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These were just a few, and far from the most horrific, tortures that Saint Maria Maddalena inflicted on her body. The information we have on this woman, whether hagiographic or biographical, lends itself to easy psychologizing on various forms of sado-masochism.(13) Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi was born in Florence to a very distinguished family and baptized Caterina, after her maternal grandmother. She received religious instruction in a Jesuit-sponsored institution, and though precociously sensitive, she did not exhibit any unusual psychological proclivities before her entry to the Carmelite monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in 1582. She took the habit as Sister Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi in 1583.

Maria Maddalena's self-tortures are not only vivid illustrations of sanctioned "masochism," they provide an unusually detailed map of the mental terrain of the religious self-hurter. The details easily put to rest any notion that pain is a monolithic experience lacking subtlety, ambiguities, or inner contradictions. It is possible, based on information obtained from Maria's confessors, superiors, and sisters, to distinguish at least three major types of pain in her monastic life: voluntary self-inflicted pain, pain that she felt was inflicted on her by devils (and which may have been nonconscious forms of self-mutilation), and natural pain (disease). These types are discussed in the following paragraphs.

Voluntary, self-inflicted pain

A vivid illustration of the first type is available from very early in Maria's monastic career. Puccini writes that Maria took the long, thorn-covered stalks of orange trees and tied them tightly around her head in the manner of Jesus on the crucifix. She kept this crown of thorns on her head for a full night.(14) In fact, Maria's identification with the crucifix was such that she sometimes would remove it from the cross at the monastery's Quire and wipe the sweat and blood from the face of her beloved.(15) But the conscious forms of self-inflicted pain went beyond the imitation of Christ. Maria on various occasions had herself tied to a post, hands bound behind her back. At other times she lay on the ground for members of the congregation to step on her body. She slept on rough straw, walked barefoot in the winter, dripped hot candle-wax on her own body, and dressed in a coarse and irritating garment. These and other forms of torment, when not conceptualized as imitation of Christ, were described as ways of testing and fighting bodily temptation (like Daniel in the lion's den), fighting the urge to eat too much, or battling the pleasures of comfort and sexual desire. Pain was also a way of driving away possessing devils and evil spirits, or it was an alchemical agent for transforming Maria's body and mind into instruments of Providence.(16)

Pain inflicted by devils

Every now and then Maria was subject to pains and injuries that she experienced as though inflicted by devils: "Sometimes the envious spirits would throw her down the stairs, and sometimes she was cruelly bitten by them, as by so many venomous vipers, whereby she suffered extreme pain."(17) On another occasion "she was then cast down to the ground with great fury and beaten with incredible rage. For sometimes the Devil struck her over the head, sometimes he cast her down precipitously, so that her face was swollen in such a way that for the space of many days it was necessary for her to be under cure."(18) The modern reader does not know what to make of these and similar descriptions. The agent causing the pain is felt as though it were someone other than Maria, the devil. The biographer clearly shares this point of view and, in fact, he describes Maria throwing stones at the devil.(19) But the reader perceives these events as delusional, which is not only a clinical observation but an ontological judgment. At this point it is safe to say that from the phenomenal perspective, the injury is not caused by ego but by some other agency.

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