors and mystical experiences become altered states of consciousness, but that these terms are used only descriptively, not prescriptively or pejoratively.
Of course, the postmodern critical reader will already know that our Western scientific world view must influence our definitions, perceptions, and research methodology, and that our assertion that we use our terms descriptively is disingenuous, since it is assumed that no description can be value-free. We can merely acknowledge in advance this postmodern bias and proceed, letting the readers apply their own judgment regarding the putative hidden agenda behind our declared assumptions. Throughout this book, we will shift back and forth between scientific and religious vocabularies. To use certain terms interchangeably does suggest that they refer to identical or closely similar processes or phenomena, or to different levels of description of the same phenomena, or that they belong to the same categories. Nevertheless, they certainly do not, as mentioned above, carry the same connotations.
The terms asceticism and mysticism carry with them a rich collection of meanings and associations that are not part of the terms self-injurious behaviors and altered state of consciousness, which carry their own modern medical and psychological connotations. Behaviorally, however, ascetic practices of the heroic variety can reasonably be located as a subset of self-injurious behaviors, and mystical experiences, whatever else they may be, are experienced by the mystic as an altered state of consciousness. There are risks to such transformations of vocabulary. The major ones stem from using the same word but meaning different things by it in different sections of the book, or using different terms interchangeably as if they have the same meaning, or using specialized terms as if there is a presupposed shared agreement by all parties about their meanings. These dangers show up most clearly in transposing technical scientific terms, such as energy, which has a precise operational meaning in physics, into other disciplines that use these terms metaphorically, such as the psychoanalytic adoption of the energy concept. There are also many terms that have specific denotations in psychiatry and psychology, but which have entered into ordinary language (or reentered after an initial appropriation from ordinary language and a secondary transformation into a technical meaning) and therefore have broader meanings in our common vocabulary.
The term depression may designate a state of sadness in the vernacular, but refer to an illness condition when used in a medical sense. The whole problem of parallel vocabularies (visions versus hallucinations or perceptual illusions; religious delusions versus idiosyncratic religious beliefs) may come into play here, and must be acknowledged when present. There are also gains that can be derived from cross-disciplinary work. In the particular area under consideration, we have available a considerable body of scientific knowledge (in this context, information that is testable and replicable) about altered states of consciousness and self-injurious behaviors. By recognizing that one group of behaviors has features in common with another group of behaviors, we can transfer some of our knowledge back and forth between groups.
We would stress the two-way transfer of knowledge. Most modern studies of selfinjurious behaviors consider them as a subclass of psychologically abnormal behaviors and, from a psychiatric perspective, as symptoms of mental illness. It is important that psychiatry also considers self-injurious behaviors from non-medical perspectives, such as those of culture-specific ritual, religious sacrifice, and spiritual values. The phenomena of altered states of consciousness, other than sleep and dreams, often suffer similarly from such a pejorative medical perspective, since psychiatry is usually concerned with states of pathological depersonalization and dissociation. It is our thought that psychiatry has much to learn from the study of normal forms of altered states of consciousness, a prime example of which is most likely represented by mystical states. Just as it is important to recognize what is known scientifically about altered states of consciousness, it is also important to recognize how very much about consciousness in general is not known.
There is little philosophical or empirical clarity about the delineation, classification, or full description of the domain of altered states. In fact, the very existence as well as the nature of consciousness itself is fiercely debated. There is no single definition of consciousness upon which all workers in related disciplines can agree. Nevertheless, consciousness, however defined and explained, seems to be a fundamental attribute of the human condition. The capacity for self-consciousness is often vaunted as the single trait, the sine qua non, distinguishing humans from other mammals (although the behavior of non-human hominids and cetaceans pose major problems for such humanoid chauvinists). At the same time that consciousness is so highly valued, it appears that humans are forever trying to alter and/or escape their ordinary states of consciousness.
There seems to be something inherently unpleasant in paying too much attention to the ticker-tape of thoughts and images that constitute our moment-to-moment stream of consciousness, such that altering this type of conscious state becomes a pastime or even a preoccupation of much of humankind much of the time. All societies, apparently in recognition both of the universality of this preoccupation and the diversity of methods by which an altered state of consciousness can be achieved, take an active role in determining legitimate and illegitimate methods of induction into altered states of consciousness. In Western society, as we well know, several different multi-billion dollar industries, legal and illegal, are dedicated to providing chemical substances which will rapidly induce an altered state of consciousness in the consumer. Despite well-known socially and physically deleterious consequences of substance abuse and dependence, the usually unsuccessful attempts by governments and special interest groups to interfere with access to and consumption of consciousness and mood-altering drugs provide telling evidence for the tenacity of this human drive. Our fundamental hypothesis is that one major and heretofore overlooked motivation for medieval heroic ascetic behaviors is the effectiveness of self-injurious behaviors in bringing about an altered state of consciousness. Such altered states of consciousness in some religiously committed persons in medieval Europe had many of the same physiological and psychological characteristics as a mystical state achieved through meditation and contemplation. Our understanding of the physiological mechanisms by which mortification of the flesh, sleep deprivation, and extreme fasting may bring about an altered state of consciousness can be applied, although with great caution, to a consideration of medieval ascetics and mystics.
