| |
; |
|
The Scourging of penitents might well
have fulfilled a twofold purpose, enabling the priest
to indulge a taste for sadism and the penitent a penchant
for masochism
|
|
George Riley Scott, A History
of Torture
|
  The
Church never seems to have specifically identified sadism or
masochism as sins. The concepts seem to have gone wholly unrecognised,
although the Church has arguably been home to many of the most
notable sadists and most bizarre masochists in history.
Early Christians deprived themselves of the necessities of
life: eating such poor diets that they suffered physical illnesses,
living in squalid and unhygienic conditions in remote places.
They flagellated themselves and allowed their wounds to become
infected. They chained themselves to fixed objects. They lived
for years on top of tall pillars. They walled themselves up
in tiny, dark, infested holes. Sometimes they wore nothing at
all except perhaps a girdle of thorns. Such practices passed
into traditional monastic life, which established standardised
privations. Monks, nuns and others were frequently scourged,
either routinely or for minor offences.
 The
cult of relics gave a reason for digging up, boiling and dismembering
dead bodies, a practice that must have appealed to necrophiliacs,
and perhaps other sexual deviants. Sometimes crowds would gather
when a saint was known to be dying, ready to dismember him or
her while still warm. Dismembered limbs of saints are still
popular, and may be seen slowly decomposing in tens of thousands
of churches around the world. Bodies are still occasionally
dug up to remove fingers or limbs as relics, as happened for
example to Eva Peron. For non-Christians, and to less traditionally
minded Christians, the practice of collecting, keeping and displaying
such items seems at best macabre, and at worst evidence of abnormal
mental states.
 With
the benefit of modern knowledge it is easy to identify sadomasochistic
tendencies in traditional Christian practices, art and literature.
As Marina Warner has pointed out:
In Christian hagiography, the sadomasochistic content of
the paeans to male and female martyrs is startling, from the
early documents like the Passion of saints Perpetua and Felicity
into the high Middle Ages. But the particular focus on women's
torn and broken flesh reveals the psychological obsession
of the religion with sexual sin, and the tortures that pile
up one upon the other with pornographic repetitiousness underline
the identification of the female with the perils of sexual
contact.
Saint Ammonius, a fifth century monk, was reputedly keen on
burning himself as a punishment for experiencing bodily pleasure.
As a sympathetic writer tells us "Extraordinary to relate,
he is also said to have burnt his own flesh with hot iron whenever
any little bit of his body reacted to some illicit pleasure,
with the result that he had scars all over him". [Historia
Lausiaca, Ch XII]
 In
the eleventh century Churchmen started extolling self flagellation
as a penance. Soon afterwards confessors were imposing sentences
of whipping. Priests initially did the whipping themselves,
the penitents often being entirely naked.
 Traditional
hatred of female sexuality featured strongly in Malleus
Maleficarum. It asserted for example that "All witchcraft
comes from carnal lust, which in women is insatiable".
Despite their own sexual purity, inquisitors felt themselves
obliged to strip women naked, shave off all their body hair,
and conduct a minute search for hidden supernumerary nipples.
Subsequent torture techniques included the application of red-hot
pincers to breasts. Inquisitors were particularly interested
in hearing about the details of demonic copulation, the quality
and frequency of intercourse, the quality and frequency of orgasms,
the details of the Devil's penis, and so on.
 Women
were usually the victims of these excesses, but not always.
They too could enjoy their share of fun. St Theresa of Ávila,
a sixteenth century ecstatic visionary, reported this visit
from an angel:
In his hands I saw a great golden spear, and at the tip there
appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart
several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he
pulled it out, I felt that he took them with it, and left
me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was
so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness
caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot
possibly wish it to cease ...
Almost like an orgasm, a number of sceptics have noted.
 Many
writings of saints and mystics are full of such scarcely disguised
sexual symbolism*. Many
pursued severe asceticism, which produced vivid sexual hallucinations.
Among them were Saints Jerome,
Anthony the Great and Francis of Assisi. Jerome
used to dream about being whipped by angels. Anthony's temptations
by imaginary naked women provided a favourite subject for artists
for centuries. Francis kept his urges in check by rolling in
the snow or throwing himself into thorn bushes.
 Christian
art overflows with sadomasochistic sex. Lust was traditionally
depicted as a naked woman whose breasts and genitals were being
eaten by serpents and toads. Real or, more often, imagined martyrdoms
were also popular: St Bartholomew being flayed alive (or afterwards
holding his skin over his arm), St Catherine of Alexandria splayed
on a wheel, St Erasmus having his entrails drawn out on a windlass,
St Sebastian shot full of arrows, yet living (still a homo-erotic
favourite), St Lawrence being roasted alive, and so on, and
so on, and so on — almost all of them the product of Christian
imaginations.
