59 Stanislas Breton, *Deux Mystiques De l'Excès : J.-J. Surin Et Maître Eckhart*, Cogitatio Fidei 135 (Paris : Cerf, 1985). See also Pierre-Jean Labarriére, "La Mystique et la philosophie Stanislas Breton et l'Odologie excessive," in *Archives de Philosophie*, 50 (1987): 679–686.

60 Andre Vauchez, "Reliquie, santi e santuari, spazi sacri e vagabondaggio religioso nel medioevo," in *Storia dell ́Italia religiosa. L antichità e il medioevo*, directed by Andre Vauchez (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1993), 474.

61 Juergen Hahn, *The Origins of the Baroque Concept of Perigrinatio* (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina, 1973), 173.

For the Portuguese nun, peregrination is both a spiritual journey and a physical one. It is her own path from Mioma, Sátão to Lorvão, Coimbra, and from there to the religious house at Lisbon. On the anniversary of this last journey, she writes:

[ANTT 91r] Dia do glorioso Apóstolo São Mateus, na era de 1663, dipois de comunguar, estando emcomendando ao Senhor por mandado do meu confessor, huma religiosa que estava doente em a Recoleta de Lisboa, aonde eu estava, se me arebatou\* o ispirito com grande força e suavidade e parecia-me que via em o Ceo aquela riligiosa que ainda estava viva e loguo se me apresentou a saída, que em aquele mesmo dia fizera de Lorvão e deu-se-me a entender que o ano se fenalisava em aquela mesma ora em que eu comecei aquela pirigrinação e me detriminei a deixar pelo Senhor, casa, parentes e irmãs e o mesmo Senhor com grande poder e magestade me ritificou, que ele fora o que me trouxera, que naquele dia fasia quatro anos completos, que lhe ofrecese os trabalhos que em eles avia padicido e sem eu, por mim, poder obrar nada, porque estavão as potências absortas\*, se me puserão diante todos os trabalhos, que em o discurso daqueles quatro anos tinha padicido\*, e era tão grande o volume que fasião, que fiquava a minha alma de todo admirada e toda se dilatava pela grandesa daqueles padecimentos, os quais com grande umildade ofrecia ao Senhor e parecia-me que era como hum fumosinho mui dilicado que hia subindo ao Ceo e o mesmo Senhor que me dispunha para lhe apresentar aquela pobre oferta a recibia e se agradava muito dela, mas suposto me permitia que eu lha ofrecese. Conhecia eu, como por vista de olhos que não tinha ali nada mais, que ser hum pobre instromento a quem o Senhor tomara para se excercitar em aqueles trabalhos que avia padicido e com esta imtiligência fiquei tão umilde e dispida\* de mim que o não sei declarar Deu-me tãobem a entender que começase com grande valor o outro ano que emtrava e parecia-me que o Senhor tinha para obrar cousas grandes, em o fim desta minha perigrinação e parece que o comprimento destes anos era como hum termo que o tempo fasia para se vir cheguando, aquele mais desejado do que a minha alma recibia grande jubilo ispiritual e com isto tornou a fiquar em si, mas com hum impito de lágrimas tão grande, que se me rasguava o coração e asim sem saber por onde hia, me fui para o coro asistir ha ora que [ANTT 91v] se dis dipois da misa e estando ainda como fora de mim, se me deu a entender que aquela religiosa, que dise que estava doente, avia de morrer daquela doença <como em effeito foi assim> e que loguo avia de ir para o Ceo, e com isto entendia a grande dita, que a esperava em quella ditosa pátria e o quanto errados hião, aqueles que emquanto tinhão vida, não fasião po-los alcançar. Isto tudo me acabou de derreter o coração como cera, com grandes deseijos de me ver de pose daqueles eternos bens, comprados com o precioso sangue do noso Bom Jesus, cujo nome dulcisimo seija de todos adorado e para sempre servido. Amém.

Em a oração da tarde, em este mesmo dia, se me tornou a retificar tudo o que deixo referido asim da religiosa, a qual o Senhor levou para si dahi a hum mês, como das mais cousas tocantes ha minha perigrinação e de novo se me deu a entender que o Senhor se paguara e servira muito do Noso Reverendissimo Padre Frei Vivardo me traser para a Recoleta, que o Senhor o avia de premiar muito por esta obra, que fisera por lhe parecer que era vontade sua e derãose-me a entender estas palavras: quia facisti hanc rem. Outras cousas entendi tocantes a este servo de Deos, todas de grande consolação que não relato por não alarguar esta leitura. [ANTT 91r-v]

[ANTT 91r] On the Day of the glorious Apostle Saint Matthew, in the year of one thousand and six hundred and sixty-three, after taking Communion, while commending, by mandate of my confessor, a religious woman that was sick in Lisbon's Recollect in which I was, my spirit was enraptured\* with great strength and suavity, and it seemed to me that I saw that still-living religious woman in Heaven, and soon the exit from Lorvão that I did that same day presented itself to me, which gave me to understand that the year was finishing in the same hour when I started that peregrination and determined to leave home, relatives and brothers, and the same Lord with great power and majesty ratified me that He had been the one that had brought me, four years ago completed in that same day. I was to offer Him the works that I had suffered during those years. And without my own possibility of doing anything, as the potencies were otherwise occupied\*, all the works that, during the course of those four years, I had patiated\* placed themselves before me and their volume was so large that my soul became wholly admiring and dilated\* itself entirely due to the greatness of those sufferings which, with great humility, I offered TO the Lord, and it seemed to me that it was like a very delicate and small thread of smoke that was ascending into Heaven, and the same Lord that had disposed me to present Him that poor offering, received it and was much pleased with it, but supposedly allowed me to offer it to Him. I knew, as if just after a swift look, that I had nothing more to do there than to be a poor instrument, taken by the Lord to be exercised in those works that I had been patiating. With this insight, I become so humble and stripped\* of myself, that I don't know how to declare it. He also gave me to understand that I should start the incoming year with great valor, and it seemed to me the Lord had great works to undertake at the end of my peregrination and that the length of these years was like a term that time made to close in to the most desired one, which made my soul receive a great spiritual joy and with this, it came back to its senses but with a thrust of tears so big that my heart was tearing itself apart, and thus without knowing the path I was taking, I went to the choir, to attend the hour that is said [ANTT 91v] after the mass and still being as if out of myself, I was given to understand that that religious woman I said that was ill, would succumb to that disease – as in fact would happen and would soon go to Heaven and with this I understood the great happiness that awaited her in that blissful home and how wrong those were that did not do enough to reach it while alive. All this ended up melting

my heart like wax, with big desires to see myself owning those eternal goods, bought with the precious blood of our good Jesus whose most sweet name shall be adored and served forever. Amen.

During the afternoon prayer in this same day all that I leave mentioned was again ratified, not only about the religious woman that God took to his side one month later but about the other things related to my pilgrimage, and again I was made to understand that the Lord had paid and much served himself with Our Most Reverend Father Friar Vivardo having brought me to the Recollect, as the Lord would reward him much for this work, the latter did as it seemed to him that it was His will and I was made to understand these words: quia facisti hanc rem ["because thou hast done this thing" Gen 22:16]. Other things I understood related to this servant of God, all of Great consolation, which I do not tell so this reading is not extended. [ANTT 91r-v]

In this passage we must highlight several motives for peregrination. The description and revelation of a dying woman's pilgrimage from life to death could be the first. The second is the anniversary of Joana's own journey from Lorvão to Coimbra: it was on the same date, four years beforehand, that Joana had initiated her life at the Recollect. The third motive is the vision and revelation she receives regarding her future in Lisbon. The Cistercian nun deals here mainly with time: the past she commemorates; the future she envisages; the present of a dying religious woman, a 'small thread of smoke' she relates to her vision.

Joana's peregrination amounts to the overcoming of many obstacles, of her own private crusade into another religious house. Her hardships in the form of sickness and physical impairment, as the abandonment of her own "home, relatives and sisters" – the powerful family network mentioned in the second chapter – are accepted by God as a testimony of her most personal sacrifice. This is shown to her by different tokens on her fourth anniversary at the Recollect. The scent, the prediction, and the prevision of the death of a religious woman signal the infused knowledge of the close bond Joana has with the God-Man.

There is a crescendo in this encounter. From the cross to the embrace, the vinculum to the peregrination, Joana is uniting herself with the God-Man in a close and intimate relationship. This crescendo acquires a special tone when Joana quotes the Latin version of Genesis 22:16, "because thou hast done this thing." The thing was, for Abraham, the sacrifice of his own son Isaac.This thing is, for Joana, her personal sacrifice of her own family ties and, ultimately, her own will. Joana is truly assured of creating her own covenant with the God-Man.

#### 3.2.4 Positioning the Gift: The Dowry

In the discourse of embrace and encounter, the flexibility of the God-Man's limbs is what makes possible his 'dom', the gift. Joana says:

são as notícias\* e mais sentimentos que nacem desta fonte e que suposto, quando verdadeiramente são de Deos, traguão grandes riquezas para a alma não convém que se abrace com o dom e deixe ao autor e dador do mesmo dom. [ANTT 45v.]

the notices\* and more feelings are [those] that sprout from this fountain. When they are truly from God, they bring great richness for the soul. It is not convenient that [someone] embraces in the gift, and ignores to the author and donor of the same gift. [ANTT 45v.]

For Joana the gift ('dom') is not only an object. Repeatedly, almost to exhaustion, Joana uses the verb *to give* associated with knowledge. She does not say: "I understood it from God," but rather, "He gave me to understand."

The gift is another token of her Cistercian heritage as the gift of truth. This is present in all of Bernard's works, but particularly in his *Commentaries on the Songs of Songs* and in *De Diligendo Deo*. 62 In the first book, in the eighth sermon on the kiss of the mouth, Bernard speaks of the threefold knowledge that God gives to the bride. The knowledge of eternal life is through the union of Father and Son, but by being "the kiss of the mouth," the (holy) spirit or breath is present, making the union, the bonding, the gift of revelation. Not surprisingly, Bernard corroborates this with two passages from Paul (1Cor 2:6-10 and Rom 5:5) on the gift of knowledge and love. The Cistercian monk says:

It is by giving the Spirit, through whom he reveals and shows himself to us; he reveals himself in the gift, his gift is in the revealing. Furthermore, this revelation which is made through the Holy Spirit not only conveys the light of knowledge but also lights the fire of love.63

In *De Diligendo Deo*, Bernard speaks of three higher gifts: dignity (will), knowledge, and virtue.64 These gifts are not rewards, neither can they be returned or paid back; they must be cherished and not neglected through charity; satisfaction lies in true love.65 Thus, it is again the bridal union that provides the intimate satisfaction of true love.

62 Bernard of Clairvaux, *Bernard Clairvaux: Selected Writings*, trans. G. R. Evans, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Crossroads, 1985).

63 Bernard of Clairvaux, "The Commentaries of the Songs of Songs. Sermon 8," [Sermones super cantica canticorum] in *Bernard Clairvaux: Selected Writings*, chap. 5.

64 Bernard of Clairvaux, "Of Loving God," [De diligendo Dei] chap. 2.

65 Bernard of Clairvaux, "Of Loving God," chap. 7.

The same gift and bridal company motivated by the encounter, experienced on the cross and through the Incarnation, achieves its likeness and joins human with God, compelling Joana to write these words:

perpetuamente sentia comiguo esta divina companhia, e tanto que me recolhia em oração se me representava\* este Senhor em <o> centro de minha alma, e me tratava com tanta familiaridade e amor que se não pode dizer. Metia-me consiguo em huma recamara mui secreta, e com hum laço\* de amor me apertava\* com tanta força, que me levava o coração, e muitas veses me dava a entender cousas tão admiraveis e [ANTT 19] e com tão grande segredo que suposto a alma entendia que ellas erão altisimas não podia acabar de entender o que erão porque parece que não era posivel emquanto estava em esta vida mortal cheguar a penetrar aque <le> uculto e secreto misterio. Mas ficava deste amoroso ritiro e suavisimo abraço\* com tantas guanancias\* e riquesas\* que bem entendia era grande a mercê que avia recibido. E muitas veses temerosa de meus grandes pecados, lhe dizia, toda abrasada\*, em o mesmo amor que elle me dava: "se for vossa vontade meu Jesus, não me deis noticia de cousas tão grandes, não fieis de mim, vosos tesouros, que suposto não demenuis os que tendes, com dares tantos, não mereço eu ser depositaria\* de tão ricas joias, basta-me por pagua destes deseijos que tenho, ou me tendes dado de voso servir, o saber-vos amar." E elle me respondia: 'quem verdadeiramente ama não sabe por limite em o que dá, nem menos pode ocultar o que sabe'. Com estas amorozas rezois julgue quem o divino sabe amar, o estado em que ficaria huma pobre pecadora vendo-se deste modo tratada do mesmo Deus. Não sei, em verdade como vivo, nem sei acertar em o que escrevo, porque nem as lagrimas me deixão nem eu sei atinar em o que diguo. E veijo-me em este destero sem segurança de perder a este divino Senhor a quem tanto devo. [ANTT 19r]