The traditional explanations that medieval ascetics injured themselves only for symbolic goals relating to imitatio Christi and contemptus mundi are too limited. However, postulating symbolic ideals as part of a matrix of motives is fully compatible with the thesis concerning a causal linkage between self-injurious behaviors and altered states of consciousness of a mystical nature. The broader the explanatory spectrum, the more likely we are to grasp the great complexity of human motivation and behavior. A second hypothesis, one open to empirical verification, is that self-injurious behaviors increased coincidently with the widespread religious renewal in the late Middle Ages that emphasized the individual’s personal relationship to God. If this is found to be the case, then the question is raised, What is the relationship between the increase in heroic asceticism and the sharper focus on closeness to and, ultimately, union with God? One possibility is that both phenomena are independent reflections of a religious renewal initiated in the High Middle Ages. But this leaves unanswered why heroic asceticism in particular should have increased along with increased religious fervor. Many other forms of pious expression were available, such as, for example, increased charitable activities and missionary work. The present religious revival in America is not accompanied by a focus on asceticism, nor was the religious revival of the 1840s.
Our third hypothesis postulates a causal relationship between the increase in heroic asceticism and mystical experiences in late medieval Western Europe, as follows. The Western Christian tradition did not have a sufficiently available series of meditative practices that a religiously committed person could learn and utilize to bring about a heightened sense of closeness to God. For some individuals who were highly motivated but unable to achieve such a mystical state through those contemplative and devotional practices that were regularly available, asceticism offered a socially supported alternative mechanism by which to approximate an altered state that had transcendental characteristics. The heroic ascetics were those individuals who carried socially supported moderate ascetic practices to an extreme, arguably because their drive to experience closeness and union with God either was not matched by a constitutional ability to experience ecstatic states of consciousness or the heightened states that they did experience were not felt to be sufficient.
Our theses require examination of two domains of information. The first consists of modern studies of the physiological and psychological effects of selfinjurious behaviors, especially in the production of altered states of consciousness. We review and discuss the relevance of such studies to the practitioners of heroic asceticism in the Middle Ages. This of course necessitates an examination of the nature of consciousness and altered states of consciousness, including material gleaned from studies of dissociative disorders. The second domain relates to how we use the medieval source material. If we do not spell out the major methodological concerns in using historical sources each time they arise, it may appear to some that we are unaware of them. If we place warnings at every other sentence, such as a reminder that our information may be derived from a male hagiographer writing about a female holy person thirty years after her death, or that the only extant vita may be an obviously altered copy of an original manuscript (e.g. the copy contains references to events that we know had occurred after the writing of the original manuscript) that is no longer available, our narrative becomes repetitive.
To address these very important concerns, we include a chapter detailing the major methodological problems that permeate all medieval hagiographical research. In addition, we direct attention in the notes to limitations in particular source materials and in the basis for some generalizations. Throughout, we strive for a balance between relevance and repetitiveness, but the reader should keep in mind the derivative nature of much of even the primary source material. Another methodological problem relates to the very concept of the Middle Ages, which is a construct developed by modern historians. Persons living in the Middle Ages did not consider themselves as living in the Middle Ages (i.e. the centuries between classical Rome and a Renaissance that had not yet occurred). We have chosen to study the behaviors of persons who lived within a thousandyear time span and across broad geographic and political areas. It is difficult to think of any generalization that would not require a discussion of serious exceptions, qualifications, nuances, and limitations.
To anticipate one particular difficulty with generalizations, we can consider, for example, the problem of assessing sleep deprivation in the “average” monk’s daily routine. It immediately becomes clear that there is no “average” monk. We need to know, and often the detailed information is not available, what monastery under what religious order under what abbot’s and bishop’s influence during what years in what region of Western Europe and in what season of the year. We may know the general outline given by the Rule of Benedict or the Augustinians, but not know whether that rule was applied strictly or loosely in each particular case. Nevertheless, despite these limitations, we can outline what we know from modern studies of sleep physiology, and apply this knowledge of the outer limits of sleep requirements and the known consequences of sleep loss and sleep fragmentation beyond these limits, to an examination of the adequacy of sleep patterns for medieval religious persons.
