The Ascetic Measure: A New Category for the Philosophical Analysis of Self-Inflicted Pain as an Expression of Love for God

Abstract

The paper identifies the measure of pain monastic Christian ascetics in medieval central Europe inflicted on themselves to express the right measure of love for God. I ask whether the measure of pain had significance; whether a ratio existed between the measure of pain ascetics experienced and the measure of love they expressed; how self-inflicted painful acts enabled the epistemic achievement of expressing the right measure of love for God; what made the right measure such; and what was the difference between ascetics and martyrs regarding the measures of pain and love respectively. Providing answers to these questions, unaddressed in existing studies, is the main contribution of this paper. While addressing them, I present a new category, the category of measure, for philosophical analysis of the old religious phenomenon under discussion. This category allows me to demonstrate that the measure of pain had significance and that there was an adequacy ratio between the measure of pain monastic ascetics experienced and the measure of love they expressed. It also lets me argue that the right measure of pain for expressing their love for God, following His example, was the exposure of blood, regardless of its quantity.

1. Introduction

Since the beginning of mankind, humans have done everything in their power to avoid pain. The phenomenon of self-inflicted pain contradicts this basic human tendency. It is a multicultural, universal phenomenon, manifested in different contexts, including religious contexts, where adherents of different religions practice self-inflicted pain for various purposes. One such purpose is expressing love for God. The phenomenon of self-inflicted pain as an expression of love for God in Christianity, the subject of this paper, was at its peak among monastic ascetics in medieval central Europe (Largier 2007).1 One key question respecting this phenomenon is identifying the right measure of pain one should inflict on oneself to express love for God. In the literature one finds theories and arguments dealing with pain in Christianity, with self-inflicted pain in general and self-inflicted pain among monastic ascetics in particular,2 with the expression of love for God, with blood, its meanings, and representations.3 I did not, however, find in the existing literature a complete philosophical, phenomenological analysis explaining the ratio between pain and love or, more precisely, between the measure of pain that monastic ascetics inflicted on themselves and the measure of love for God they sought to express. Nowhere in the literature did I find a reference to the category of measure.

Existing studies do not ask whether the measure of pain has significance; whether a ratio exists between the measure of pain and the measure of love; what is the right measure of pain one should inflict on oneself in order to express the right measure of love for God; how self-inflicted painful actions enabled, to some extent, the epistemic achievement of expressing the right measure of love for God, stopping at just the right moment; what makes the right measure such; why ascetics, unlike martyrs, did not mimic the exact measure of pain Christ experienced; and what is the difference between ascetics and martyrs in terms of the measure of pain experienced and the measure of love expressed. The purpose of this paper is to answer these questions and complete the aforementioned gaps in the literature. While addressing them, I introduce the category of measure, one of the contributions of this paper. I also show that blood is the measure of pain one should inflict on oneself as an expression for the right measure of love for God.

I do not address the quantity of bloodshed, the number of blood drops or their shape and color, noted in many studies discussing the preoccupation of medieval Christians with quantification. I also do not address the various purposes of the acts under discussion analyzed in many studies outside philosophy, such as in the historical,4 medical,5 psychological, psychoanalytical,6 anthropological7, and sociological8 disciplines, as well as in the cultural studies literature. Constable noted that the religious purposes of self-inflicted pain varied and often overlapped in individual cases.9 These purposes included competition with official representatives of religious orders, drawing close to God, making penance, imitatio Christi, expressing love for God, as well as non-religious purposes such as sexual arousal.10