I perpetually felt this Divine company with me, so much that I would recollect myself in prayer and the Lord would represent\* Himself to me in the center of my soul. And He treated me with such familiarity and love that it cannot be put into words. He put me with Him in a most secret chamber and, with a loving bond\* He tightened\* me so strongly that he took my heart . Oftentimes, He gave me to understand quite admirable things, [ANTT 19] so greatly secret that, even when the soul understood that they were of the most high, I could not totally understand what those were because it seemed impossible to eventually be able to penetrate that secret hidden mystery while still in this mortal life. But from this loving retreat and most suave embrace\*, I kept so many gains\* and richesses\* that I well understood the greatness of the mercy I had recieved. And many times, fearful for my great sins, I said to Him, all ablaze\* in the same love he gave me, "If this be your will, my Jesus, do not give me news of such great things; do not entrust me with your treasuries for even you do not diminish those you have by giving so many, I am not worthy

to be the custodian\* of such rich jewels; that you allow me to serve you and to know how to love you is payment enough for the desires I have." He replied: "The one who loves truly does not know the limit of what he gives, neither can he hide what he knows." With these loving reasons who knows how to love the Dive may judge the state a poor sinner would be in seeing herself being treated this way by the selfsame God. I do not know in truth how I live, nor conceive of what I write, for not even my tears leave me, neither can I unearth what I say. And I see myself in this exile without security, loosing this Divine Lord, to whom I am so much in debt. [ANTT 19r-v]

There is eagerness within the experience of anxiousness, a crescendo of the God-Man's givenness in the space of mystical union. The words 'company', 'familiarity', 'chamber', 'secret', 'hidden mystery', 'retreat', 'embrace', and 'treasuries' are vestiges of the great wealth Joana cannot pay back. If the God-Man gives without asking for anything back, it is only due to his desiring nature. Only then is the gift truly possible.Therein, the salvation and redemption can happen. It can never be an exchange, in which the giver and the receiver establish a personal relation with the object, creating a social bond.66 This gift is less of a commodity, for there is no private propriety. It is instead a mutual relationship, but an unbalanced and disproportionate one between everything (the act of giving) and nothing (the act of receiving). God's givenness is what grace means. The favor is indeed a poisoned, mortal gift. It can never be returned, it can never be exchanged, and it is the gift of God's humanity, of mortality, creation, reshaping, and, of course, love, as we will subsequently see in chapter four.

God's gift is neither an object nor an essence.He does not give the being but gives the supreme present: the dowry *in* and *of* time. In another passage, Joana writes explicitly on the importance of that dowry.

como eu hera só e estrangeira\*, imaginava que as podia molestar com meus trabalhos e para que estes me paricesem mais amarguosos, punha-se-<me> diante dos olhos, que viera para aquela santa casa sem traser dote. Lembravãome minhas parentas e irmãs e o muito <amor> que me tinhão e o cuidado com que em aquelas ocaziois me [ANTT 60r] acudiao com todo o necesário e finalmente não avia cousa penosa que se me não pusese diante para <me> desconsolar e fazer guera e como eu não tinha nimguém em que tivese imteira confiança, asim cercada de penas e metida em trevas, me apresentava ao meu Senhor e ele por Sua imfinita bondade me socorria sempre humas

66 For a classic view on the gift, see Marcel Mauss, *The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, [Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques*], trans. by Ian Cunnison (New York: Norton, 1967) ,and Michel Panoff, "Marcel Mauss's 'The Gift' Revisited," in *Man* 5, no. 1 (1970): 60–70.

veses, dipois de ter batalhado muito com estas imaginaçois e outras loguo, em me começando acercar, me dava a entender que ele me trouxera para padecer só com ele e muitas veses entendia estas palavras: Eu sou o teu dote, per minha conta corre a pagua do que gastas não te ei-de faltar nem a esta casa. Com estas mercês tão grandes de meu Senhor, fiquava toda trocada\* e chea de fortalesa e deseijos de mais padecer por quem tanto devia. [ANTT 59v-60r]

As I was both alone and a stranger\*, I imagined that I could bother them [the other religious women] with my labors; and in order for the latter to seem more bitter, the fact that I had come to this holy house without bringing a dowry cast itself before my eyes. I would recall my relatives and sisters and the great love they had for me and the care with which in those occasions they [ANTT 60r] aided me with all that was necessary. And finally there was no sorrowful thing that did not set itself before me, to disconsole me and wage war at me. As I had nobody that I wholly trusted, surrounded by sorrows and set in darkness, I presented myself to my Lord and He, through His infinite kindness, would always come to my side, sometimes after giving much battle to many of these imaginations and others as soon as they started surrounding me, He would make me understand that He had brought me here to suffer alone with Him. I often understood these words: "I am your own dowry. The payment of what you spend is at my expense. I will not leave you nor this House." With such great mercies from my Lord, I remained all changed\* and full of fortitude and desires to suffer more for the one to whom I owed so much. [ANTT 59v-60r]

Here Joana describes how her dowry (a legal procedure in both monastic and conventual life), and especially the lack of it, intensifies the situations of anxiousness she is experiencing. What she is describing here is the second dowry she must have obtained to enter the Recollect.67

As already mentioned in the first chapter, the dowry was of much importance in the conventual life of the Lisbon Recollect and may have been an issue regarding Joana's return to Lorvão.68 In this excerpt, Joana speaks of a historical given fact – her coming to the Recollect,invited by Vivardo de Vasconcellos, her confessor, who at that moment no longer protected her. However, taking her point of departure from

67 The problems related to the dowry also happened in the case of the seventeenth-century Flemish mystic Antoinette Bourignon. Her *Sa vie exterieure* relates her father's unwillingness to pay the Carmelites for her entrance into the Cloister and the Carmelites' reluctance to fulfill Bourignon's desire to enter the Cloister made her realize the true path of Christian faith. Mirjam de Baar, "*Ik moet spreken.* Het spiritueel leiderschap van Antoinette Bourignon." (PhD diss., University of Groningen, 2004), 53–54*,* http://irs.ub.rug.nl/ppn/26 4413962.

68 Vasconcellos, "De hum papel," 112r.

an actual fact, Joana depends from God-Man twofold: she is under his patronage and only he has the faculty of giving whatever that is, including the dowry.The God-Man's words reiterate the lost symbolism of the dowry. The dowry is more than a payment; it is a gift. It is the excess behind God-Man's omnipotency.

Joana's saintliness also lies here, in God's givenness. To be a saint is, therefore, is to have the ability of accepting a favor, a mercy that God is naturally impelled to give – infused knowledge, or, in other terms, grace. But the Son's humanity is in his flexibility towards humanity and not in its inflexible righteousness ('justificatio') toward a law. Grace here underlines more the event of *santificatio* with/in God than its *justificatio* against/before God.69

Dowry is also a symbol for a change of state that goes beyond exchange. In the text, Joana was transformed, changed, ex-changed, 'trocada'.70 This occurred in her humor and disposition; she does "battles with [her] imaginations," but acquires fortitude, re-inscribing herself in the discourse of anxiousness as well as in the divine economy of the gift. Although the nature of the gift does not ask for return, it is not merchandise; it produces an inner exchange in the person who receives it. She cannot give it back – then it would no longer be a gift. She must keep it, as she will be naturally affected by it. The ideal of *affectus* has less of a scholastic-Aristotelian base and more of a Cistercian one; despite its passional nature, it is a higher state of receptivity and suffering of what is there, what is given.71 As in the case of Aelred of Rievaulx (1110–1167), an English Cistercian abbot, this relationship is the closest bond that one can have with an Other. It is an *affectus*: both attachment and affection.72

Affection is not merely passive. Amy Hollywood has already pointed out the activeness of this concept.73 The affection achieved is based on the close communication of the suffering (Son-on-the-cross) with the *patiating*\* (daughter-on-the-bed). It is the crux of positions. The gift is the communication, the knowledge, this particular wisdom that cannot be shared or validated, a taste of wisdom: *saper*. It is the extreme gift: the present of presenting time (the brief time of humanity's nuptials

69 See the two moments of grace, santificatio and justificatio, in Charles Baumgartner, "Grace II Le mystére de la Filiation adoptive," in Baumgartner, *Dictionnaire de Spiritualité Ascétique et Mystique*, 6: 711.

70 Bluteau*, Vocabulario Portuguez e Latino*, s.v. "trocado", 8: 302.

71 Caroline Walker Bynum, "Jesus as Mother, Abbot as Mother' Some Cistercians themes in the twelfth century-writing," in *Jesus as a Mother. Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages* (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 110–170.

72 Aelred de Rievaulx, *Spiritual Friendship*, [*De spiritali amicitia]* trans. Lawrence Braceland, ed. Marsha Dutton, Cistercians Publications (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010), 49.

73 Amy Hollywood, "Song, Experience, and the Book in Benedictine Monasticism," in *The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism*, ed. Amy Hollywood and Patricia Z. Beckman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 67.

with God) becomes the present of death.74 In the first pages of her account, Joana states:

Repetia muitas veses com lagrimas e suspiros saidos d'alma aquelle verso do salmo que se resa na pri<ma> de quinta feira = us quequo Domine obbliveceris me infinem us quequo avertis faciem tuão a me= e quando me paricia que este amante Deos punha em mim seus divinos olhos não me sofria o coração que esta tão misaravel e torpe criatura fosse obgecto daquella divina vista em cuja presença me estava toda desfasendo\* em o nada de minha miseria aniquillada e pasmada\* da grandesa de minhas culpas, pedia a Deos me desse tempo para chora-las.[ANTT 8v]

I repeated, many times with tears and moans leaving my soul, the psalm that is prayed on Thursdays' Prime: "Usquequo Domine oblivisceris me inflinem? Usque-quo avertis faciem suam a me?" [How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? Forever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me? (Ps 13:1)] And when it seemed to me that this loving God cast His divine eyes upon me, my heart could not bear that a miserable and torpid creature such as me could be the object of that divine sight, in whose presence I was undoing\* myself into the nothingness of my annihilated misery. Astounded\* by the greatness of my guilt, I begged God to give me the time to cry about it. [ANTT 8v]

Here there is an interplay within the Psalm she hears about abandonment, hiddenness, and the contrast the Cistercian nun experiences by having God's 'eyes' cast upon her. This paradox within God's givenness turns Joana to a pious state of tears.

For her, the time of the gift is the time to 'chorar' (to cry, bemoan, weep for) one's guilt. I believe the Portuguese nun uses the plural when mentioning favors, mercies, miseries, etc., indicating the repetitive and continuous character of her relation to God. Throughout this chapter I will show more examples of this language of repetition when analyzing the operations of love. The reiteration and periphrasis "nothingness of this annihilated misery" attests several goals. The first is the affectivity and passivity that were lived in the Cistercian spiritual tradition. The second is the rhetoric of a female subjectivity, as Alison Weber has shown in Teresa's life.75 The third is a wholly open position to receive God's own humanity. Joana begged for more time to bemoan her guilt, her fallibility, and her nature. She was seen through God's capacity of loving (of giving himself through Christ), and she asked him for time to cry or weep. Crying is the way she found to establish a thankful but not re-

74 Check the glossary and the subchapter, "Deathly Anxiousness."

75 Weber, *Teresa of Ávila and the Rhetoric of Femininity*, 42–76.

tributive relationship with the God-Man. Finally, crying is a performative ritual as well, seen also in other religious mystics of diverse orders.76

Joana cannot return the divine gift of creation, but she can give thanks for it by crying (aloud). In chapter 17, on Christmas night, Joana shows how human thankfulness is connected to the gift of Incarnation. She warns that all men, especially the priests, must be thankful for being able to consecrate and to have in their hands the Son of God.This thankfulness comes with an obligation, as 'obriguada por sentimento' ['obliged by feeling', ANTT 7]. Obliged is also the Portuguese word for thanking someone for something. It means: "I am obliged to return what you give me."77 It seals, performatively, a contract between the giver and the receiver. But Joana cannot be obliged to return God's mercy. She can only give thanks, or give grace for the mercies that are her sanctity. In this way, she is also showing the impossibility of giving back: she even asks for more in return. She asks for time.

#### 3.2.5 Saudade and the Impossible Time

The time Joana receives is a time of absence. She expresses this absence and yearning through the use of the Portuguese word 'saudade'.78 Though it is not as recurrent a word as anxiousness,*saudade*is an important feature, as Mafalda Férin Cunha has already briefly mentioned.79 Joana uses this word throughout her account80 The presence of *saudade* related to the God-Man shows, simultaneously, the loss, lack, and desire of such a relationship.They are apart but they were and will be re-united. Dowry and gift are the present time and the presence.

The theme of *saudade* is of utmost importance to Portuguese thought. According to one of the first Portuguese dictionaries, the *Vocabulario Portuguez e Latim* by Raphael Bluteau, the word *saudade*, "accordingly to all extension of its signification, is the finest feeling ('sentimento') and sorrow ('pena') of a lost good, and desire to attain it."81 The early modern linguist suggests that it is not a mere 'desiderium', but a sorrowful 'desiderium'. It is a yearning for someone or something.

