Don’t feel too badly for Saint Catherine of Siena, shown here besieged by demons in a work from 1500. In the Late Middle Ages, a number of female saints became well-known for their mystical visions. Some of these were heavenly, but other times they were not. Frequently, the visions conveyed an idea that female sexuality was evil, and holy women endured physical self-torment of their bodies in a way that they felt brought them closer to Jesus Christ. Catherine’s ability to shake off her demons here shows her sancity, and she died at age thirty-three after starving herself.
A poor widow named Ermine de Reims similarly suffered. Her demons tormented her with sexual visitations. Her biographer writes about one occasion when two devils appeared to her and in front of her “began to embrace and kiss each other and then lay down on the floor and committed a sin together. And the devil did all this in front of her because he wanted her to take evil pleasure in fleshly sin.” Ermine hated her sexuality so much that she tied a rope around her waist “that then embedded itself into her flesh.” Apparently she said that this was because “I hate my body for the sins it committed”. Gruesome as this pattern is, it differs from the picture of women that dominated the witch-craze of the 16th-century, when they were increasingly accused of seeking sexual relationships with demons. The opposite of the Late Medieval mystic holy woman, these people were frequently killed after being publicly condemned for witchcraft.
Source(s): Image Wikimedia “St. Catherine of Siena besieged by demons,” at the National Museum in Warsaw. _The Strange Case of Ermine de Reims_, pp. 108-109, Rebate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Univ of Penn, 2015.