2. Pain: Measure for Measure

Most of the many case studies I analyzed document self-inflicted painful acts performed by monastic flagellant ascetics during the monastic orders era in medieval central Europe (~1000 to ~1500), namely the Kingdom of France, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Kingdoms of Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire.11 In speaking of ascetics below, I refer to such ascetics exclusively. Among these case studies are Francis of Assisi, founder of the order of monks named after him, and his successor, St. Clare of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order of Poor Clares named after her, who would meet, pray together, and whip themselves and each other to inflict pain;12 Isabelle, the daughter of King Louis VIII of France, who turned her palace into a convent in memory of St. Clare, and would fast and whip herself until she bled;13 nuns who lived, during the 13th century, at the Dominican convent of Colmar, France;14 St. Dominic, the founder of the Dominican order, to which these nuns belonged;15 Margaret of Hungary;16 female saints documented by Thomas de Cantimpre,17 such as Christina Mirabilis,18 who had her wounds and representations of the pain she inflicted on herself appear and disappear, or Margaret of Ypres,19 who practiced self-inflicted pain from the age of seven; Catherine of Siena;20 Maria Magdalena de Pazzi;21 Charles Chateau of Blois, the Duke of Brittany, nephew of the King of France, Philip V;22 and many more.23 My main case study in this paper, however, is Henry Suso, a German ascetic and mystic.24 Suso was among those ascetics who left us texts documenting in detail their lifestyle, their faith, their experiences of self-inflicted pain, self-flagellations, visions, mystical events they experienced, as well as their immense love for God. His book The Exemplar25 describes the spiritual development of Suso, a successor of the father of German mysticism, Meister Eckhart.26 Reading Suso’s writings and about them, as well as many scholars having described him as an “athlete of pain”, makes clear that his case is an ideal example for corroborating my hypothesis. A phenomenological analysis of Suso’s case and other cases documenting acts of self-inflicted pain allowed me to extract the pattern of these acts.

Among these cases is the well-known case of the 11th century Italian monk, Dominic Loricatus, who developed a mathematical method for spiritual training and self-flagellation.27 He believed that the greater the measure of pain, the more love it expresses. The mathematical method Loricatus developed led me to formulate the adequacy ratio argument. According to him, reading ten chapters of Psalms and flogging himself a thousand times express four months’ worth of atonement; thirty chapters and 3000 lashes express a year’s worth of atonement; and reading the entire book of Psalms, consisting of 150 chapters, and 15,000 lashes, express five years’ worth of the same.28 His method quantifies pain and teaches that the measure of pain has significance. The case of Loricatus is particularly apt as an exemplification of the adequacy ratio between each specific measure of pain experienced and the corresponding measure of love expressed.

Many studies concerned with the phenomenon of self-inflicted pain among devout Christians include lists of medieval European monks and nuns who practiced self-inflicted pain, mainly through self-flagellation, and radically abused their bodies. Many such studies include detailed descriptions of saints who severely and repetitively tortured themselves as part of their daily routines, who chose a life of abstinence and poverty, limited diets, little sleep, extended prayers, and vows of silence. Largier, for example, noted in his fascinating book how widespread a phenomenon flagellation was, mentioning some late medieval sources on the topic containing names of innumerable saints who beat themselves and were dedicated to the scourge.29 He showed how monks and nuns, including Dominic Loricatus, held a concept focused on imitatio Christi and the transformation of their bodies into models of Christ’s tormented body. Imitation served as an important component in the process of turning back to God and drawing close to Him. As Constable also noted, the model of Christ showed that one can please God and draw close to Him by experiencing pain.30 Whipping, mimicking Christ’s suffering for the redemption of humanity, allowed believers in general, and ascetics in particular, to express the increasing love they felt for God. Largier mentioned the withdrawal of flagellants to private monastic orders, where they could practice their distinctive way of life, including inflicting pain on themselves.31 The formation of the monastic ascetic orders resonated with social criticism, distinguishing the ascetics’ way of life from that of the community and from other religious orders. Monks and nuns manifested this love in daily rituals, responding to their desire to express love for God, to whom they submitted themselves.

Unlike Glucklich, who argued that self-inflicted pain served as a means for achieving religious goals such as atonement (2001), Largier believed that the ideology of atonement could not explain the phenomenon of self-inflicted pain among ascetics, presenting a collection of arguments, some formulated in the late Middle Ages, explaining the phenomenon.32 I could only, however, identify the relationship between self-inflicted pain and the expression of love through a hermeneutical analysis of arguments and descriptions he presented. Largier’s accounts of flagellants’ motives lead, in one way or another, to the imitation of Christ, who embodies within him, among other things, the expression of love. Such imitation helped flagellants draw closer to God. In Largier’s work, however, no mention is made of the category of measure, the measure of pain and its significance (2007).33

McGinn’s book also lacks reference to the measure of pain, despite his necessary search for descriptions marking the boundaries of ascetics’ self-inflicted painful acts, undertaken to imitate Christ, and for the maximal extent of pain ascetics inflicted on themselves for this purpose (2005). As part of his search, he referred to Suso’s The Exemplar. In one case described therein, Suso removed his clothes and cruelly beat himself until his whip broke. When he looked at himself, he saw his entire body bleeding and immediately recollected the bleeding body of Christ and the pain of his Passion. In this manner, Suso strove to resemble Christ, in order to draw close to God.34 According to McGinn, the said case clearly outlines the boundaries of self-inflicted painful acts ascetics undertook to imitate Christ, setting them out on the painful and bleeding body and reflecting the literal significance of Christ’s Passion.35 This argument illustrates that pain has significance, but is still devoid of reference to the category of measure.