The Portuguese King, Dom Duarte (1391–1438), in his work *Leal Conselheiro*, distinguishes several notions, such as 'tristeza' (sadness), 'nojo' (mourning), 'pesar' (grief), 'desprazer' (displeasure), and 'avorrecimento' (abhorrence) from 'suidade' – an older version of *saudade*. The *latter* is described as being a 'sense of the heart'

76 Moiteiro, "As lágrimas na hagiografia do Mosteiro de Aveiro," 391–411.

77 Bluteau*, Vocabulario Portuguez e Latino*, 6: 20.

78 Check the glossary.

79 Cunha, "A Fiel e Verdadeira Relação," 54–55.

80 See folia ANTT3, 4v, 5, 16v, 35v, 37, 38, 53, 57, 104v, 107, 128.

81 "Saudade, segundo toda a extensão da sua significação hé um finissimo sentimento e pena de um bem ausente, com o desejo de o lograr." Bluteau, *Vocabulario Portuguez e Latino*, 7: 512–513.

that does not belong to the realm of reason, that causes feelings of sadness and mourning, while remembering and not regretting its implicit pleasure.82

In the seventeenth century, the theme of *saudade* was present in the work of António das Chagas (1631–1682), an author of spiritual books who, like Joana, had been widely influenced by Luis de Granada.83 He turned the theme of *saudade/s* toward the celestial goods, which were not yet attained.84 Another seventeenth-century author, Dom Francisco Manuel de Melo (1608–1666), the most important exponent of the Portuguese Baroque era, affiliates *saudade* with love and absence in his *Epanáforas Amorosas*. According to this baroque author, the two feelings were very strong in Portuguese sensibility, as the Portuguese were known in other countries for possessing a "loving nature" and for their extended journeys, which were a synonym of absence.85

When Joana speaks about *saudade*, she mentions the plural, and it is frequently connected with a feeling of tenderness and tears, as we will see in the next section. But Joana associates *saudade* with the 'ditoza patria' ['blessed fatherland', ANTT 128r, 135r], or with the feeling of yearning for her family [ANTT 4v]. She relates *saudades*to both objects of her past privation (her family, her home region, her first convent) and objects of future encounter (the God-Man). By asking for time, she asks for the time of reunion, of encounter, of communication, for the possibility of salvation, which is also inscribed in a possible etymology of *saudade*. This etymology was studied by CarolinaMichäelis,a Luso-German scholar,who traces *saudade* on the one hand back to the *soïdade/soidão* (loneliness), as seen in Portuguese troubadour poetry related to both nostalgia and abandonment of the beloved one, and on the other hand back to salutation (*saudar*), health (*saúde*), and salvation (*salvação*).86

*Saudade*is the discourse of both presence and absence. Like encounter and reencounter, *saudade* happens in time, through the deeper capacity of sight. In this passage, Joana recalls a particular knowledge she had received from God, and how a new sense of vision emerged from that:

E suposto que esta noticia\* me não largava em todo o luguar e tempo, dipois que o meu Senhor me fes esta mercé, que deixo escrita, de me dar a entender que todas as cousas estavão nele, e ele em todas elas. Foi este conhecimento

82 Afonso Botelho and António Braz Teixeira, *Filosofia da Saudade*, Colecção Pensamento Português (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1986), 14.

83 On António das Chagas see Maria Lurdes Belchior, *Frei António das Chagas – Um Homem e Um Estilo do Século XVII* (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1953).

84 António das Chagas, "Carta XLII," in *Cartas Espirituaes de Frei António de Chagas com suas notas* (Lisbon: Officina de Miguel Deslandes, 1664).

85 Botelho and Teixeira, *Filosofia da Saudade*, 19.

86 Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos, *A Saudade Portuguesa* (Oporto: Renascença Portuguesa, 1917), 49–64.

por outro modo tanto mais superior e dilicado que me fazia andar atonita\* e sempre recolhida, porque me parecia que em tudo o que obrava e cuidava, asim de dia como de noite, tinha por testemunha de minhas obras, aquele poderoso Deos da Magestade, que me estava vendo como se actualmente estivera em [ANTT 32r] sua presença.  Não he por ser mais santo, quem as recebe, que muitas veses fez ele mercês aos grandes pecadores para assim os tirar do mau estado em que vivem, não he prova de mayor virtude o recebelos, se não o exercitar as proprias virtudes e servir, amar e padecer pelo amado, e não apetecer nem desejar mais que a sua crus e aborrecer o descanso e regalos. [ANTT 31v-32r]

This notice\* would not let go of me in all places and at all times after my Lord granted me this mercy of giving me to understand that all things were in Him and He Himself in all of them, as I have written. This knowledge was, in another way, so much more superior and delicate that it made me walk in astonishment\* and always recollected, as it seemed to me that in everything I did and thought, during the day as well as at night, I had as a witness to my works that mighty God of Majesty that was seeing me as if I actually was in [ANTT 32r] His presence; and this company that I felt, I did not see with the eyes of the body, much less with those of the soul, but I felt that Divine company with me, as a person that is with another in the dark and, although the former does not see the latter, the first knows she has the second with her and even with more certainty, for the creature's presence may raise doubt, but this other one's not; as the same soul feels always with herself that same Lord that is supporting and directing her in all her actions and works, and if the Lord goes away that poor soul remains in such a forlornness \* and in a desert so big that she does not know herself nor knows what to do, seeing herself as if bereft\* of a good that took all her goods with it. And to enjoy it again she can do nothing, because all diligences

are lost and in this work she is not capable of anything; the creature is wholly, entirely, of the creator.  Everything that the Lord shares with a creature of His mercies is because He wants to His infinite goodness. Being an absolute and almighty Lord, He gives when, to whom, and how He wants. It is not because someone is saintlier that He will receive them. Many times He did mercies to great sinners in order to free them of the bad state in which they were living. Receiving them is no proof of greater virtue than exercising the proper virtues: serving, loving, and patiating for the beloved, and not coveting nor desiring more than His cross, and abhorring respite and pleasures. [ANTT 31v-32r]

In this passage, anxiousness becomes voraciousness, as can be seen in Joana's astonishment at being notified of God's plenitude and omnipresence. Joana distinctly uses the Cistercian vocabulary of the 'eyes of the soul', and she might be alluding to William of Saint Thierry through Teresa.87 The feeling of presence is the ultimate gift which God grants, which is even out of reach of the 'eyes of the soul'. Joana's notion of support and holding when the Cistercian nun says "that same Lord who was supporting me" is similar. She is inscribing herself in an equal relationship, into the spiritual tradition based on the commentaries on the Songs of Songs. This support and its deprivation are nothing less than the giving essence of diversity in the arms of God. Anxiousness is to be both embraced (in God's arms) and 'desamparada'(helpless, lost, desperate, without support, forlorn) for Christ's Man, in the *saudade*. The paradox is implicit in the mystical experience, in and out of time: life and death.

The encounter comes from a salutation and ends in *saudade*. The latter also contains the salutation, the greeting, the mourning of all the impossible though experienced relationships. Therefore *saudade* is extreme health, the extremely gifted life, the possible salvation for humankind.

The *present* is now also a time of loss, of missing, of absence, of the gift. When this *gift* becomes poisoned, it only gives off the bitter flavor of *saudade*. Joana writes her own confessions, calling on the possibility of a *present* for her memory. As shown in the first chapter, Augustine is always present in the discourse of *saudade*, because confession, memory, recollection, and writing are moments, events, and states of experiencing *saudade*. This is the impossible but perennial movement of rotating – almost a somersault – toward one's own *vita*/life.

The time and movement of *saudade* lie in the formation of anxiousness/ancias. These *anxiousnesses* (always in the plural) are recurrently situated: they intensify throughout the life as 'amorozas ancias' (loving anxiousness) [ANTT 19v], 'ancias

87 William of St. Thierry, *The Nature and Dignity of Love*, 8.31-23. This theme, however, is also present in Theresa, from whom Joana might have taken directly. See, for instance, Teresa de Jesus, "The Way of Perfection," chap. 24.

continuas' (continuous anxiousness) [ANTT 20r], 'entranhaveis ancias' (estranging anxiousness) [ANTT 45r], 'ancias do coração' (anxiousness of the heart) [ANTT 92r], into 'ancias tão mortais' (such deadly anxiousness) [ANTT 105r].

Anxiousness is a state that makes Joana move and be a part of the 'operation of love' – another expression the Cistercian nun uses. It suggests a new aspect of the subjectivity's saintliness: its *excessiveness*.The positioning, forwarding, and thinking of/reflecting excessiveness (as a possible synonym of ecstasy) are the next limit-situations of loving anxiousness.

#### **3.3. Operation of Love**

So far I have shown that, in Joana, anxiousness is transmitted in the encounter. The situation of the encounter is the meeting place, the possibility of a colloquium on the cross, and the crossing between humanity and the Divinity in the female *daughtership*: the movement of the God-Man's givenness (mercies, favors, knowledge) and human-daughter receiving; the impossible exchange of the dowry (a symbol of mystical marriage, but also a symbol arising from the quotidian monastic practice of paying a fee to enter a religious house, as happened twice to Joana). This is the time of salutation, salvation, and mourning – the time of*saudade* after the long journey in the rough sea. *Saudade* becomes a sign of exile or, better yet, a sign of displacement in time (from eternity to temporality), which is concurrently a desire, a yearning (desire and lack), and a home*sickness*. There is a growing sense of sickness, which is felt mainly in Joana's recurrent embodied usage of ancias/anxiousness. Now I will proceed to analyze how anxiousness is an operation of Christocentric love in Joana's imagery. The Cistercian and Iberian mystical traditions inscribed in her account show how she builds a discourse of excess, which shall not be without dogmatic consequences. Anxiousness here is what Joana de Jesus calls an 'operation of love'.

#### 3.3.1 Deadly Health: Patiating Anxiousness

For Joana, the state of anxiousness is entirely a state of (lack of) health. In chapter 30, the nun describes her fear, which is her deficit of virtues and surplus of imperfections. However, what 'afflicted' her most was the impossibility of doing her penance, due to the seizures she suffered starting from her arrival in Lisbon. Throughout the years, she claimed to have 'perilous illnesses' which took away her strength. She was always feverish and suffered from 'continuous bodily pains', which prevented her from working and moving. Some 'dangerous blisters' in which holes were opened appeared all over her body. Even the 'lint' that was used to prevent the holes from getting wider was the cause of many maladies. She also had 'apoplectic attacks' that lasted up to five hours, causing the physicians to have doubts about her survival [ANTT 40-v]. Her body could not keep food down and she vomited. Her companions prayed for her and the end of her 'trabalhos'(hardships, trials,and works). Joana even drank from a relic of Saint Paul, which provided her with one hour of respite from her seizures [ANTT 41]. She was ill to the point of having received the Extreme Unction, but (as occurred once with Teresa de Ávila) God allowed her to survive. Joana describes this experience as if she had returned from the dead, acquiring an embodied and half-living state.

muitas veses era o Senhor servido, que di noite me tornasem outra ves estas âncias e tormento, e sem me lançar em cama, o pasava estando muitas veses em estado que de todo me faltava o alento\* da vida, porque além das dores serem tão tiríbeis, que me paricia, que me tiravão todos os os[s]os do corpo, via-me metida\* em humas sombras tão penosas e mortais, que me tiravão o Juiso e sentidos, suposto os não perdia de todo, mas como esta nuvem me tomava a rispiração, paricia-me que moria, e asim o cuidavão todas as que me vião em aquelle estado. [ANTT 41v]

Often it pleased the Lord that this anxiousness and torment returned during the night, without throwing me into a bed, I underwent this many times in a state wholly lacking life's breath\*; for besides the terrible pains to the point it seemed to me that all my bones were being extracted from my body, I saw myself set in\* such deadly and sorrowful shadows that they deprived me of my judgment and senses insofar as I did not lose them totally; but, as this cloud would take my breath away, it would seem to me that I was dying, and all those that saw me in that state feared the same. [ANTT 41v]

In this passage, we see the semantic field of anxiousness transforming into a state of mental and bodily health. Dealing with the state of eminent death, the fear of dying, and the pain of surviving, Joana mentions the two wars she has waged. One was the war she fought for her own survival, in which the anxiousness she felt made it difficult for her to move, eat, or breathe; she was in a state of utter tightness or constriction that gave her no rest, that made her walk through her cell and hold herself against its walls without being able to stay standing.The other was a mental war she fought with herself. She mentions the shadows, darkness, and clouds that would take her reason and breath (life) away. She claims the doctors said that her feelings towards 'some people's contradictions' were causing her loss of health [ANTT 42]. And whenever she got better, Joana began wondering whether God was abandoning her, for she did not feel him and his service through the suffering. The Cistercian nun continues:

e se alguma me via com algum pequeno alivio, loguo temia e cuidava se me tiria deixado o meu Senhor, por que já não sabia viver sem padecer\*, e bem conhecia, que erão mui limitados aqueles trabalhos, para o que meus pecados mericião, mas só o que sentia com huma pena tão dilicada, que me firia a alma, era o não poder com estes males e doença dar imteira satisfação às obrigaçois do meu estado e isto penalisava-<me> muito, porque me paricia que por minha negligência faltava a eles e que me encareguava em tudo, de modo que andava sempre em duas guerras, que me tiravão a vida, huma dos males que padicia e outra dos escurpulos de cuidar, que me encareguava é não faser o que fasião as que erão sãs. [ANTT 41v]

And if sometimes I saw myself a little relieved, I soon feared and wondered if my Lord had left me, for I already did not know how to live without patiating\* and I knew well that those labors were very limited for what my sins deserved, but the only thing I felt, with a delicate sorrow that wounded my soul, was that with these illnesses and this sickness I was unable to give an entire satisfaction to my state's obligations and this penalized me much as it seemed to me that out of negligence I did not live up to them while I imposed them on myself in everything and so I was always in two wars that took my life, one through the illnesses that I suffered and the other due to the scruples of fear, which burdened me with not doing what healthy persons did. [ANTT 41v]

This excerpt shows the recurrent vocabulary of Joana's description of her illness, within her relationship with God and her community. She does not mention ancias, but does refer to a 'delicate sorrow', which is almost a replacement for her anxious state. 'Relief ', 'fear', 'care', 'abandonment', 'labors', 'sorrow', 'evils', 'disease', 'satisfaction', 'state', and 'in charge' are other frequent associations with anxiousness. Nonetheless,one of her *Lieblingsworten* is 'patiating'.The English verb *to patiate*is now obsolete, but was used in the seventeenth century to describe suffering from an infirmity.88 The Latin root 'pateo/patere' and the Greek 'pathos' come from the proto Indo-European origin 'pei', which means to damage, injure, hurt.89 It survived in multiple dynamics, all of which could help to delve deeper into the meaning of the Portuguese (and Spanish) 'padecer'.90

88 "Though he patiate infirmities, yet he shall recover." Richard Saunders, in *Physiognomie*, 1653. Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. "patiate, v.", accessed July 30, 2011, http://ww w.oed.com/view/Entry/138812. An entry for this word was first included in New English Dictionary, 1904.