 St
Bridget of Sweden, in the fourteenth century, seems to have
originated the popular sadomasochistic practice of dropping
molten wax onto bare skin. Whipping was always popular. It is
conceivable that the ecstasy induced by prolonged flagellation
and other Christian mortification of the flesh were not always
entirely attributable to divine grace. The mystery as to why
so many penitents found it so much more satisfying to whip each
other, rather than for each to whip themselves, might well have
been solved on a psychiatrist's couch. So too the reason why
devout laymen should want to join organisations such as "The
Slaves of the Blessed Virgin Mary".
Christina the Astonishing (1150–1224), also known as Christina
Mirabilis, was a Christian peasant given to violent siezures,
with a penchant for physical suffering. According to Thomas
of Cantimpré and Cardinal Jacques de Vitry, she subjected
herself to all manner of suffering. She threw herself into fiery
furnaces. In winter she would plunge into the frozen Meuse River
for weeks at a time. She allowed herself to be carried down
river to the mill where the wheel "whirled her round in
a manner frightful to behold". She was chased by dogs that
tore her flesh She ran into thickets of thorns, and emerged
covered in blood. According to other sources she had herself
racked, and hung on the gallows beside a corpse, and partly
buried in a grave* .
Her problems were, as one commentator put it, "transparent
sexual hallucinations". Today she is regarded as a patron
saint of the insane.
Sister Christina Ebner, (1277 – 1356) was a German Dominican
nun born in Nuremberg, Germany. Att the age of twelve, she entered
the Monastery (sic) of St. John the Baptist in Engelthal, a
community of nuns. She cut a cross of skin over her heart and
tore it off, suffered "terrible self-torture" for
years and then convinced herself that she had conceived a child
by Jesus after being embraced by Him*
. - an hallucination too many for her more orthodox sisters,
one imagines, which might explain that, unlike other psycho-sexual
visionaries, she has not been made a saint.
 St.
Marguerite Marie Alacoque (1647 - 1690), a Burgundian nun, was
frequently visited by Jesus, who exposed to her a more acceptable
organ, his heart. Sometimes the heart was burning; sometimes
torn and bleeding. To torment herself, she sought out rotten
fruit and dusty bread to eat. She allowed herself no drink from
Thursday to Sunday, and when she did drink, drank water in which
laundry had been washed. Like almost all of her fellow "mystics",
she frequently fell to the ground in convulsions. She imagined
the devil was buffeting her.
In her diaries she describes how she wished to clean up the
vomit of a sick patient, and could not resist doing so with
her tongue. This caused her so much pleasure that she wished
she could do the same every day. She cut the name of Jesus on
her chest with a knife. When the wounds started to heal, she
burnt them in permanently with a candle flame.*
. Her hallucinations were the basis of the modern cult of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus.
A desire to lick up vomit seems to have been popular. Jeanne
Guyon a seventeenth century Quietist, describes a strikingly
similar experience. St. Rose's interest in the sick was even
more extreme. She drank a bowl of human blood drawn from a diseased
patient.
St Mary Magdalena dei Pazzi was born in Florence in 1566. She
became a Carmalite nun, but her sadomasochistic tendencies started
early at the age of nine. Here are a few extracts from a detailed
account of her life*:
She regarded as just the sufferings of the senses; and, as
children invent plays and amusements by the instinct of their
age, so she would find new ways of afflicting her delicate
limbs. Her ardent desire for suffering was not appeased by
the discipline a common instrument of penance but, in addition,
she would make crowns and girdles out of the thorny stems
of orange trees, and, imitating the passion of Jesus, she
would encircle with them her head and sides. Thus encircled
and crowned, she would lie in bed at night, not sleeping,
but bitterly suffering.
…
Of this the mother Sister Evangelista del Giocondo left a
special testimony, declaring that she found her many a time
in the act of most cruelly scourging herself, her flesh livid
and bleeding, and even the floor and the walls of the room
besmeared with blood. To these cruel torments she added others
which her indefatigable and insatiable zeal suggested and
prompted her to invent. It was principally remarked that on
lighting a candle, she used to let some of the melted wax
drop on her hands and feet, which would be skinned thereby,
and she would sometimes be made lame for some days. She would
also press her flesh with iron pincers until the blood would
flow. In the fervor of prayer, like another St. Jerome,
she was wont to strike her breast with a stone. She would
gather up a quantity of nettle in the orchard, and, bringing
it into her cell, she would rub it over her body. During the
time that she went around with shoes or slippers, that the
feet might not be without their martyrdom, she used to break
some dry cypress berries, and, placing them in her shoes,
she would walk about as usual, with great pain. In a word,
she regarded her body as a vile beast of burden, as the ground
which we tramp upon. She loaded it with all sorts of toils,
and reduced it almost to the exhaustion of its last degree
of strength.