According to Tinsley, for the ascetics, anguish and pain were also a sign of God’s love for them; therefore, they practiced self-inflicted pain while comparing their experiences to the crucifixion. Their concept of pain originated in the fact that God loved His son Christ more than the whole world yet subjected him to pain and suffering. They believed that Christ experienced only tribulation and anguish from birth to burial, and even when he had the opportunity to choose, he chose pain.36 The object of imitation, at the heart of practices of imitatio Christi, is the choice of pain. Ascetics’ actions illustrate how they saw suffering and pain in a positive light. Even Tinsley’s important study, however, lacks a clear reference to the measure of self-inflicted pain. Nor does he discuss ascetics’ love for God. He mentions a 14th century concept of the connection between human suffering on earth and Christ’s suffering on the cross. This concept compares and contrasts the righteous, who choose to suffer willingly, and sinners, who suffer against their will, modeled respectively on Christ on the one hand and the two thieves on the other.37 This comparison, part of the imitatio Christi model, emphasizes the importance of acts of self-inflicted pain. From analyzing this argument of Tinsley’s, one can learn that those who voluntarily inflict pain on themselves do so to resemble Christ. Tinsley’s argument lacks, however, the element of love. Christ chose pain, though he never sinned and did not have to atone; he chose pain as an expression of love. This is in contrast to those who experienced pain because they sinned, as a punishment that is supposed to atone for the sin. Adding the element of love to Tinsley’s aforementioned comparison, this reformulation emphasizes the distinction between bearing pain as divine retribution and bearing pain to express love.

Bynum pointed out the medieval obsession with quantification, expressed in enthusiasm for counting and measurement as a sociocultural characteristic, and analyzed the representations of wounds and blood droplets, as well as those representations’ significance (2007). This obsession fits well with my position regarding the importance of the measure of self-inflicted pain.38 In her comprehensive and interesting research, Bynum focused on blood and examined its role and significance among medieval Christians. Her work, while tangential to this paper, is at times reminiscent of some of my main arguments and serves as a basis for the hypotheses I examine concerning the right measure of pain. The examples she presented focus mainly on the obsession with counting blood drops and wounds, as part of the Christian desire for divine retribution and redemption.39 Despite her interesting discussion of the 12th and 13th century Christian tendency to quantify wounds and blood drops, Bynum, like other scholars I have mentioned, did not clearly link the measure of pain experienced to the measure of love expressed. She referred neither to the significance of the measure of pain, self-inflicted as an expression of love for God, nor to the adequacy ratio.

According to a common argument,40 recurrent in many texts, including by Largier, McGinn, and Tinsley, in self-inflicted pain, believers sought to draw closer to God and expand their knowledge of him.41 At this point it is impossible not to ask why believers wanted to draw close to God if not out of intense love for Him; and they are indeed described as having hurt themselves out of love.42 According to chapter 31 of Suso’s The Exemplar, one of the consequences of self-inflicted painful acts is that those who practice them become more similar to Christ. Imitation of Christ’s love for God is practiced in the same manner that Christ expressed his love: devotion to pain.43 The medieval Church agreed that self-inflicted pain in intense measure must be practiced solely as an expression of devotion to God,44 out of love of course. The existence of this inner emotion was, from ascetics’ point of view, necessary as a motive for action; an action that not only expresses love but also creates it.45 Although descriptions such as Suso’s are found in medieval sources, studies on the subject have not analyzed the relationship between the experience of pain and the expression of love as manifested in said practices.