89 *The Online Etymology Dictionary*, s.v. "pacience," accessed 30 July, 2011, www.etymonline. com. See also *Oxford Dictionary of English*, ed. Angus Stevenson, s.v. "patience" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/97801 99571123.001.0001/m\_en\_gb0610210.

90 Bluteau, *Vocabulario Portuguez e Latino*, s.v. "padecer," 6: 175.

The Greek 'pathos', for instance, the root of 'pathology', 'patience', and 'patient' (as a noun both in linguistics, as the contrary of 'agent', and in medical usage, as in 'the patient'), contains both passivity and reception of some action. Aristotle saw 'pathos' as a rhetorical device which, if not divorced from 'ethos' and 'logos', would achieve 'phronesis' (wisdom), 'arête' (virtue), and 'eunoia' (good will) with an audience.91

'Pathos' also evolved into passion in the Latin tradition.The theme of passions of the soul became very important to Patristic and Medieval thought, culminating in Descartes, with his *Treatise of Passions*. 92 'Passions' was the classic term for emotions related, to some extent, to the body, constituting the basis of a psychological and anthropological philosophy.93 They were, likewise, of vital importance to the Christian doctrines of Incarnation and Resurrection. The passions of Christ were his humanity's sufferings: In whichmeasure could Christ be 'proficiens', 'nesciens', 'orans', 'passibilis', and *'*patiens' while continuing to be the Son of God?94

For Joana, to *patiate* her illness means her surrender to Christ's humanity. Joana is the *patient* (as a noun) of her doctors, but *patient* (as an adjective) of her health. While waging wars with herself and her community by not being able to be the agent of her obligations to her religious (recollected) state, she is a patient of God's actions. Her illness, her *pathos*, is not apart from *ethos* and *logos*. She acquires wisdom and virtue before the eyes of her audience: God and the reader. But does she acquire *eunoia* ('benevolentia') from the others? My hypothesis is that to *patiate* fosters a sense of *metanoia*. Joana repents humanity's sins, corrects her human limitations (not inflicting pain on herself, but suffering what is given instead), breaks through, and acquires what we could call self-healing.95 She redeems the world's own death and *patiates* anxiousness. Joana finishes her description by writing:

Em o tempo em que padicia\* estes aciden-tes que tenho dito, se me ajuntava a este trabalho, outro que não era menor, por que erão humas sequedades\* e trevas\*, em que me via sem ter caminho, para poder admitir hum pensamento,

91 Aristotle, "Art of Rhetoric,"[Rhetorica] trans. J. H. Freese, vol. 22, Loeb Classical Library (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1926), book 2, chap. 1.

92 Cf. René Descartes, *The passions of the soul*, [Les passions d´ âme], trans. Stephen Voss (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1989).

93 Thomas Dixon, *From passions to emotions: the creation of a secular psychological category* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1–26.

94 Kevin Madigan, *The Passions of Christ in High-Medieval Thought – An Essay on Christological Development* (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

95 *Metanoia* has many usages, both biblical and rhetorical. In psychology, [Zivilization im Übergang] considered *metanoia* a moment in which one experiences a change of mind. See Carl G. Jung, "Civilization in transition," in *The Collected Works Of C.G. Jung*, ed. Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, Gerhard Adler, vol. 10 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 89.

que fosse de Deus, e quando aquelas dores e âncias me cercavão mais e me afligião o corpo, tentava-me o Demónio e punha-me diante dos olhos, que era parvoice sofrer tanto, que não sofrese, nem tivesse paciência, por que tantas miu-desas de trabalhos tão rigorosos, que só eu as padicia, com estas tentaçois Diabólicas me tentava com tanto aperto\*, que não po-dera eu sair vitoriosa, se o meu Senhor me não socor[r]era em esta aflição, com hum valor [ANTT 42v] que me dava, que <eu> conhecia era seu, com o qual cobrava hum ânimo mui valeroso e come-çava a diser-me muitas veses em vos alta, que não qui-ria que se fisese de mim mais, que aquillo que o meu Senhor permitisse e que se elle fosse servido, que eu padecesse aqueles trabalhos até o dia do Juizo, que eu quiria asim, por<que> já para mim não quiria descanso, nem pelos trabalhos quiria outra pagua mais, que o gosto\* que tinha de os padecer por elle, que aquilo era o que qui-ria e que em tudo se comprisse perfeitisimamente sua divina vontade e que nun-qua em cousa alguma, a minha se fizesse, senão a sua, com esta risinação, que fasia na von-tade de meu senhor, ficava tão valerosa e esforçada\*, e melle (sic) mesmo, que assi os males do corpo, como as tentaçois do i[ni]miguo, tudo me paricião flores e bo-ninas. E muitas veses me cerca-va, estando com estes trabalhos huma suavidade mui espiritual em presença de meu Senhor, com a qual me alentava para mais padecer. Outras ne dava a entender, que se compa-dicia de mim, mas que era vontade sua, que eu padecesse e com isto me dava muitas veses imtiligências de cou-sas futuras e de mercês que me avia de fa-ser, ou a outras pesoas, isto com hum amor tão dilicado, que me roubav a alma e me cricião os de-seijos de mais padecer tra-ba-lhos, por hum Senhor a quem tanto devia. [ANTT 42r-v]

At the time I was patiating\* these accidents I have been describing, this labor were joined by other not lesser ones; for they were a dryness\* and darkness\* wherein I saw myself without a path\* to be able to admit a thought about God. When those pains and that anxiousness besieged me and afflicted my body more, the Devil would tempt me and put before my eyes the silliness of suffering so much. I should not suffer neither should I have patience for so many rigorous labors which I alone suffered. With these devilish temptations he tempted me with such tightness\* that I would not be able to leave victorious if my Lord had not succoured me in this affliction with a valor [ANTT 42v] He gave me that I knew to be His, with which I received a most valorous courage and started to say many times aloud to myself that I did not want that more should be made of me than what my Lord should allow, and if He saw fit that I suffered those labors until Judgment day, for such was my will; because I already did not want rest for me and I did not want further reward for the labors than the pleasure\* I had in patiating them for Him, for that was what I wanted and that His Divine will should be followed entirely in everything and mine would never intervene in anything, except His. With this resignation, that I practiced in the will of my Lord, I became so valorous and daring\* in Himself that, thus, all the body's evils as well as the enemy's

temptations seemed flowers and daisies to me. And when I was with these labors I was often surrounded by a very spiritual suavity in the presence of my Lord, which made me gain more spirit\* to patiate. On other occasions, He gave me to understand that He felt compassion for me, but that it was His will that I should suffer. Through this He often gave me intelligences of future things and mercies He would grant me or other persons, all this with a love so delicate that it robbed\* my soul and started\* my desires of patiating more works for a Lord to whom I owed so much. [ANTT 42r-v]

In this excerpt, anxiousness continues to be related to afflictions, pains, hardships, dryness, and darkness, but mainly with the lack of a guide, or being 'without a path'. This could mean falling into the hands of the enemy.The fight with the devil is a *topos* of mystical life-writings, which even evolved into the science of demonology.96 The devil persuades Joana to neither suffer nor be patient.These two dimensions of patiating despised by the devil are the possibilities of a 'union of wills', the great moment of transcendence that joins humanity with the Divinity.The breakthrough or the 'intelligences of future things' can thus be the metanoic aspect of the enduring activity that is to *patiate*, for it reveals the self-healing and the changes that are necessary to one's own transformation.

The sense of presence is also connected with suffering or patiating. Joana is imitating Christ, and this intimate relationship makes her reiterate the "very spiritual suavity coming along with these labors and the presence of my Lord, which made me gain more spirit to patiate."

#### 3.3.2 Patiating Dryness and Fire

To *patiate* is the operating verb and notion within anxiousness. It is through receptivity and enduring desires that Joana may wait for/upon, act for/on, or be a subject to/of God. Once again, this fearful desire is a token of time. If the time of desire was a time of mourning, the absence, the time of loving anxiousness, is a time of urgency, immediacy, and extremes, of fearful action. For Joana does not claim virtuosity (strength, courage, virility,manhood) in her encounter/presence with the God-Man. Quite the contrary, she mentions the quiet *operation of love*that occurs either in her orin her soul.This operationismade possible by anxiousness (as fear, desire, and time). She suffers the latter several times, which provokes in her a sense of dryness, or 'sequedades'.

96 See, for instance, Alison Weber, "Saint Teresa, Demonologist," in *Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain*, ed. Anne J. Cruz and Mary Elizabeth Perry (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 171–95. Cf. also the wider work of Dyan Elliot, *Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages* (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).

Grandes forão os sentimentos que a minha alma teve com esta mercê que o meu Senhor me fes, mas loguo emtendi que ele ma fasia para me fortalecer para outros muitos e asim foi porque as dores do corpo e sequedades d'alma, crecerão de modo que imaginava eu que se acabava a vida, a puras afliçois e penas com as quais pasei sem ter huma ora de descanso para a alma, que do corpo já não trato, dele padeça\* e mais padeça que para iso hé, e não para regualos, mas nem hum bom pensamento, nem poder dar hum suspiro que emtendese me sahia do coração pelo meu senhor, nem pela Virgem Maria que era a minha lus e a minha consolação. [ANTT 123]

Great were the feelings my soul had with this mercy my God did to me, but I soon understood that He did it to me to make me strong to many others and so it was, for the pains of my body and the dryness of my soul grew so much that I imagined my life was ending in pure afflictions and punishments, which I spent without having one hour of rest for my soul as I am no longer talking about my body – let it patiate\* and patiate\* more, as it is for that and not for pleasures -, but neither a good thought nor an audible sigh came out of my heart for my Lord, nor for the Virgin Mary, who is my light and my consolation. [ANTT 123]

Anxiousness continues to be seen not only as a period of darkness but also of dryness. This word, however, was not included in the eighteenth-century Portuguese language dictionary.97 In fact,it was most certainly directly borrowed from the Teresian vocabulary. Teresa uses the word *'*sequedad', which is present in *The Interior Castle*, a work that Joana claims to have read in her youth. The soul's experience of fear and dryness is the third mansion or dwelling of the soul in her path toward God. 98

Ever since I began to speak of these Mansions I have had that young man in mind, for we are exactly like him; and this as a rule is the origin of our long periods of aridity in prayer, although these have other sources as well. I am saying nothing here of interior trials, which vex many good souls to an intolerable degree, and through no fault of their own, but from which the Lord always rescues them, to their great profit, as He does also those who suffer from melancholy and other infirmities.99

97 Bluteau, *Vocabulario Portuguez e Latino,* 7:597. For the Spanish usages of the word 'sequedad' since the eleventh century, see: http://www.corpusdelespanol.org/x.asp.

98 Teresa of Ávila, "Third Castle," in *The Interior Castle*, chap. 1, 9.

99 "Desde que comencé a hablar en estas moradas le traigo delante; porque somos así al pie de la letra, y lo más ordinario vienen de aquí las grandes sequedades en la oración, aunque también hay otras causas; y dejo unos trabajos interiores, que tienen muchas almas buenas, intolerables y muy sin culpa suya, de los cuales siempre las saca el Señor con mucha ganancia, y de las que tienen melancolía y otras enfermedades." Teresa of Ávila, *The Interior Castle*, chap. 1, 9.

In the third mansion there is no mastery of one's soul, and there is also no consolation or sweetness. The sweetness and the 'prayer of the quiet' can only be found in the next mansion. Sequedades*,* or the feeling of thirst, is what Scaramelli mentions when analyzing 'loving anxiousness'.100

Dryness is the psychosomatic discourse of melancholy.101 According to the Greek-Islamic tradition of humors, the melancholic type, or humor, is related to dryness, wakefulness, and deprivation of vigor. During the Renaissance and early modernity, a change occurs in the concept of melancholy: the seventeenth-century Robert Burton in his *Anatomy of Melancholy* sees a difference between worldly and religious melancholies.102

Dryness becomes an important feature in mystical rapture, especially if not only the psychological, but the medieval physiology of women is also taken in consideration. In the article "The Physiology of Rapture and Female Spirituality," the historian Dyan Elliot says that the Aristotelian notion of woman's deficient nature makes her prone to higher dryness. Women would be much more susceptible to rapture (a violent 'rape' of a weak body): an action associated with their coldness.103 In Joana's texts, dryness surrounds Joana's uttermost nature in order to fulfil the conditions of her heart being robbed ('roubou-me') and broken into ('arrombado'), which announces a true rapture.

