Many who like history are drawn to a past that they can feel connected to. But some are drawn to the ways the past feels radically different. In the latter case, when faced with a totally alien world-view, we are constantly forced to recognize how powerful cultural ideals are in shaping the consciousness of human experience. And that is highly significant when we look at how, in the Late Middle Ages, many women experienced the body of Jesus in ways that were both super erotic and spiritual at the same time.
This sculpture by the great Renaissance artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini (the _Ecstasy of Saint Teresa_, 1647-1652) illustrates the point. The second image shows Cupid piercing Teresa with his arrow, and comes out of Teresa’s mystical vision of the same. According to the spiritual confessor who recorded her experience, Teresa was visited by an angel who held in his hand “a long spear of gold, and at the point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it . . . “. Teresa’s blending of the spiritual and erotic was characteristic of the Late Medieval period, when the body of Jesus became an increasing focal point of devotion.
