Abstract

This chapter addresses modern Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, originating in the appearances of Jesus experienced by nun Margaret-Mary Alacoque (1647-90). Since the seventeenth century, understandings of the Heart of Jesus have shifted from visceral to symbolic registers: from a fetish (a concealing object standing in for something else) to an icon (an image) and, finally, to a mere symbol (a sign). Yet from the eighteenth century up to the present day, the status of the Sacred Heart has remained a source of theological contestation between Jesuits and orthodox Catholics, who emphasize its viscerality, and Jansenist Protestants and Catholic reformers, who treat it as a symbol.

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