One partial remedy to the problem of generalization is the use of statistical studies. Statistics allows us to see broad patterns among large numbers of individuals and to correct generalizations that may be founded upon the purposeful selection of a few dramatic examples recruited to support a favored thesis, but which may prove not to be representative of the group as a whole. In this book, we employ both techniques, examining the results of data derived from a large number of saints’ lives, and then selecting a few lives to scrutinize in detail by way of illustrating or limiting the generalizations based upon large numbers. We have selected the Thurston and Attwater 1956 revision of Butler’s Lives of the Saints as a database. We devote much of Chapter 7 on historiography to the methodological problems of selecting a database of saints and our choice of Butler. We have identified 1,462 saints in the Thurston and Attwater revised edition whose death date fell between the years AD 450 and 1500.
Out of this cohort of medieval holy persons, we identified those individuals who met descriptive criteria for heroic ascetic behaviors and/or mystical experiences. We present at relevant places in each chapter the problems in studying saints’ lives and the limitations of the special uses to which the genre of hagiography lends itself. The organization of the book follows the major points outlined in the discussions above. Part I, the psychology and biology of asceticism and mysticism, begins with two chapters examining in depth the constructs that form the major points of interest: self-injurious behaviors (heroic asceticism) (Chapter 2) and altered states of consciousness (mysticism) (Chapter 3). Definitions and their many limitations are presented both broadly and within the special contexts that comprised medieval Christendom. We introduce philosophical, anthropological, and psychiatric studies as we inch our way toward understanding the interplay of medieval culture and the pursuit of asceticism and mysticism.
The final three chapters of Part I examine the physical and psychological effects on states of consciousness of the three most common forms of self-injurious behaviors among medieval religious persons: laceration of the flesh (Chapter 4), sleep deprivation (Chapter 5), and extreme fasting (Chapter 6). Part II examines the lives of medieval holy persons in historical context. We are as interested in how we come to know what we think we know as we are in what we know. Chapter 7 provides detailed discussions about theoretical and methodological problems in figuring out how holy persons came to be considered holy, the reliability and limits of source material, and the various pressures that modern scholarship imposes upon how we view and revise our views about the Middle Ages. Chapter 8 discusses the various pathways to holiness, since a study of a large body of medieval saints makes it clear that most saints were best recognized for their administrative skills (bishops, royalty) on behalf of the church and for charitable works on behalf of the populace (and ecclesiastical institutions) rather than for their mystical pursuits and ascetic behaviors.
Statistical analysis of the temporal and gender patterns of heroic asceticism and mysticism provide the basis for questioning several generally accepted assumptions about medieval asceticism and offering our own perspective on the complex phenomena of intense medieval religiosity. These two chapters are followed by studies of four medieval saints. We chose these particular saints to illustrate different combinations of asceticism and mysticism, but there is no ultimate justification of why these four rather than four others.
The basis for our selection was affection for these particular saints along with the existence of a fairly rich saint’s vita, as well as our wish not to rehash the most well-known ones, such as Francis of Assisi or Catherine of Siena. There was not much focus on mysticism in the early Middle Ages. Radegund’s (Chapter 9) life is both representative in some ways and atypical in other respects of Merovingian royalty. Her asceticism was ferocious and encompassed a combination of personal anguish and religious sentiment. The two Beatrices (Chapters 10 and 11) provide a good sense of early asceticism and slower-maturing mysticism in two holy women of the Low Countries in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Chapter 12 on Henry Suso brings us to a person known at first glance for a twenty-year excursion into extremely harsh self-injurious behaviors, but whose rich descriptions of his deep religious grounding and mystical experiences far outshine his ascetic excesses.
Following the saints’ lives, Chapter 13 takes up the question asked by medieval and modern persons whether the heroic ascetics and more flamboyant mystics were mentally ill. The dramatic behaviors of a certain number of mystics, and especially ascetics, raised questions about their sanity in the minds of their own contemporaries as well as by modern thinkers. This remains a contentious issue, in which often the conclusions reached appear to reflect one’s initial biases or attitudes when first asking the question. We discuss problems with modern Western diagnostic formulations of persons living in other times and cultures in general, and examine in particular the charge that medieval holy persons suffered from hysteria. We then close with a Conclusion, outlining what we think the book has been about, what it has argued for and against in our understanding of medieval holy persons and the world in which they lived. Finally, we present in an Appendix some of the statistical analyses that we have mentioned in various spots throughout the book, but that would have interrupted the narrative flow had we elaborated on these in any detail.
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