When speaking of 'dryness', Joana also speaks of *saudade* [ANTT 104v, 107]. Just as is the case with *saudade*, dryness is the discourse of loss and lack. Lack of water, or thirst; lack of breath; lack of gravity; and lack of spatial orientation: Joana does not know her whereabouts when she experiences a dry anxiousness. In this lack (which is also reiterated through the lack of virtues, or faults), her consciousness is also the hallmark of inflammability.

100 Scaramelli, *Directorium mysticum*, treatise 3, chap. 9.

101 On melancholia, see Julius Rubin "Melancholy," in *The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Emotion*, ed. John Corrigan (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 290–309, and Wenzel, *The Sin of Sloth*, 61–63. See also the classic studies by R. Klibansky, E. Panofsky, Erwin, and F. Saxl, *Saturne et la mélancolie: études historiques et philosophiques: nature, religion, médecine et art* ([Paris]: Gallimard, 1989), 39–44 and 123–124, and Jennifer Radden*, The nature of melancholy: from Aristotle to Kristeva* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). See also Radden's introduction to "Melancholie: modeziekte in de middeleeuwen en vroegmoderne tijd," Groniek vol. 40 (Groningen: Stichting Groniek, 2007), and Amy M. Hollywood, *Acute Melancholia: Christian Mysticism and Contemporary Historiography* (Columbia University Press, forthcoming).

102 Robert Burton, *The anatomy of melancholy*, ed. Thomas C. Faulkner, Nicolas K. Kiessling, Rhonda L. Blair (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).

103 Dyan Elliot,"The Physiology of Rapture and Female Spirituality," in *Medieval Theology and the Natural Body*, ed. Peter Biller and Alastair Minnis.(Woodbridge, Suffolk: York Medieval Press/Boydell and Brewer, 1997), 141–173.

Again, like Teresa, Joana needs the element of fire to express her transformation, her rebirth or 'desacordar' (unawakening), as shown in the second chapter. She mentions fire, burning, conflagration, all the signs of the combustible matter of the encounter with the Divine, the extreme *filiatio*. One of the most notable symbols of the Holy Spirit is fire or flame, e.g., "Quench not the spirit" (1 Thes 5:19).

Fire and dryness are connected.104 As opposed to the organic, fertile life of earth, dryness appears as a 'psychic climate' in which passion, virility, and fire predominate (as wetness belongs to femininity). Eliade speaks of the fleshless state, of the spiritual character of fire, in opposition to the body. Nevertheless, fire has a twofold nature. According to Marius Schneider, the 'fire-earth' axis brings out eroticism, the solar and physical energy, while the 'fire-air' axis is associated with mysticism, purification, and sublimation.105 There is both death and renewal.

It is not surprising that, as a woman theologian, Joana resorts to the language of annihilation and erotic desire while *writing* her own subjectivity.106 Fire is the change, the possibility of being 'undone', and, consequently, the rebirth constituted by the *conversio*. A destruction that enables fire is also the condition of virginity (as a genderless state), the silence and disturbance in another person's gaze.107 Joana is not body anymore; what she sees is not even due to the eyes of the soul, but to those of God:

Com esta presença de meu Senhor e luz que elle me dava, fui continuando em escrever esta sua obra, em a qual via que não tinha nada, porque conhecia por huma noticia mui clara, que toda ella era de Deus e que a mim me não tocava. Sempre em este tempo andava em oração, ainda quando não escrivia e ordinariamente sentia comiguo a presença de meu Senhor, que suposto o não via com os olhos d'alma, nem do corpo, não podia duvidar de que estava comiguo, com muita mais certeza do que se o vira muitas vezes, estando escrevendo, me dava huma ância tão grande de seu amor, com huns deseijos tão exsecivos de sua onra e glória e da salvação das almas, que me desfasia em lágrimas e emlouquicia de amor. E huma ves cresceu tanto este foguo, que me desfasia\* e abrasava\* toda e a umildade era tão rara que me não atrivia a hir por diante em o que hia escrevendo. E fiquando asim parada, emtendi estas palavras: Ad omnia qua mitam te ibis et qua mandevero tibi logueas ad eos. [ANTT 53v]

104 Juan Eduardo Cirlot, *A Dictionary of Symbols,* 2nd ed. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1962), 98.

105 Marius Schneider, *El Origen Musical De Los Animales-Símbolos En La Mitología y La Escultura Antiguas: Ensayo Histórico-Etnográfico Sobre La Subestructura Totemística y Megalítica De Las Altas Culturas y Su Supervivencia En El Folklore Español*, vol. 12 (Madrid: Siruela, 1998), 50.

106 Juan Marion, "Annihilation and Deification in Beguine Theology and Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls," *Harvard Thelogical Review* 103 (2010): 89–109.

107 Compare with the work on Joan of Arc, Françoise Meltzer, *For Fear of the Fire: Joan of Arc and the Limits of Subjectivity* (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

With this presence of my Lord and light that He gave me, I continued to write this work of His, in which I saw I had nothing of mine, for I knew through most clear notice\* that it all belonged to God and was not meant for me. By then I was always praying when I did not write, and I normally felt the presence of the Lord next to me, and although I did not see Him with the eyes of the soul nor those of the body, I could not doubt that He was with me with much more certainty that if I had seen Him many times. While writing, I would fall into such a great anxiousness for His love with such excessive desires of His honor and glory, and the salvation of souls that I undid myself in tears and became mad with love. And once this fire grew so much that it undid\* me and set me all ablaze\* and the humility was so rare that I would not dare to proceed with what I was writing. Being so still, I understood these words: "Ad omnia qua mittam te íbis et qua mandevero tibi loqueris ad eos" ["You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you," Jer 1:7]. [ANTT 53v]

In this passage Joana acknowledges the presence of the Lord during the process of writing her account. He gives her a 'great anxiousness' and 'excessive desires' to become his own. Thus she is 'undone in tears' and in fire, while entering into a maddening state of extreme *filiatio*/sonship. Sonship is a recurrent preoccupation for Joana, as seen withMagdalene and her commentary on John 20:17. In this case, Joana quotes Jeremiah. The complete passage is: "But the LORD said to me, 'Do not say, "I am only a child."  Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,' declares the LORD"(Jer 1:7–8).The *filiatio* Joana aches for is not a synonym for youth or immaturity. Just as God commanded Jeremiah to leave his minor age, Joana also accepted her godly prescribed mission. Jeremiah symbolizes the prophet and the importance of a close relationship with God.108 She needs to be taken seriously.109 Writingis seen here as the preferred way of communication, even considering the non-imagetical

108 J. D. Douglas, org, N. Hillyer, *The New Bible Dictionary* (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1982), 563. See also Jeremiah 31.

109 "The great advantage for prophetic women was that not just their prophecy but they themselves were taken seriously; they could be called upon to account for the interpretations that they gave. Not merely divine megaphones but independent-thinking Christians, these women acquired, through prophecy, a recognized medium to issue opinions on religious – even theological – questions. The gain for the theologians was that they did not have to accept the visions as God's dictations without question, but guide the interpretation with their own suggestions, at least insofar as the clergy accepted them as inspired prophetesses (and there was, as we know, a need to grant such acceptance)," in Anneke Mulder Bakker, "Two women of Experience," in *Women and Experience in Later Medieval Writing*, 93.

representation of Christ. Here, Joana does not see with her soul's eyes: she feels the presence, an awareness of Christ, beyond any doubt.

#### 3.3.3 The Wounds of Anxiousness

Joana's encounters with the Divinity bring out the vulnerability she felt through such impossible contact. The imagery of elements continues in another passage, chapter 21 [ANTT 26v-27].   Joana describes how she opened her mouth and drunk from that 'singular river'. Afterwards, she was raised from the earth and the Lordmade her understand that those threads of blood with which she wasimprinted were the most holy wounds ('chagas'). As her health declines, her appetite diminishes. Once, when she thought that maybe wine would do her some good, although she had never used such 'medicine', the Lord gave her to understand that his body was her only food, and his blood was her only drink. During a recollection,it seemed to her 'with most certainty' that to be drinking from that divine wine, by which she was totally engulfed, was to be consuming the body and blood. Later, while wanting to relieve herself from a fever she had, Joana drank water as the Lord made her understand that that same liquid was also mixed in the blood that came from Christ's blessed side [ANTT 107].

The importance of this liquid imagery, where the dew, wine, water, and blood reconfigure the 'corpus mysticum'*,* is shown here. Caroline Walker Bynum states that wine was important for women mystics, because women in general, as well as laity, had no access to the chalice and thus no possibility to drink from it. Blood was nurturing, fecund, inebriating, being also about the testimony of sacrifice and violence in the death of the body – possibly meaning the death of the unfaithful or of their own bodies.110

The devotion to Christ's wound or side was highly important in monastic and lay spirituality. Cistercian authors like Bernard of Clairvaux, Gertrude of Helfta or Aelred of Rievaulx commented on this subject, presenting the wound as a place of refuge, a fountain from which someone could drink, and an opening to the revelation of the mysteries.111 Aelred had a particular affection for Christ's 'side's wound',

110 Caroline Walker Bynum, "The Blood of Christ in the Later Middle Ages," in *Church History* 71 (December 2002): 689, accessed July 9, 2009, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4146189. See also her previous work: *Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women* (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 150–187.

111 Amy Hollywood "That glorious slit': Irigaray and the medieval devotion to Christ's side wound," in *Luce Irigaray and Premodern Culture: Thresholds of History*, ed. Theresa M. Krier

proclaiming transubstantiation from honey/milk/wine/blood and increasing its degree of sweetness.112 As happens with Angela Foligno or other mystic authors, Hollywood shows that the wound is a refuge, but also the place for the union of the soul. Much in the same way, Luis de Granada, an author read by Joana, sees the wound as his dwelling.113 Joana continues this tradition, describing the side wound in an apostolic and missionary tone:

Loguo ao outro dia, que erão 16 de Maio se me tornou apresentar o mesmo e o Senhor com mais poder e magnini[mi]dade me deu a emtender que me apresentava abertas as portas do sacrário, porque aquelas misiricórdias, que avia de repartir com todas as criaturas que estavão já na Terra, que só lhe faltava manifesta-las e correr a cortina que as ocultava e loguo emtendia que naquela devina ostia estavão humas letras que disião Jesus. O qual se me representava Deos e homem verdadeiro, cheo de grande glória e fermusura e neste Senhor se me discubrião as suas devinas cinco chaguas, suposto não erão com dores nem cravos, senão já em corpo glorioso, das quais emtendia que corrião cinco caudolosos rios, os quais se dilatavão tanto, que recolhião e abraçavão em si a toda a redondesa da Terra e loguo se apresentou ali aquele soldado, que deu a lançada a Cristo Senhor Noso em quele mesmo paso em que correu a lança e com aquele sangue precioso e augua que sahiu do lado sacrosanto do Salvador, alcançou remédio para a alma e juntamente para o corpo e deu-me o Senhor a emtender que com aquela fonte que aquele ceguo abrira em seu sacratisimo costado, avia de alumiar todos os ceguos, que estavão sepultados em as trevas da gentilidade e juntamente emtendi que aquele rio que coria do santisimo lado do Senhor, era <mais> particularmente para os paguãos e ereiges, porque se eles ate aguora o alanceavão com suas sodomias e culpas, quiria ele como Pai piadoso remedia-los, asim como remediara aquele que o alanceou quando estava preguado em a crus [ANTT 119r] causava esta noticia\* em mim tão grande operação que me paricia que o coração me quiria sair fora do peito e com huma sede insaciável de que todos se salvasem, dava no imtirior huns gritos que me paricia se dilatavão muito e falando com todas as criaturas disia: Todos os que tendes sede, vinde has auguas da fonte da mesma vida, que a todos vo-las esta oferecendo, vinde. E a certesa do que emtendi que estava vendo, era tão grande que me paricia que todos vião e emtendião o mesmo que eu estava emtendendo. [ANTT 118v-119r]

and Elizabeth D. Harvey, Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture, 4, vol. 4 (London; New York: Routledge, 2004), 107.

112 On the sweetness of God, see Rachel Fulton, "'Taste and see that the Lord is sweet (Ps. 33:9)': The Flavor of God in the Monastic West," in *The Journal of Religion*, vol. 86, no. 2 (April 2006): 169–204, accessed February 23, 2011, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/49 9638.