Phenomenological analysis of descriptions of self-inflicted pain documented in the sources leaves no doubt as to the end motivating these experiences. The analysis indicates that Loricatus and other ascetics felt a strong love for God and sought to draw closer to Him through imitation of Christ. They sought to imitate Christ not only in the physical sense, as Largier, McGinn, and Tinsley had argued, but in every sense; they also tried to emulate his spiritual virtues and the measure of love he felt when he sacrificed himself on the cross. This diagnosis explains how the measure of pain ascetics inflicted on themselves was, among other things, an expression of their desire to trace the measure of love that they believed Christ felt. Hence, again, we find that the measure of pain has significance.

Tinsley and others have pointed out that, for believers, the greater the suffering, the closer they become to God and the deeper is a believer engraved in God’s memory.46 The source of the idea that a desire to draw close to something indicates an emotion of love for it can be found as early as the second century BCE, in peripatetic and stoic texts on emotions and movements of the soul.47 This idea is known to have influenced the early Fathers of the Church and is also reflected in Christian philosophy of the late Middle Ages, including in Aquinas. According to Aquinas, voluntary actions originate in the emotion of love, volition being driven by the premise of the existence of two concepts: the subject/the lover and the object/the beloved.48 The measure of desire for closeness to the beloved God expresses the measure of love the lover feels towards Him. The greater the measure of pain, the closer one becomes to God. Hence, the measure of pain expresses the measure of one’s desire to draw closer to God; and self-inflicted pain in a certain measure is an expression of love in a similar measure.

Expressions of this adequacy ratio emerge from hermeneutic analysis of cases of self-inflicted pain, such as those of Suso, Loricatus, and their like.49 The method of self-flogging developed by Loricatus, for example, indicates the existence of the adequacy ratio and clarifies it, by the very quantification of the measure of pain; whipping in a certain measure express love in the same measure. On one occasion described in The Exemplar, as part of Suso’s attempts to express his love for God, he went into the chapter room to his secret and secluded place, prostrated himself a hundred times, and then genuflected a hundred times. The movements he performed caused him great pain, because of the cross he fastened tightly to his body, to which he attached nails that stuck into his flesh. At each stage of the session, Suso stood up and pulled the nails out of his flesh so that when he next prostated himself or genuflected they would stick in other places in his body.50

The aforementioned session occurred in three stages, at each of which Suso amplified the measure of pain he inflicted on himself, creating a new set of wounds. The stages differed in the number of wounds created at each stage, representing different measures of pain. With the increase in the number of wounds, the measure of pain Suso experienced increased proportionately. Analysis of this case requires an account of Suso’s purpose in increasing the measure of pain at each stage. To identify this purpose, I rely on the argument that the measure of pain has significance and, in the spirit of Bynum’s arguments, that pain is expressed in physical representations. If Suso had found the representations of pain he created on his body at the first stage sufficient, he would have stopped then and not increased the measure of pain. Increasing the measure of pain, by turning to further self-inflicted painful acts, indicates Suso’s need to produce increasingly severe representations of pain or experience a greater measure of pain. The cause that motivated Suso towards the ontological component of his actions, self-inflicted pain and creating representations thereof, was epistemic: love. Suso’s increasing of his self-inflicted painful acts signifies that these actions were an expression of love and that the greater the measure of pain experienced, the greater the measure of love expressed. The premise underlying this epistemic component motivating Suso’s actions, that love is expressed by pain, leads to my conclusion regarding the adequacy ratio. Suso stopped inflicting pain on himself only after reaching a certain measure of pain he sought to experience. His choice to keep going until he reached that point indicates that the purpose motivating his actions was a need to express love in a certain, specific measure, and that a certain measure of pain was adequate to the measure of love he sought to express. Hence, the greater the measure of pain, the greater the measure of love. At one moment, self-inflicted pain expresses a certain measure of love; at another, a greater measure of pain expresses a greater measure of love. There is an adequacy ratio, a direct and constant proportion between the two measures.

The existence of an adequacy ratio also provides an explanation for the fact that ascetics, from Francis of Assisi and his successor, St. Clare, through St. Dominic, Charles Chatillon of Blois, Christina Ebner, Elsbeth Stagel, to Mary Magdalene de Pazzi,51 were not content to express love for God with a single experience of self-inflicted pain. They all used to flog themselves as a regular routine. In their doing so, one can see that the religious phenomenon under discussion was characterized by repeated acts of self-inflicted pain, as well as prolonged, continuous experiences of pain. These characteristics reinforce my arguments, that the measure of pain has significance and that an adequacy ratio exists between the measure of pain experienced and the measure of love expressed. The more moments of self-inflicted pain one experiences, the more love one expresses, in direct and constant proportion to the number of such moments.

