WHAT ELSE DO WE HAVE BUT A BODY? REFLECTIONS ON AN APPARENT PARADOX
WHAT ELSE DO WE HAVE BUT A BODY? REFLECTIONS ON AN APPARENT PARADOX

Summary/Abstract: I began this paper emphasizing several aspects of bodily manipulation in a spiritual context – as traced by scholars over the last decades – and claiming that the particular case of Saint Catherine of Siena provides us with an enormous potential to analyse the body-focused spirituality. Thus, I have followed the various bibliographical clues, which – assembled – retrace a conflicting representation of the flesh, both doomed and source of redemption. Integrating this topic within the broader context of the Saint’s theological vision and of her devotional practices and linking it to the religious milieu she belonged to, I attempted to shed light on what appears to be a paradox, according to contemporary standards. Yet during the Late Middle Ages, the flesh was conceived in terms of an inherent ambivalence and body and spirit were thought to be an inseparable unit. As for Saint Catherine, the flesh has no meaning in itself, but only insofar as it is a means which serves the mystical yarning to achieve oneness with God and an expression to describe this state of grace.

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