113 Hollywood, "'That glorious slit,'" 107.

As soon as the next day, which was the sixteenth of May, the same Lord presented Himself to me, and with more power and magnitude, He gave me to understand that He presented me with the open tabernacle doors, for He would share those mercies with every creature who was already on earth; He only had to make them manifest and open the curtain that hid them, and soon I understood that in that divine unleavened host there were letters that spelt Jesus: who presented Himself to me as God and true man, full with great glory and beauty and in this Lord, His five divine wounds discovered themselves to me, although these obviously had no pains nor nails, being instead in a glorious body, from which I understood that five rivers were flowing abundantly which dilated themselves so much that they gathered and embraced all the earth's roundness within them. And soon the soldier who speared Christ Our Lord presented himself too, in that same passage when he thrusted the spear and with that precious blood and water that left the Savior's sacrosanct side, [He] reached the remedy for the soul and for the body as well and the Lord gave me to understand that, with that the fountain that that blind man had opened in his most sacred side, He would enlighten all the blind who were buried in the darkness of gentilehood\* and I also understood that the river that ran from the most holy side of the Lord was more particularly intended for the pagans and heretics, because they still speared Him with their sodomies and guilt, he wanted as a pious Father, to amend them, as He had amended the one who had wounded Him with a lance when He was nailed to the cross [ANTT 119r]. This notice\* caused such a great effect in me that it seemed that my heart wanted to leave my breast and, with an insatiable thirst to see all sinners saved, inside of me I shouted cries that seemed to dilate much, and speaking to all creatures, I was saying: "Everyone who is thirsty, come to the source of the waters of life itself, He is offering it to every one of you; come!": And the certainty about what I understood and was seeing was so great that it seemed to me that everyone saw and understood the same thing as I. [ANTT 118v-119r]

In this passage, Joana addresses the awareness of the wounded Jesus Christ "who presented Himself as God and true man," full of grace. She corroborates the same Christocentric concern of Incarnation (true man) and Trinity (God and grace). Her mentioning of the Roman soldier who wounds Christ in his left side is of no less importance.114 The soldier can be interpreted as sinful humanity who hurts and touches the Son of God.

114 Aelred of Rievaulx, "Rule of Life for a Recluse,"[*De institutione inclusarum*] in *The Works of Aelred of Rievaulx 1: Treatises and Pastoral Prayer*, trans. M. P. Macpherson. Cistercian Fathers Series 2 (Spencer, Mass.: Cistercian Publications, 1971), 90. Cited in Caroline Walker Bynum, "The Blood of Christ in Middle Ages," in *Church History* 71 (December 2002): 685.

In the wound, Joana encounters both the nurturing and the healing aspects of Christ's body and an opening into proselytizing the 'gentiles'.This is the idea of sacrifice that is also present in Bynum's interpretation of blood in medieval culture. Following Catherina of Siena, Joana sees in the wound a place for (doctrinal) redemption.115 There, the Portuguese nun finds union with God as well as her own messianic voice. She 'sees' and 'understands', but it is not an internal, psychological, or nuptial event: Joana is *calling out* her own insights and understanding to those who suffer the thirst of God.

#### 3.3.4 Drinking God

Within the image of the godly wound, thirst dominates human nature, particularly in the Cistercian tradition. 116 Water, as well as blood, is an element of life and rebirth, and Joana continues this imagery of God as a sensorial response to thirst. In chapter ten of her self-writing, Joana describes how she loses her 'discourse' and prayer because of extreme physical and spiritual dryness.  This is described as an abyss, where great and deep sticky rivers flow, with dark water and fiery blue flames ('lavaredas'). She states that the mere representation of those flames, even for an instant, could kill someone. These waters were inhabited by a multitude of hopeless souls, suffering terrible punishments. Many creatures and serpents came from there, 'infernal beasts' which, 'with great furor', despised her. God protected her, held her fast against him, and laid her in a 'most beautiful castle'. There they were observing from a scaffold ('de palanque') the place to which, through his mercifulness, God had snatched her. This interior castle was the soul itself, in grace and friendship with God [ANTT 96v].

Contrary to Teresa, Joana does not present a topology of mansions or castles. However, the latter sees hell (i.e., extreme punishment) from a superior castle. The true water for her thirst cannot come from that river, nor from a cistern; there, she drowns herself and cannot breathe [ANTT 73v].

Teresa uses theimagery of waterin her prayermethodology.Godis the water, the element of knowledge, and in order to collect his water, the faithful must transport it from the river in a vase or build a well, but all these methods are strained and difficult.When the water is poured from the sky, no effort is necessary.The goal is to acquire an easier, quicker, and more efficient way to profit from God's knowledge.117

115 Hollywood, "'That glorious slit,'" 108.

116 Michael Casey*, A Thirst for God: Spiritual Desire in Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermons on the Song of Songs*, Cistercian Studies Series no. 77 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications/Liturgical Press, 1987).

117 Teresa of Ávila, "Fourth Castle," in *The Interior Castle*, chap. 2.

Joana is less preoccupied with a pedagogical method of praying than with communicating with the God-Man. As stated above, the wound is the path of imitating Christ. The path can be a 'river of hearts' [ANTT 50r] or a queue ('fileira') of crosses pointing to heaven [ANTT 13v]. But only God himself is the nurturing food – fountain, water, blood, 'bitter chalice' – [ANTT 49v] of incessant knowledge. She hears these divine words:"*Potestis bibere calicem quem ego bibituros sum"* ["Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of?" (Matthew 20:22)] [ANTT 49v].

The 'fountain of Life', which is God and which makes human thirst grow even more, and the permitted divine knowledge of God are the purest water of life. In Joana's writing, God is ultimately a fountain, a source from which only clean and pure water, not 'murky water', can spring. He is the food that feeds the saints and holy people, on which she inebriates herself. In another passage, Joana says:

Estando em oração me veio ao pensamento isto mesmo que deixo referido e como eu fisese por tirar de mim aquelas cousas por me parecerem escusadas, lembrarão-me as religiosas daquela casa como algumas se acomodarião mal com terem por Prelada a huma criatura inútil como eu era e loguo em aquele mesmo instante entendi isto do Senhor: Quando ho ispirito Santo deceu sobre meus dicipolos, nenhum ficou em trevas, todos conhecerão as verdades de meu Evangelho e ficarão alumiados asim serão tãobem as vontades destas religiosas, quando eu o permitir. E com esta notícia parece que me ferião aqueles raios da devina lus, com que a minha alma se foi embebendo\* e juntamente me dava huma sede tão exciciva daquele Senhor, em cuja presença estava, que me sentia emlouquecer de amor e ele como que se compadicia daquelas amorosas âncias me dava de beber aquela augua e me derão a entender estas palavras: Aqua salutis de fontibus salvatoris. Com as quais a alma se anciou com mores emcêndios de amor e toda lançada em as correntes daquela devina fonte bebia sem medida e não acabava de satisfazer-se, mas já como enagenada\* e perdida de si começou a sentir huma fraguância mui dilicada e ispiritual com que lhe paricia que [ANTT 96v] daquele luguar adonde estava, subia a outro mais supirior e devino e como se admirava do que ali sentia, se me apresentarão as palavras seguintes: quam magna est multitudo dulcedinis tua Domine quam abscondisti timentibus te. E com isto sentiu a minha alma que se dilatava muito e paricia-lhe que hia por hum caminho mui apertado e dificultuoso de andar e lá no fim e mais oculto dele se discubria huma fonte e me davão a entender que naquela fonte bebião todos os Santos do Ceo, dos quais conhecera muitos que tinha por meus a[d]vogados e parecia-me que era mui dificultoso o poder-se cheguar aquele luguar. [ANTT 96r-v]

What I refer to here came into my thoughts exactly when I was in prayer. And as I tried to withdraw from me those things that seemed unnecessary, the religious women from that house reminded me how some of them would feel uncomfortable if they had as a Prelate such a useless creature as I was. Immediately, in the same instant I understood this from the Lord: "When the Holy Spirit came upon my disciples, not even one of them remained in the dark; all of them knew the truths of my Gospel and became enlightened. Thus will also be these religious women's wills when I allow it." And with this notice, it seemed that those rays of divine light with which my soul was imbibing\* itself were wounding me and I also felt such an excessive thirst for that Lord before whose presence I was, feeling myself going mad with love and He, as if feeling compassion for that loving anxiousness, gave me that water to drink and I was given to understand these words: "Aqua salutis de fontibus salvatoris" ["water out of the wells of salvation" (Isa 12:3)] with which my soul became anxious with even bigger love fires and wholly thrust in the currents of that divine source, it drank immeasurably and did not cease to satisfy itself; but as if alienated\* and out of herself, it began to feel a very delicate and spiritual fragrance with which it seemed to it that, from the place where it was, it ascended to another, more superior and divine and as it was astonished with what it felt there, the following words presented themselves to me: "quam magna est multitudo dulcedinis tua Domine; quam abscondisti timentibus te" ["O how great is the multitude of thy sweetness, O Lord, which thou hast hidden for them that fear thee" (Ps 30:20)]. With this my soul felt itself dilating plenty and it seemed to walk through a very narrow and hard path to walk and at its end and the more hidden part of it a source was discovered and I was given to understand that all the Heavenly Saints, many of whom I had known and which I had as my advocates, drank from that source. Is seemed to me that is was very difficult to arrive at that place. [ANTT 96r-v]

In this passage trans-ascendence is at stake; the Spirit descends upon the disciples and enlightens them. Joana even "ascend[s] to another [place] more superior and divine." Here, anxiousness is the state in which she can come closer to God and drink from him directly. Anxiousness, the state of thirst, 'sequedades', and purgation of the soul, according to the interpretation of the Jesuit Scaramelli, is no longer present, because Joana is in a higher degree of knowledge. She ascends to and receives the word – the promise of what is hidden to most. Joana begins to walk this hidden path and to drink together in community with other already-known saints.

Joana continues the liquid imagery of God. Beyond water, blood, and invigorating food as wine, the Divinity is even transmitted through (olive) oil and ointments within the nuptial seclusion. In the beginning of her account, Joana was 'unawake' ('desacordada'), as already stated in the previous chapter.118 The Cistercian recalls entering into a cellar, in an unknown region, where she is given some olive oil to drink that made her thirst grow with desire.

118 See the section "Writing the Self: Corpus,Body, and Subjectivity in Joana's Narrative," in chap. 1*.*

Joana's anxiousness is connected to a threefold thirst: concurrently physical, spiritual, and what we could call 'gnoseological'. It can only be (incessantly) satisfied through a fountain from which life, knowledge, and salvation flow. Yet the fountain itself is also a place of travelling and passing where, almost in a paradoxical way, humanity dwells.

#### 3.3.5 Trinity as the Household

Joana's anxious *state*(of*unawakingness)* and *estate(region,house, cellar)*isin this 'abode'; this dwelling that she describes, following Teresa, as the 'interior castle' is the soul, and it is the growing desire for companionship and knowledge. Thus, in chapter 82, Joana perceives the God-Man as Martha and Magdalene had once perceived and received Jesus: she hears "Intravit Jesus in quoddam castelum" (Luke 10:38) [ANTT 130r]. This knowledge is admiration, wonder, and awe. Joana's soul uncovered and discovered ('descobrir') the 'highest Mystery', and it is the mystery of the Trinity that is evoked throughout her writing [ANTT 18r]. The Trinity itself is also a place of discovery. In chapter 83, Joana feels the need to share an explanation of this: it is a place to theologize, enduring a lemmatical process of reading (out loud) the God-Man's body. Just as for Teresa, for the Cistercian nun the Trinity is a fundamental theme that characterizes both of their mystical writings.119 In a tradition that could be traced to the *Minne* mysticism of Hadewijch and Ruusbroec, the Trinity as a theme marked the transition from Northern mysticism to Southern female mysticism, according to Bouyer.120 It expresses the relationship with the God-Man, the achievability of communion, and participation in the Divine Household, where the Divinity is communal and accessible through the incessant thirst or desire to partake in this economy. 121 Joana describes this relationship with the following words:

119 Louis Bouyer, *Women Mystics: Hadewijch of Antwerp, Teresa of Ávila, Thérèse of Lisieux, Elizabeth of the Trinity, Edith Stein* [Figures mystiques féminines : Hadewijch d'Anvers, Térèse d'Avila, Thérèse de Lisieux, Elisabeth de la Trinité, Edith Stei], translated by Anne Englund Nash. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 13–130.

120 See, for instance, Louis Dupré, *Common Life: The Origins of Trinitarian Mysticism and Its Development in Jan Ruusbroec* (New York: Crossroad, 1984); Jessica A. Boon "Trinitarian Love Mysticism: Hadewijch, Ruusbroec, and the Gendered Experience of the Divine," *Church History* 72 (2003): 484–503; Anne Hunt, *The Trinity. Insights from the Mystics* (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010).

121 Sarah Coakley "Why three? Some further reflection on the Origins of the Trinity," in *The Making and Remaking of Christian doctrine: Essays in honour of Maurice Wiles,* ed. Sarah Coakle y, David Arthur Pailin (Oxford: Clarendon Press Oxford, 1993), 29–56. Anne Hunt "Christology, Trinity and pneumatology," in *Companion to the Trinity,* ed. Peter C. Phan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 365–380, and Susak K. Wood, 'The Trinity in the liturgy, sacraments, and mysticism," in the same book, 381–397.