On his return from voluntary exile, Stefan decided to settle in Obazine, in the district of Limousin.52 There he lived in severe poverty, carried out hard manual labor while enduring self-mortification, wore metal plates on his skin, maintained vows of silence, and prayed while repeatedly moving in a painful manner. Stefan and his male companion used to whip each other whenever they felt tired, and to wear thin clothes that froze on their bodies in the winter cold.53 An analysis of Stefan’s case confirms my hypothesis that ascetics sought to experience a large and prolonged measure of pain. Stefan combined self-inflicted pain in his daily activities. This habit let him experience a daily routine of continuous pain, alongside sessions of more focused self-inflicted painful acts. The experience of continuous pain throughout the day allowed Stefan to express love in a similar measure, i.e., continuously throughout the day.

The case of Dodo of Hascha similarly features a combination of self-inflicted painful acts experienced on a daily basis. He used to wear seven iron plates to imprison his flesh, while on the iron plates he wore a hairshirt and on top of that, a kind of an armor or lorica.54 He slept on a hard bed and used a convex stone as a pillow. Dodo’s case is an example of a sequence of self-inflicted painful acts, continuing not only throughout the day but also as he slept.

In a book documenting Maria de Pazzi’s life, we can find passages describing her repetitive practice of self-inflicted painful acts. One of these passages details her different manners of inflicting pain. De Pazzi wore clothes that were painful to wear; fastened an iron belt tight to her flesh, and sometimes also a belt of nails she made herself; and whipped herself cruelly by various means, namely with an iron chain weighing about three pounds. Each time she lit a candle she dripped the boiling wax on her hands and feet and injured her skin until it peeled off so that it made her limp for days afterwards. She pinched her flesh with iron pincers until her blood was shed; struck her chest with a stone; rubbed her body with itchy nettles; put cypress berries in her shoes and walked while suffering great pain; and performed arduous physical labor to exhaust her body. By the end of reading this passage, no doubt remains regarding de Pazzi’s purpose in repeatedly inflicting pain on herself: she sought to experience pain in a certain measure to express the same measure of love, which she felt for God.55

In one of the cases described in The Exemplar, Suso made himself a long wooden cross, into which he hammered thirty iron nails, symbolizing the wounds and signs of his beloved, God. He fastened the cross to his bare back, between his shoulders, and carried it day and night for eight years. In the seventh year, Suso set the cross with seven additional iron nails so that their points extended out and wounded his body.56 The case demonstrates another experience of continuous, self-inflicted pain, lasting for years. Analysis of this case, once again, points out ascetics’ need to increase the measure of pain; a need indicating that the measure of pain has significance and that there is an adequacy ratio between the measure of pain experienced and the measure of love expressed. For six years, Suso experienced the measure of pain caused by thirty nails and expressed love in a similar measure. In the seventh year, Suso increased the measure of pain by seven nails, as an expression of love in a greater measure, greater by seven. This intensification in the measure of pain, through adding nails to create additional wounds on the body, indicates, again, the need to experience a certain, specific measure of pain proportionate to the measure of love Suso sought to express.

Suso’s not curing incisions he caused himself is another example of his penchant for long lasting self-inflicted painful acts. For a long time, he went about “wounded by love”.57 This description leaves no place for doubt as to the role of wounds, the representations of pain; they are made by love and express it. Suso chose to bear the painful wounds he inflicted on himself for a long time, so they would serve as an expression of love for as long as possible. For 16 years, Suso wore an iron chain with rings and nails that stabbed and injured him, piercing his flesh and making him bleed. To this item of clothing, Suso attached 150 pointed nails, always turned towards his body, and tightened the garment so that the nails penetrated into his flesh. He would sleep at night while wearing such painful attire.58 An analysis of actions performed by Suso, as well as of other cases documenting painful acts self-inflicted in order to express love for God, indicates ascetics’ need for a continuous and prolonged experience of pain. Believers inflicted intense pain on themselves relentlessly, in various manners, such as wearing painful clothes and repeated flogging. They did so in an attempt to produce, in a kind of relentless, non-stop, continuous sequence, a certain measure of pain that expressed love in a similar measure.59

The above analysis shows that mere self-inflicted pain is not enough to express love for God. The measure of pain also has significance for expressing such love and forms the basis for the existence of the adequacy ratio, as well as for identifying the right measure of pain expressing the right measure of love for God, laid out in the next section.

