J'y souffre ce qui ne se peut comprendre ni exprimer

From 1673 to 1674, Anne-Cécile Duhamel, a French sister of the Order of the Visitation, wrote a series of letters to her spiritual director Archange Enguerrant in which she gave a meticulous account of her spiritual suffering and inner struggles. The afflictions that the sister described, the comments added by the spiritual director, and the context of their correspondence are examined in a detailed case study. For Anne-Cécile Duhamel, religious suffering and self-sacrifice were intrinsically connected with the act of writing, the search for a suitable language, and the always given possibility of different interpretations. The case casts light on the transfer of knowledge prerequisite for the experience of suffering and on procedures of discernment, classification, and adaptation, thereby contributing to our understanding of the complexity of mystical suffering in the second half of the 17th century

Art · Humanities · Education, sociology, and vocational training · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research