E suposto que a auguoa desta fonte da vida satisfas a sede aos que a bebem, não he como as iguarias da tera, que a poucas veses que se comão loguo emfastião. Esta auguoa de vida não hé asim, porque quanto mais della se bebe mais crescem os deseijos de a tornar a beber. Com estes andava eu o mais do tempo porque o Senhor mos dava, e como elle quando da deseijos loguo acode com remedio, estando hum dia em oração me <deu> hum grande recolhimento alli naquele mundo imtirior de nosa alma, bem em o centro della, dipois de estar abrasada\*, em o foguo daquelle divino amor, por <huma> noticia admiravel. Se me reprezentavão as tres divinas pesoas da Santisima Trindade. E eu toda atonita e com [ANTT 18r] e com grande temor e umildade não <me> atrivia a admitir tão grande mercê, e loguo se me representavão aquelas palavras do sagrado evangelho 'Pater, meus diliget eum et ad eum veniemos e mansionem aput eum faciemos' (Jo: 13, 23) com os quais creceu tanto em mim o amor e admiração como o não poder duvidar daquella verdade que me deixou grandes riquisas em minha alma. E deste dia em diante o mais das veses que tinha oração, achava comiguo aquella devina companhia.  As verdades que se lhe discubrirão tocantes àquelle altisimo misterio, com huma fe e fortalesa tão grande que me paricião limitadas. Muitas mil vidas para dar pella confissão desta ver[da]de.  This water of life is not like that, because the more you drink of it the more the desires grow to drink it anew. Most times I had these; for the Lord gave them to me, and when he gives desires he soon responds with remedy. One day, while in Prayer, I was caught there by a great recollection in that interior world of our soul, right in its center, after being ablaze and on fire with that Divine love because of some admirable news. The three Divine persons of the Most Holy Trinity represented themselves to me, and I, wholly astonished\* [ANTT 18r], and with great fear and humility, dared not admit such a great mercy, and soon those words of the Holy Gospel presented themselves to me: "Pater meus, diliget eum et ad eum veniemus e mansionem aput eum faciemus" ["My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him" (John 13:23)], with which grew in me such love and admiration to the point of being impossible to doubt that truth which left great riches in my soul. And from this day on, on the majority of occasions when I had Prayer, I found that Divine Company with me. And as these most great favors were received by this sinner, I started to fear, to doubt and as if somebody wanted to dispel that doubt, these words spoke themselves to me: "Nunquam Pater e Filius fuerint sine Espiritu Sancto" ["The

Father and the Son never ought to be without the Holy Spirit"]. What this soul felt at that time cannot be said. The truths that discovered\* themselves to her regarding that most high Mystery with a faith and fortitude so great that many thousands of lives seemed limited to become aware of this truth's confession. [ANTT 17v-18r]

The 'companionship', the dwelling with, the friendship, and the presence of the Father with the Son are not possible without the Holy Spirit. Joana's use of 'sine' gives a sense of condition, of necessity to the union. Could Joana be privileging the Holy Spirit's role in the Trinity, following a tradition began by the Cistercian Joachim Fiori?122 Or could the Holy Spirit, both animal (dove), feminine, and disembodied (in its fiery state), be a place where Joana's soul (for she was chosen) could be *'*metida' (set to dwell or abide in)? The 'third' Person in the Divine Household could be both the present and the unexchangeable gift.

In chapter 16, Joana describes her desire to take Communion more often. Her taking of Communion happens spiritually, and in it she clearly sees the Lord consecrated in the sacramental bread. Her soul is compared to and treated as God's dwelling, and, in one of her recollections, the center of her soul transforms itself into the most beautiful city, where she partakes with the angels and the Virgin Mary. Probably mimicking Teresa, Joana speaks of the innumerable closed rooms, whose keys were in the hands of her Lord. He himself would eventually allow her to "enjoy the sight of those rich jewelleries" [ANTT 22v]. Later on, Joana would mention the making of the tabernacle for their communal living area.

E fasendo-lhe eu de novo a mesma petição e oferta, parecia-me que este piadoso Senhor tirava de penas\* hum grande nomero de almas, as quais em aquela mesma ora voavão ao ceo e a minha toda admirada das [ANTT 36v] maravilhas deste devino monarqua, sahia fora de sua esfera e tornava <se> a ver em aquela região de vivos e luguar de verdadeiro descanso e estando guosando dele por algum espaço, desejei de faser ali meu tabernáculo, em companhia daquelas ditosas almas que novamente o hião povoar. E estando com estas âncias toda ocupada, esqueci-me do meu Senhor e ele como que estava zeloso me repreendeu e disse-me: QUEM ME TEMA MIM NEM O CEO HÁ DESEJAR POR QUE EM MIM TEM TUDO. E como quem me quiria retificar em aquella verdade, me arrebatava o ispirito com hum sentimento dilicadíssimo e ilustrando-me o entendimento com huma lus admiravel se me representavão as Três Divinas pesoas da Santisima Trindade em hum trono de grande majestade e glória e dizia-me o Senhor: Ves aqui o ceo que desejavas

122 On the relation between the Trinity and the historic conception of Joachim of Fiore, see Delno C. West and Sandra Zimdars-Swarts, *Joachim of Fiore: A Study in Spiritual Perception and History* (Indiana University Press, 1983), 55–58.

guosar, fora de mim não há que ver. E naquelle mesmo instante conheceu a minha alma tão grandes verdades e ficou tão ilustrada com os raios daquella devina lus, que não sabia dar acordo de mim, nem me paricia que a ciencia que alli aprendera, em aquelle breve espaço de tempo, se podia aprender em muitos anos em as escolas da Tera, por que em estas, ainda que se ensinem as verdades de nossa Santa Fé, não ficão esculpidas n'alma com aquella claresa e lus que as ensina aquelle devino mestre [de] sabiduria infinita e lus da mesma lus e glória da mesma glória. [ANTT 36r-v]

And making of Him again the same petition and offer, it seemed to me this pious Lord took away the punishments\* of a great number of souls, which in the same hour were flying to heaven. And mine, completely astonished by these Divine Monarch's [ANTT 36v] wonders, left its sphere and I saw myself again in that region of the living and the place of true rest. While enjoying it for some space of time, I desired to build my tabernacle there in the company of those blissful souls that were once again going to populate it, and being fully occupied\* with this anxiousness, I forgot my Lord, and as He was zealous, He reprehended me and told me: "WHOEVER HAS ME SHALL NOT EVEN DESIRE HEAVEN FOR HE HAS EVERYTHING IN ME." And as if He wanted to ratify me in that truth, he abducted my spirit with a most delicate sentiment and illustrating my understanding with an admirable light, the three Divine persons of the Most Holy Trinity presented themselves to me on a throne of great majesty and glory and the Lord told me: "Here you see the Heaven you wished to enjoy, which is nowhere to be seen outside myself." And in that same instant my soul knew truths so great and became so illustrated by the rays of that divine light that I did not know how to give accord of myself, nor it seemed to me that the science I learned there during that brief space of time, could be learned during many years at the earthly schools; for in these, even if they teach the truths of our Holy Faith, these would not stay carved in the soul with that clarity and light that are taught by that Divine Master of infinite wisdom and light of the same light, glory of the same glory. [ANTT 36r-v]

Heaven is not the ultimate goal for Joana; this is rather the extreme *filiatio* and communion in the Trinitarian Household. Joana acknowledges that true heaven is participation in and union with the Trinity. Yet, the desire to 'be in heaven' vanishes when the faithful, such as Joana, in fact do prefer the glory. Heaven cannot be seen as a reward and cannot be objectified as the last goal, being rather the participation in this relational Trinity that makes possible the 'quick illustration', higher than the knowledge provided by any human sciences. The knowledge becomes printed, carved in the soul, in a complete likeness of the Divinity: "light of the same light, glory of the same glory."

#### 3.3.6 The Way of Glory

God gives one's soul 'feelings' through the exercise of prayer, and there lies the true communication. In chapter 26, Joana states that her spirit was enraptured and flew "quicker than an instant thought" when seeing herself in the presence of the highest majesty. Again,it seemed to her that "thousands upon thousands of Angels" were incessantly hailing the glory and praising their Creator.And "set up above all the Choirs of Angelic Spirits" was the Virgin Mary, spreading her power and majesty, with "so many divine prerogatives and graces," making Joana's soul rapture even more intense with this knowledge and the goodness that came out of the former's sphere. The beatitudes were exhaled throughout the space.The Beati and the Saints were full of eternal glory, each one of them feeling they could not know a higher enjoyment. Even if each one's degrees of glory differed, it equally existed among all.

mas avia em todos huma tão encendida caridade e riciprico amor com que em Deos se estavão amando, que a glória de hum era de todos com tanta igualdade como se fora hum só e com esta mesma igualdade festejavam todos a glória de hum, e hum a glória de todos como sua própria. E naquela pas e tranquilidade guosavão daqueles eternos bens, participados daquele sumo bem donde sem princípio procedem todos os bens, dos quais guosavão eternamente todos aqueles que forem umildes e puros de coração, como o promete o mesmo Senhor e nosso redentor Jesus Cristo cuijas palavras não podem faltar. [ANTT 33r]

But there was in all such an enkindled charity and a reciprocal love, with which they loved each other in God, that one's glory belonged to everyone in a constant equality, as if they were only one; and with this same equality all celebrated the one's glory as the latter did with everyone's, and in that peace and tranquility they enjoyed those eternal goods, partaken from that highest of goods, from where, without a beginning, all goods precede to be eternally enjoyed by all those who are humble and pure at heart, as promised by the same Lord and Our Redeemer Jesus Christ, whose words cannot fail. [ANTT 33r]

In this passage, Joana emphasizes the reciprocity and participation of love, charity, and glory. She speaks of an equality acquired in the union of peace, a tranquility which is a complete and equal enjoyment of the Godhead.

Joana's soul becomes greedy for such glory, but her humility and self-knowledge "which [she] saw undone in the nothingness" [ANTT 28r] also gave her the strength to be embraced and comprehended within God's light, although she was as the most sinful and faulty of all.These themes are not unfamiliarinmedievalmysticism, especially in female vernacular elaborations such as Hadewijch. Still, in this subchapter on the 'operation of love', we will see some resemblances.

The exercise of prayer was the way for sinful people like Joana to reach the highest truths. Joana even mentions how she helped a lost nun to acquire this 'supernatural' prayer, through her intercession with God. However, the 'supernatural' state or the plenitude of glory is not achievable by everybody. In her visions there are constant reminders of the 'degrees' of glory or grace. Her father, for instance, in chapter 28, is said to have acquired a higher level of glory in heaven than her also pious aunt. Later in her narrative, Joana mentions how she also saw through a recollection all her siblings and her mother, who wanted to offer all her children to religion (to a religious Order).Through Joana's initiative, as stated in the first chapter of this book, António Freire de Albuquerque, her youngest brother, was granted a place in another Cistercian Monastery. In her vision, the Lord allows the younger child to hold the higher degree in glory. Afterwards, theThree Kings (Three Wise Men) appeared to her when they came to adore the God-Child. As had occurred in the case of her brother, the younger king was the first one allowed to praise the child. Thus it was revealed that God aimed not to reward people through a superiority of condition, but through the "carats [mass] of Love" instead [ANTT 119r].This effort to quantify glory and blissfulness is comparable to the "List of Perfects," in which the thirteenth-century Beguine Hadewijch appears, and which was added to her visions.123 However, contrary to the Flemish mystic, Joana mentions more concretely people from her own family, and particularly her younger brother António.

com isto entendi grandes verdades, que se não sabem diser e estando asim recolhida, me acordei de mim e juntamente do meu confesor reparando em como naquele ofrecimento o não vira a ele nem a mim e loguo com <hum> repente que me admirou muito, me deu o Senhor a entender que a ele e a mim nos tinha em luguar separado para cousas de seu serviço e esta separação emtendia eu que era com huma particular tendência de que me admirava e entendia que era favor particular e emtendia tãobem que recebera primeiro a este meu irmão mais moço, porque buscara ao Senhor com mais amor que os outros e com isto ficou a minha alma consoladisima. [ANTT 119v]

With this I understood great truths that cannot be told, and being thus recollected, I woke myself up and with my confessor noticing how, in that offering I had not seen him nor myself, and soon, all of a sudden, to my great admiration, the Lord gave me to understand that He had my confessor and me in a separate place to do things in His service. I understood that this separation had a particular tendency which admired me and I also understood

123 Hadewijch, *The Complete Works of Hadewijch*, trans. Columba Hart (New York: Paulist Press, 1980).

that it was a particular favor, and I understood as well that He had received my younger brother first, because this one had sought the Lord with more love than others had done, and with this my soul became most consoled. [ANTT 119v]

This participation in the glory (ante- and post-mortem) is constantly featured in her narrative.There is an active *filiatio*, a distinctive likeness either through her family or the divine economy in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.This is also transmitted from her textual network to her professional and family ones: Joana actively partakes in the well-being of her confessor and her siblings as well as dead and dying souls, as shown in the quotations above. She copies the divine economy of the Trinity into her own familiar relationships.

The question of participation on this divine glory is also a feature that is present in Joana's contemporary, Maria da Cruz, the founder of the Recollect at Lisbon and the visionary who was later expelled to Brazil.The fifteenth proposition of which this beata was accused said:

that God Our Lord has infused grace [in her] with more highness than in all apostles, even than Saint John the Baptist.124

Joana is more careful in her assessments regarding the degree of glory she can acquire in her lifetime. However, the infused and superior knowledge she receives from the Godhead is present in Joana's writings, just as it was attributed to Maria da Cruz.

#### 3.3.7 Operation of Love or of Excess

The 'operation of love', which occurs after God's gift of recollection through anxiousness, is felt either in the soul or in Joana herself. When Joana says 'herself ', she does not distinguish the body from the soul or herself altogether; there is a psychological discourse that concerns what happens with the soul's faculties when the will becomes one with God's. However, at other times, the discourse refers to the 'I'/self 's experience. There is not a theological precision as there is in Teresa's case, for instance. Nevertheless, this shows an embodiment of the experience: I am my soul and my body.