3. Blood: The Right Measure

Given that ascetics practiced repetitive self-inflicted pain and were not satisfied with a single act of inflicting pain, the next question to be discussed is identifying the right measure of pain for expressing the right measure of love for God. The right measure of pain, I find, was necessarily the measure of blood. Again, I found evidence for this conclusion by analyzing medieval textual passages documenting cases of self-inflicted pain among ascetics. In analyzing relevant cases, I looked for the moment ascetics stopped inflicting pain on themselves, assuming that the moment they stopped was the moment they achieved the right measure of pain, expressing the right measure of love for God. Every case I analyzed reinforced my argument regarding the right measure. In all cases, self-inflicted painful acts ceased when blood was exposed. Hence, blood is the right measure of pain for expressing the right measure of love for God. Exposing blood and shedding it expresses the right measure of love for God. Many sources document ascetic saints experiencing revelations, during which they received knowledge about the pleasure God draws from bloodshed as an expression of love. Mechtild of Magdeburg was told by Christ that God was not pleased by him experiencing pain so long as no blood was shed from his heart.60 Adelheid Langmann, who asked God how to honor him, received a similar message,61 as did nuns in the convent of Colmar.62 Similar messages were received in many more cases.

The fact that Goswin of Bossut,63 a monk at Villers Abbey, in Brabant, was a poet is manifested in his writings and distinguishes them from other texts I came across. His use of various poetic styles and motifs influenced the figurative and dramatic nature of his descriptions of the lives of some of the monks in the monastery. Analysis of a description by Goswin of Arnulf of Villers gives us an idea of the great importance self-inflicted pain and the measure of blood had in the monk’s life.64

According to Goswin, Arnulf inflicted pain on himself by piercing and stabbing his body in a repetitive and ruthless manner. He stopped only once his blood was shed. One of the motifs Goswin used to achieve a vivid and dramatic depiction of pain and blood was a chiastic repetition of three acts depicted. His use of this motif indicates that he sought to give his scripts and those described in them a sacred status in the eyes of devout readers, accustomed to associating texts in this style with the Bible. Goswin’s text shows that when detailed descriptions of self-inflicted painful acts are phrased in a chiastic formulation, the purpose of these acts is emphasized and amplified. Expression of that purpose is intensified by representations of pain and its measure, as well as by multiplying them in the following style: it was his own hands that did the striking—his own hands that heaped torment; merciless perforating—multiple jabbing; making each gash bleed—coating it all blood-red.65 After describing the bloodshed, Goswin chose to stop using the chiastic formulation.

The points in his text where Goswin focused the chiastic repetitions and the point where he abandoned them show what elements of the description he sought to emphasize. The description falls into three stages. First, Goswin emphasized self-inflicted painful acts, as opposed to pain inflicted by others. Next, he emphasized the large measure of pain and, finally, Goswin emphasized the shedding of blood. In describing the bloodshed, Goswin did not settle for chiastic repetitions, adding the word “red”.66 This created an additional, third repetition, which emphasized and intensified the presence of blood. Being a representation of pain, Goswin’s emphasis on blood intensifies his description of the experience of pain. Goswin abandoned chiastic repetitions when Arnulf stopped inflicting pain on himself, at the moment blood was spilled. The phenomenological aspect of Goswin’s description is embodied in motifs that emphasize the moment of bloodshed as a sort of climax, by way of triple repetition; motifs that disappear from the text with the appearance of blood. This demonstrates the great importance of bloodshed and that it is the right measure of pain, for bloodshed, again, is when self-inflicted pain stops.

At this point, a need is apparent for an account of ascetics who sought to express love for God in ways that did not involve self-inflicted pain, as well as to those who sought to do so by self-inflicted pain without bloodshed. We can find such an account in arguments such as Constable’s, according to which ascetics practiced self-inflicted pain and suffering much like athletes training in sports.67 Despite their training, not all athletes are able to excel and achieve the desired results. Similarly, not all ascetics were able to excel and achieve the results they desired; not all ascetics were able to imitate God, incarnate in his son Christ, and bear the right measure of pain as an expression of the right measure of love for Him. While Glucklich argued, for example, that there were ascetics who managed to develop resistance to pain,68 it can also be argued that there were ascetics who were unable to bear pain at all and turned to other ways of expressing love for God.