…
One day whilst Mary Magdalen was at work with her novices,
she saw in the heart of one of them a fault or imperfection
which was greatly displeasing to God, and of which the novice
having no knowledge had not spoken to the mother or the others.
She saw that such a fault was rooted in the heart of that
girl like a juniper tree (so it presented itself to the imagination
of Mary Magdalen), and she said that the Guardian Angel of
this novice was trying to uproot it from her heart, but could
not succeed, as some devils prevented him. Hence the holy
mother, enkindled with zeal, arose suddenly from her seat,
and, taking the novice by the arm, led her to the oratory
of the novitiate, and there, being rapt in ecstasy, began
to strike her with the discipline, so as to humble her spirit
rather than inflict pain on her body, saying at the same time
to the devils: "Depart from her, ye evil ones, and leave
this soul." The novice, between the surprise and the
humiliation, burst into tears, and the mother, having known
her to be well disposed towards docility, manifested to her
the fault which had taken root in her interior, and thus enlightening
her wrought also her amendment.
Saint Veronica Giuliani (1660 – 1727) another Italian
mystic nun took at least one lamb to bed with her, kissing it
and suckling it at her breasts She was beatified by Pius II,
in memory of the lamb of God, and canonized in 1839 by Pope
Gregory XVI who seems to have been a little less keen to recognise
the ovine connection.
Some saintly activities are difficult
to credit and there must be uncertainty as to whether they were
carried out for perverse sexual pleasure, or some other inexplicable
perversity. Here is the Blessed Angela of Foligno (c. 1248 –
1309) whose idea of a good time was to go out drinking and eating
from the suppurating sores of a leper.
After this we washed the feet of the poor women and the hands
of the men, but especially those of a leper which were all
putrefied and spoiled and full of corruption. Afterwards we
did drink the water wherewith we had washed him, and that
drink was so sweet unto us that we tasted of its sweetness
all the way as we returned until we arrived at this place.
And because a scale from those sores had got into my throat
I endeavoured to swallow it as though I had received it in
communion ; and at last I did swallow it, and I found it to
be so sweet that I can in no wise describe it.*:
But the Blessed Angela of Foligno was not alone. St. John of
the Cross (1542 – 1591), a Carmelite friar, licked out
the sores of lepers, which he described as "pleasurable".
He is now a Doctor of the Church.
  Since
Freud's theories were published, many sadomasochistic practices
have been abandoned, or at least confined to the privacy of
Church institutions. Young girls no longer have their clitorises
cauterised and boys no longer forced wear spiked rings on their
penises.
A
churchman giving a whip as a present to a prominent statesman,
as Dr Pusey did to Gladstone, might now raise an eyebrow or
two. Bishops no longer deliver lengthy public sermons lauding
the merits of punishing the body for the good of the soul, as
they did in the nineteenth century.Priests and monks no longer
flagellate naked schoolgirls with impunity, as they did until
recent times, and trainee Jesuits are no longer given spiked
bands to wear on their thighs, as they were not so long ago.
Or perhaps they just keep quiet about it now, and leave silices
to members of Opus Dei.
Christian iconography still abounds in sadomasochistic images.
It is not difficult to find images of broken and bleeding saints;
Christ in agony nailed to the cross, complete with lacerations,
bleeding scalp, and gaping wound in his side;
or Mary with her chest torn open to expose a heart pierced with
one or more swords, or a heart with flames issuing from it,
or bound with a circlet of thorns. Why such images are found
so compelling is a mystery known only to God, although those
with a grounding in psychiatry could hazard a guess.
 Saint
Simeon Stylites or Symeon the Stylite (c. 390 – 459) was
a Christian ascetic saint. Simon won his sainthood by finding
ingenious ways to torment himself. He would starve himself until
unconscious. He wore a girdle which bit into his flesh so that
it drrew blood and his waste became a suppurating mass writhing
with maggots. He then spent a summer living in a hole, with
only his head sticking up above the ground. At other times he
woulod stand upright for as long as his body would allow. Later,
he lived exposed to the elements on top of a column. The column
was later extended to 15 or 18 metres where he lived for 39
years, sometimes standing on one leg when the other was too
ulcerous to bear any wieght. Monks using ladders supplied food
and drink to him. He prostrated himself, sometimes over 1000
times a day. He would not see a physician or converse with any
woman, including his own mother. For such acts he was elevated
to sainthood. He was emulated by Simeon Stylites the Younger
(They are both shown on the right). They were then emulated
by Simeon Stylites III. This last Simeon seems not to have been
as discerning in his choice of pillar for he was killed by a
lightning strike.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Buy the Book from Amazon.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
Buy the Book from Amazon.co.uk
|
|
|
|
