Wounds of Love: The Mystical Marriage of Saint Rose of Lima (review)

This is a somewhat sprawling book, chock-full of interesting material that doesn't quite achieve a coherent perspective. Author Frank Graziano, however, may not regard that lack as a fault. He explicitly states that his intent is simply to "add another layer to the palimpsest" of interpretations of Rose of Lima, without claiming that this interpretation is more definitive than others. The metaphor of the palimpsest suggests a text through which faint hints and fragments of other texts, neither synthesized nor entirely erased, can be glimpsed. Graziano's own perspective is summed up as an "attempt to understand what Rose of Lima might mean, as a cultural expression, if the substructure of early modern Catholicism is false" (10).

It is fascinating to watch how Graziano develops his project with both a genuine respect for the person and culture of Rose, and a basic assumption that they were deluded. In other words: Graziano's own layer of the palimpsest is a secular humanist one, which presumes that religion is a complex and deeply rooted collective delusion. At the same time, he does not erase without remainder the integrity and sincerity of interpretations that affirm Rose as a woman of God.

Rose of Lima (1586–1617) is a difficult saint. Her extreme asceticism and devotion to suffering are legendary. Today, it is difficult not to interpret as pathological such practices as extreme fasting, repeated bloody self-flagellation, or the eating of vomit and pus. Yet within the culture of late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century Peru, behaviors such as these were regarded with awe as evidence of the highest sanctity. Moreover, this heroic suffering was a core element of a societal belief system which asserted that the sins of the group would be cleansed by the voluntary agony of a saint. Rose's personal history of severe childhood traumas and parental double-binds predisposed her to an attraction (probably even a compulsion) to masochistic self-torture. Yet the specific form in which her self-destructive practices developed required the encouragement of a culture that needed and lauded them. Graziano's case study of the interplay among psychology, culture, and popular ideology is perhaps the strongest element of this monograph.

Less satisfying is his treatment of mysticism. The author's previous studies have been on poetry and on Latin American culture, including a major work entitled Divine Violence, Spectacle, Psychosexuality, and Radical Christianity in the Argentine "Dirty War." His theoretical perspective is strongly shaped by the work of Jacques Lacan and René Girard. Coming from this background, it is not surprising that he mainly identifies mysticism with spectacle. For him, mystics are those who radically internalize and act out the core collective delusions of their social grouping. Mystics give themselves over to a radical longing for union, which they project upon "God," but which is really all about gaining love, status, and power within their community. This longing, as well as the phenomena in which it manifests, is profoundly erotic.

In view of this, Graziano provides a veritable catalog of explicit sexual imagery that is associated with mystical experience. To give only a few examples: Catherine of Siena receiving the foreskin of Jesus as her wedding ring; Agnes Blannbekin discovering the foreskin in her mouth, and melting with ecstasy; Rupert of Deutz describing Christ opening his mouth in the midst of a kiss to allow him to enter more deeply; the well-known imagery of women mystics in ecstasy as they are pierced to the heart by phallus-like objects. While some of his examples seem a bit gratuitous, in general his point is valid if not exactly new: sexuality and spirituality inevitably draw on the same deep erotic drives, and the particular psychosexual constitution of each individual profoundly marks their spiritual practice.

As for Rose of Lima, her spirituality gives clear indication of a pattern of masochistic sexuality. At a certain point in her life she took great...