her divine spouse became a
living presence; and her language to him, as recorded by herself, is of
intense passion. She went to prayer, agitated and tremulous, as if to a
meeting with an earthly lover: 'Oh, my Love,' she exclaimed, 'when shall
I embrace you? Have you no pity on the torments that I suffer? Alas!
alas! my Love, my Beauty, my Life! Instead of healing my pain, you take
pleasure in it. Come, let me embrace you, and die in your sacred
arms!'"[97] The historian remarks that the "holy widow," as her
biographers call her, is an example, and a lamentable one, of the
tendency of the erotic principle to ally itself with high religious
excitement and enthusiasm. Further along he says that "some of the
pupils of Marie de l'Incarnation, also, had mystical marriages with
Christ; and the impassioned rhapsodies of one of them being overheard,
she nearly lost her character, as it was thought that she was
apostrophizing an earthly lover."[98]

[95] Krafft-Ebing: _op. cit. ante._, p. 8, footnote.

[96] _Ibid._

[97] Francis Parkman: _The Jesuits in North America_, p. 175. "_O
amour, quand vous embrasserai-je? N'avez vous point pitie de moi
dans le tourment que je souffre? Helas! mon amour, ma beaute, ma
vie! au lieu de me guerir, vous vous plaisez a mes maux. Venez donc
que je vous embrasse et je meure entre vos bras sacres._" Journal
de Marie de l'Incarnation.

[98] Francis Parkman: _The Jesuits in North America_, p. 176.

The instances of religio-sexual outbursts in nuns and Roman Catholic
female devotees who lead celibate lives are very numerous; I will,
however, call attention to but one other: St. Veronica was so much in
love with the divine lion that she took a young lion to bed with her,
fondled and kissed it, and allowed it to suck her breasts.[99]
Throughout sacred literature, beginning with the Bible itself,
religio-sexual feeling is very much _en evidence_. Hosea married a
prostitute because--so he declared--God commanded him so to do. If
Solomon's beautiful song is typical of the Church and the Christ (as
some theologians teach), then it is an unmistakable instance of
religio-sexual feeling; religious emotion and sexual desire walk hand in
hand through the measures of this impassioned verse. Circumcision, now
eminently a religious ceremony, was, unquestionably, a sexual fetich and
a phallic rite, which has been handed down from antiquity, when all the
world were