On the basis of arguments such as those by Constable and Glucklich and my abovementioned arguments regarding the adequacy ratio, I suggest it is possible to treat various measures of pain and suffering as an expression of corresponding measures of love for God. In other words, it is possible to refer to various measures of self-inflicted pain as corresponding to a ranking of capacity for expressing love for God, where the right measure achieved by excellent ascetics being the measure of blood. The idea of such a ranking clarifies why, for example, many scholars referred to Suso as an “athlete of pain”. Such a ranking explains more clearly what motivated ascetics to repetitive self-inflicted painful acts; why many of them did not settle with inflicting pain on themselves just once; and why many of them did not stop until their blood was exposed. If at the top of such ranking one can find the measure of blood, as the right measure of pain for expressing the right measure of love for God, then the ranking reinforces the importance of the right measure. Simultaneously, it reinforces the importance of the category of measure as a constituent part of the model of self-inflicted pain as an expression of love for God.

The measure of pain experienced by ascetics was, however, small compared to what God experienced. He was incarnated in flesh as his son Christ, chose to experience pain in the measure of blood, and then sacrificed his own life and the life most precious to him, that of his son. Ascetics did not inflict on themselves the precise measure of pain originating in the divine archetype, God. According to the measure He dictated, one must sacrifice life itself and not just experience wounds and bloodshed. Even so, we find, as I have shown, evidence for ascetics’ striving to apply self-inflicted painful acts in the measure of blood, to express their love for God. This distinction leads to the question, why those ascetics did not sacrifice their lives as an expression of love?69 A key answer to this question, discussed by several scholars, including Bynum, points out the initial outcome of sacrificing one’s life, i.e., martyrdom. The point of view offered in this paper highlights, however, that choosing martyrdom stops bloodshed and pain. Stopping self-inflicted pain is inconsistent with the model by which ascetics operated. They sought to inflict pain on themselves repetitively, shedding blood each time, in order to express, time and again, not once, love in the right measure:70 not too little, not too much.

I found another answer to the same question in Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy, based on his interpretation of Aristotle, according to whom one of the attributes of the good or of God is existence. Therefore, the love of the good or the love of God means the love of existence and of preservation, reminiscent of the creator’s love for his work.71 Thus, when ascetics sought to express love for God, they inflicted pain on themselves in the measure of blood but maintained their existence. That is why, even according to God’s own model, the right measure of pain, expressing love for God, is the measure of blood. Once again, however, what about sacrificing life as an expression of love? Why did ascetics not imitate Christ in this respect too? Why did they stop inflicting pain on themselves at the point of bloodshed? Why did they take care to choose actions that would not harm their lives, as Easterling argued?72 And further, if blood is the right measure, what makes it so?

I found answers to these questions in studies of blood in Christianity,73 and especially in studies analyzing the concept of divalent blood, which was prevalent in Christianity in general74 and in medieval Christianity in particular.75 According to this concept, blood is divalent because it contains a fundamental distinctive contrast. According to Anidjar, we can divide the concept of blood into spheres or realms, such as literal, real, and figurative or symbolic blood (2014). Anidjar discussed two moments in the history of Christianity, arguing that these moments play an important role in the perception and construction of Christian blood: the Last Supper and the Inquisition. His argument regarding the representation of the Christian blood community, constructed by each of these moments, clarifies the idea of divalent blood. For him, that representation symbolizes, simultaneously, “unity and division, communion and persecution, inwardness and outwardness, continuity and rapture, transformation and revolution”.76

Each representation of Christian blood contained, according to Bynum, a positive value and a negative value simultaneously. Blood represented both pain and redemption; sin and purification; guilt, due to sin, and love, which allows forgiveness and absolution; impurity and purity;77 destruction of the private and social self, and construction of one. Bloodshed also expresses violence and death, but at the same time signifies birth and life.78 Blood was perceived as distinct from the living body, but simultaneously as a representation of the living. Even when shed in cases of violence, blood served as a means of access to continuation of the community. The same is true of the blood of Christ as savior. The moment his blood was shed, he became alive.

