At 07:20 PM 4/5/98 -0400, Laurie Postlewate wrote:
>
>QUERY: VICARIOUS SUFFERING
>
>I need some suggestions for primary or secondary sources on the doctrine of
>vicarious or expiatory suffering in the late Middle Ages.
>
>I am currently working on the life of blessed Lidwina of Schiedam and the
>adaptation of her story by the French fin de siecle writer, Joris-Karl
>Huysmans.
>
>I am particulary interested in to what extent expiatory suffering in the
>Middle Ages is simply that or if it ever allows for the kind of "mystical
>substitution" which some nineteenth century writers like Huysmans imagined.
>(Mystical substitution as when the person accepting the suffering can
>receive the transference of the ills of others--both physical and other
>kinds of ills--and even "take on" sins committed by others.)
>
Dear Laurie,
I dimly recall a motif like this in the life of Catherine of Siena
[presumably the standard one, by Raymond of Capua], and Caroline Bynum also
mentions some examples in the lives of other late-medieval women in *Holy
Feast and Holy Fast* [I found a few just by using the index, under
"Suffering as service"].
This doesn't exactly supply you with the *doctrine*, but maybe it will get
you started.
Sherry Reames (English Dept., U. Wisconsin, Madison)
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