Dear All,
I have always been very intrigued by the following passage of Susos
spiritual autobiography:
Above all his other exercises, he had a longing desire to bear upon his
body something which might betoken a sensible sympathy with the painful
sufferings of his crucified Lord. To this end he made for himself a
wooden cross, in length about a man's span, and of corresponding breadth,
and he drove into it thirty iron nails, intending to represent by them
all his Lord's wounds and love-tokens (...) he drove into it besides
seven needles, so that their point passed a long way through the cross,
and remained sticking in it, while the other ends were broken close to
the wood. He bore the wounds made by these pointed needles in honour of
the piercing anguish of God's pure Mother [...]. For a long time he took
two disciplines every day with this cross in the following manner. He
struck behind him with his fist upon the cross and thus drove the nails
into his flesh, and made them stick in it.
I have spotted a crucifix with protruding nails in a painting by Lorenzo
Lotto, and what I am after is some bibliographical references where I
could find out more about this type of instruments - and how common they
were - as well as about the general use of similar instruments as help to
meditation.
Furthermore, in the text quoted above, the seven needles are allusions to
the seven sorrows of the Virgin. To me this sounds like using the sense
of touch as a means of apprehending this theme, without the intermediary
of words.
Any suggestion welcome, and many thanks in advance.
François Quiviger
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