It seems that both Anidjar and Bynum would agree that Christian blood represented the blood of Christ, from which the apostles drank at the Last Supper, but at the same time it represented something separated from Christ as a means to deliverance, saving and bringing about redemption. Blood was perceived as representing a change of the living body into annihilation and death and thus represented the earthly redeemed.79 Above all, both during the Middle Ages and at other times, blood simultaneously represents life and death; life and the sacrifice of life; God, whose essence is existence and life, and God who died on the cross. To my understanding, it was this divalent quality of blood and its capacity for connecting opposite poles, positive values with negative ones, that gave blood the power and status to serve as connector between human and divine.

Many studies have discussed this connecting role of blood, the representations and symbolic values it carries.80 The present paper proposes to enrich this discussion by granting blood another role, as the right measure of pain expressing the right measure of love for God. In God’s original model, actualized when He was embodied in the flesh of His son on the cross, blood represents pain in general, and the right measure of pain as an expression of love in particular. It seems, however, that the model’s divine origin does not suffice as proof that blood is the right measure. Fully imitating God would include sacrifice of life; it may undermine the very existence of the Christian community, potentially eliminating it. Had it not been for its divalent character, blood would not have represented both life and sacrifice, both pain and redemption; that character made blood the right measure of pain. The measure of blood served as a solution, enabling the expression of love for God, as well as love for the body of the church; love for those who are loved by God, for whose sake He experienced pain and sacrificed his own life. This highlights the importance of the category of measure from yet another perspective. It ascribes a new meaning to blood’s divalent nature, which has hitherto gone unmentioned in the literature: blood as the right measure of pain, which mimics, among its other meanings, both life and the sacrifice of life, in order to express love for God.

Considering blood’s divalent nature, one can understand why ascetics inflicted pain on themselves, and then stopped when their blood was shed, without actually sacrificing their lives. Among the many distinct divalent representations blood carried, it bore a full imitation of the divalent experience of God incarnated in His son Christ, which included pain and sacrifice of life, but also an achievement of redemption and continuity of the Christian community’s existence. In carrying this representation, self-inflicted painful acts in the measure of blood achieved the ends of pain alongside an imitation of the sacrifice of life, but also the ends of redemption and the continuity of life. These ends where achieved by the very fact that ascetics did not sacrifice their lives. The measure of blood provided a complete ontological imitation of the measure of pain according to the model originating in the archetype, God. This enabled the epistemic achievement of expressing love for God in the right measure.

4. Conclusions

This paper presents a new tool, the category of measure, for the philosophical analysis of an old and often studied religious phenomenon. Using this category, I found that for those who inflicted pain on themselves, the greater the measure of pain the more love it expressed. On the basis of this finding, I concluded that the measure of pain has significance and that there is an adequacy ratio between the measure of pain experienced and the measure of love expressed. It can, therefore, be argued that pain is indeed an expression of love and that it serves as an index of its measure. This makes clear the importance of the category of measure in the context of self-inflicted pain as an expression of love for God, the focus of this paper. I analyzed self-inflicted painful acts among ascetics, finding that they stopped inflicting pain when blood was exposed. I further concluded that the exposure of blood was the right measure of pain that one should inflict on oneself in order to express the right measure of love for God.

The category of measure was nowhere discussed in existing studies on the subject. No reference was made to the measure of pain or the adequacy ratio between that measure and the measure of love expressed. I therefore highlighted the measure of pain as a central component of this paper, focusing on an analysis of self-inflicted painful acts as an expression of believers’ desire to draw closer to God. The presence of such desire indicates the existence of love for God. At the bottom of the religious phenomenon in question is the Christian concept that drawing close to God allows one’s knowledge about Him to expand. Drawing close to God becomes possible by imitating the pain He experienced while incarnate in the flesh of His son Christ. Along with other religious purposes, such as competition with official representatives of religious orders and making penance, as well as non-religious purposes such as sexual arousal, self-inflicted painful acts served ascetics by allowing them to imitate God. The painful nature of these acts has significance, as it is an expression of love and there is an adequacy ratio between the measure of pain and the measure of love. Self-inflicted painful acts were an important component of attempts to imitate the character and measure of God’s love, embodied in the flesh of His son Christ; painful, violent, bloody love.