What place for the senses in contemplative life?
Laurence Lux-Sterritt
English Benedictine Nuns in Exile in the Seventeenth Century April 24, 2017 DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9781526110022.003.0008 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Women in early modern Catholic convents, as documented in their personal writings |
| Key points | Argues that despite behavioural guidebooks exhorting nuns to break away from the senses toward an a-sensory contemplative state, nuns' personal writings show they experienced the sacred through sights, smells, and sounds and through what they described as their 'inner senses', making the study of the senses a valuable lens on cloistered life. |
Abstract
The Protestant critics of the early modern Catholic Church denounced what they sometimes described as its sensual approach to the sacred. In the convents, behavioural guidebooks exhorted the Sisters to break away from their senses and to move towards a more perfect a-sensory contemplative state, where prayer no longer needed sensate perceptions to stimulate the soul. Yet the personal writings of the nuns are full of references to the senses; they provide valuable details on the individual experience of the cloistered life. Women taking the veil exchanged a sensory world for another, in which the sights, smells and sounds evoked the sacred. In prayer, they also felt with what they described as their ‘inner senses’. Although little used until now, the prism of the study of the senses provides a fascinating insight into the lived experience of women in early modern convents.