The anxiousness is felt before and/or after love's operation: there is a delicate feeling of suavity, a sweetness that liquefies and corrupts words, concepts, and even

124 "que Deos Nosso Senhor lhe infundia a graca com mais altura que a todos os apostolos e que a S. Joao Baptista." "Porposisons que proferio a delata Maria da Crus," in *O processo de Maria da Cruz*, Tribunal do Santo Ofício, Inquisição de Lisboa, proc. 4372, Portugal, ANTT, mf. 4420. 238fl. 20/08/1659-18/07/1668, fol. 64v.

images. An operation is the synonym of quietness: love's operation is the possibility for God's will and Joana's will to join each other, together. This is the time of the *impetus*, the arrow, the spear ('lançada') – the inevitable trespass that crosses through one's own body, one's own *corpus,* anew.

It is not surprising that words vanish even from her writing, which is already an 'account', an enumeration, the repetition of the same uniqueness.The Cistercian nun has no words, and yet she keeps on writing. Not because she uses negative (or apophatic) language, which she also does, but because she 'dilates' and extends those words. We have seen that from 'desacordo' (unwilling) she makes 'desacordada', or the verb 'desabrir' (not continue) becomes 'desabrimento'125 [ANTT 105]. Yet there are other examples, especially regarding suffixes: 'aflição' (affliction) becomes 'afligimento'(affliciousness, a more creative way of afflictedness)126\* [ANTT 131v].There is a certain kind of abstraction of the language through the use of suffixes. These new words that Joana creates are marks of her knowledge of Latin and her direct transposition to Portuguese. 127 However, we may also speak of a mystical *docta ignorantia*, a knowledge that Joana de Jesus looks for but does not find in language.

The language of excess lives throughout the text. Her love for God is excessive, as was Joana's (and Teresa's) biological father's love for his children. It would be a mistake to view Joana's inventive vocabulary as proof of limited literacy. Her (positive) language of excess, through its more or less conscientious break with semantics, is a creative expression of her desire to describe in positive terms something for which she has no words. 128

Besides the excessiveness of her vocabulary, the images become more and more concrete. It is not just the soul or the visions she has: it is an *I* and a *You* that relate to *themselves*. In this subchapter we have seen that this union is achieved through suffering (*patiatiang*) the (nurturing) wounds of Christ. Nonetheless, the most open wound/openness in the God-Man's body is the mouth, where lies the possibility of a word and a kiss. Joana continues her exegesis of the Song of Songs, especially the passage that appealed so much Bernard of Clairvaux: "Let him kiss me with the kiss

125 Cf. Bluteau, *Vocabulario Portuguez e Latino*, s.v. "desabrir," 3: 81.

126 \*Check the glossary.

127 On Portuguese suffixes see Maria do Céu Caetano, "Rivalidade sufixal e polissemia," in *Cadernos WGT – Polissemia*, org. Clara Nunes (Lisbon: CLUNL, 2008), 23–35. On the suffix -mento see also Maria C. Caetano, "O sufixo -mento em Gramáticas Históricas do Português," in *Saberes no Tempo. Homenagem a Maria Henriqueta Costa Campos*. *Revista da Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas* (special edition), ed. Maria Helena M. Mateus and Clara Nunes Correia (Lisbon: Colibri, 2002), 147–154.

128 In his analysis of the theological thought of Hadewijch, Paul Mommaers also finds the tension between gebruken (to enjoy) and gebreken (to lack). Paul Mommaers, *Hadewijch: schrijfster, begijn, mystica* (Averbode: Altiora, 1989), 126.

of his mouth."129 She does this in a very excessive way – so excessive that this part was removed from the second manuscript, the eighteenth-century *Copy*, which was circulated for publication.

Neste mesmo dia, depois de completa, quando me queria recolher cheguem como sempre custumava ao hum Senhor que tinha na cela posto na crus e dei-lhe hum osculo no peito e emtendi que o Senhor me fasia grande força que lho dese na boca, mas eu tive hum temor e parece-me que por umildade, lho não dei e assim como quem não fasia o que lhe mandavam, me recolhi\*. Ao outro dia has cinco oras da manhã, fui para a oração conventual e comeceime com grande pas e suavidade a recolher-me ao imtirior, aonde emtendia, com grande certesa, [que] tinha comiguo o meu Senhor Deos e homem verdadeiro, o qual com hum amor eisicivo, se cheguava a mim e dava-me a entender que aquele ósculo, que eu lhe não quisera dar, quando ele mo pedira, mo daria ele a mim. E cheguando-me assim me tomava e apertava comsiguo e pondo, eu pecadora, a minha imdigna boca em a sua, com huma duçura e suavidade que me tirava de meus sentidos, estava guosando aquele soberano favor e como com ele me sintia emlouquecer, o Senhor me tornava há apertar consiguo, como quem se não satisfaz de huma cousa que muito deseija de lograr e tornava a renovar o favor pasado e a minha alma de todo a morticida\* sem saber o que disia, parece falava imtiriormente muitas palavras, todas de grande amor e emtendia que o Senhor me respondia outras muitas, das quais me acordo destas: Quirida esposa minha, quanto te amo e quanto me deleito em estar contiguo aqui. Me lembrei do meu confesor, como quem desejava de lhe dar parte daqueles grandes bens que estava guosando. E o Senhor me disia com grande amor: Aqui o tenho comiguo. E loguo emtendi que tãobem ele ali estava. [ANTT 112v]

On the same day, after the compline, when I wanted to recollect, I came closer, as usual, to a Lord that I had in my cell put on a cross, and gave Him a kiss on the chest. I understood that the Lord was insisting I should kiss Him on the mouth. Yet I had a fear, and – it seems to me by humility -, I did not do it, and as someone who did not do what he was ordered to do , I retreated\*.

On another day, at five o'clock in the morning, I went to the conventual prayer, and began, in great peace and suavity, to recollect to the interior, where I understood, with great certainty, that I had with me my Lord God and true man, who, with an excessive love, was coming closer to me, and gave me to understand that that kiss I did not want to give Him which He had asked me for it, He would give Himself to me. And coming closer to me, He held me tight to Him, and I, sinner, putting my unworthy mouth to

129 Bernard of Clairvaux, "Sermons on the Songs of Songs," in *Selected Writings*, trans. G. R. Evans (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), sermon 3, I.i, 221.

His, with a sweetness and suavity that took away my senses, was enjoying that sovereign favor, and as I felt that I was going mad with this, the Lord again held me tight, as someone who could not be satisfied by something he very much desired to possess, and again He renewed me the past favor. My soul, completely deadened\* without knowing what it was saying, seemed to speak internally many words, all of great love, and I understood that the Lord answered many others, of those I recall these: "Dear spouse of mine, how much I love you and how delightful is it to be here with you." I remembered my confessor, as I would desire to give him part of those great goods I was enjoying. And the Lord said to me with great love: "I have him here with me." And immediately I understood that he was also there. [ANTT 112v]

This passage speaks of the kiss or 'osculum' of the God-Man materialized in a statue which Joana possessed. For her, the "Lord God and true man, with an excessive love" becomes personified in a vision through that small object (of art) she venerates. Verbal communication and fleshly contact is established through the desire: he wants to kiss her, and her humility is greater than her obedience.The love is excessive as he forces her to kiss him on his own mouth, with a desire which he cannot satisfy.

Though this is a moment of closeness, secrecy, and longing, Joana cannot but remember the need to testify, verify, and share that experience she is enjoying.Therefore, she calls for her confessor, and Christ assures her of that man's presence.

In this passage we can see how Joana's sense of anxiousness, which culminates in the osculum, is so similar to Hadewijch's notion of 'oerewoet'. In the seventh vision, for instance, the thirteenth-century Beguine says that the God-Man embraced her, joined to her, filled her, and they were one without distinction. This sense of unity is given by 'oerewoet', the mark (torment, insanity), a theme that is a moment of an anxious and unquiet relationship with the 'true man', just as for Joana.

This 'disquiet union' may be considered the culmination of an 'operation of love', where the anxious encounter Joana develops with Christ becomes an act or operation of the embodied soul. Anxiousness prevails in both moments. Firstly, in the encounter, as she prepares for the union, and anxiousness is a *condition* of such a meeting. Secondly, in the operation, as Joana's body, in an anxious *state*, aches in pain, hardships, and joy for a state of glory, bliss, and participation in the mysteries of Christian faith. Finally, as we shall now see, anxiousness is an *effect,* or a need to share the knowledge obtained from the closeness and secrecy of the mystical experience.Thus, anxiousness becomes *notícia*, which encompasses knowledge, news, novelty, and notice.

#### **3.4. The Notice (Notícia)**

The philosophical and theological Christian traditions have always been obsessed by the pursuit of knowledge.The mystical path – either cataphatic or apophatic – does not escape that demand.Thus, when one reads Joana's writing, the recollection (considered as memory) of her recollections (psychosomatic experiences) or its reiteration throughout the text (an account that becomes an accountability of her deeds), the experience cannot be exempt of meaning. Beyond fear, doubt, urgency, absence, and excess, anxiousness becomes a sort of parasympathetic system that enables the *notícia* (here translated as 'notice') to flow throughout the speech.

'Notícia' is the word Joana uses. It derives from the Latin 'notitia', which is a central concept in Augustine.130 For the author of *Confessions*, 'notitia sui' is self-knowledge.131 However, this word can also refer to a list or a catalogue.132 In its latter meaning, it became a genre in the diplomatics: it means a variety of texts that contain a substantive presence of informal redaction and a general absence of validation.They are 'notitias', memories, inventories, etc. Historically, they are not considered trustworthy, being situated at the margins of the true *document*. 133

'Notícia', however differs from 'conhecimento'. In her narrative, Joana uses the word 'conhecimento' (knowledge) in different ways. First, when she mentions *conheci-mento* as acquaintance with Friar Alberto do Amaral through letter writing [ANTT 66], or the erudition of the Latin language [ANTT 100v]. However, *conhecimento* is mainly described as 'conhecimento próprio' ('cognitio sui').134 This is achieved by the operation of love and is accompanied with an extreme humility.The knowledge is still very formal and methodological (or instrumental) in the sense that it formalizes the relationship with God.

On the other hand, Joana uses the word 'noticia' three times while referring herself to 'cognitio Dei': the information or the news that the God-Man gives to her during their intimate encounter and 'communication'.The contemporary translation of

130 Jacques-Guy Bougerol, "The Church Fathers and *Auctoritates* in scholastic theology to Bonaventure," in *The reception of Church Fathers in the West: from the Carolingians to the Maurists,* ed. Irena Backus with Antonina Bevan (Leiden, New York: Brill, 1995), 387–390.

131 E. Brooks, "St. Augustine's '*notitia sui*' related to Aristotle and the early neo-Platonists," in *Augustiniana* 27 (1977): 70–132 and 364–401; *Augustiniana* 28 (1978): 183–221; *Augustiniana* 29 (1979): 97–124.

132 Adolf Berger, *Encyclopedic dictionary of Roman law,* Series of the Transactions of the Ame rican Philosophical Society vol. 43, part 2 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1953), 599.

133 Susana Maria de Albuquerque Emiliano de Figueiredo Tavares Pedro, "O género diplomático 'notícia' na documentação medieval portuguesa (séculos X-XIII)" (PhD diss., Universidade de Lisboa, 2008), 13. I thank the author for guiding me in this question.

134 See folia ANTT 34, 38, 39, 47v, 52v, 54v, 107v.

Joana's *noticias* would be 'news'. According to Bluteau's eighteenth-century *Vocabulario*, *notícia* is something between 'knowledge' and 'acknowledgement':

Notícia: Knowledge, or business (thing) that comes to knowledge. There are many castes of notices. Some are certainties, as the science is; others doubtful and obscure, as the opinion, the conjecture, the suspicion; another firm but obscure as the Faith; others are firm and most clear, as the light of glory is. Also there are natural notices, as the intelligence, others acquired, like Metaphysics; others infused, like all the revelations are. To these latter the moral, celestial, terrestrial, profane or mundane, political or diabolical notices are adjoined Notice. To know. Cognitio, onis. Fem. Cic. [my translation].135

This is similar in the English language.*Notice* contains both knowledge and acquaintance.136 Even 'to notify' or 'paying notice' (attention) still conveys the economy of indebtedness and withdrawal. In *notice* there is also stamped the novelty, the urgency, and the redemptive character that is lacking in the notion of mere 'knowledge'. The 'Good News', within the Evangelium, is what the word of God entails.

For Joana, the *noticia* she receives is also the involuntary pretext to extend the secret communication to those who were not chosen. Continuing with the image of the well and God inherited from Teresa, Joana states:

Parece me a mim, que asim como da fonte\* que nace, corre [p]ara o rio, o qual traz a auguoa da mesma fonte, porém os que vão buscar desta auguoa não deixão a da fonte pela que corre e dece ao rio, porque bem conhecem que melhor he beber na fonte pura, que no rio que vai já turvado. Asim tãobem podem considerar todos os que o Senhor levar por este caminho sobrenatural, que a fonte pura he o mesmo Deos e o rio são as notícias e mais sentimentos que nacem desta fonte e que suposto, quando verdadeiramente são de Deos, traguão grandes riquezas para a alma não convém que se abrace com o dom e deixe ao autor e dador do mesmo dom, porque se pelo rio deixar a fonte [ANTT 46r] verdadeira, pode-lhe suceder que quando queira tornar a ela, achar o caminho insilvado e não poderá atinar por donde veo, nem saberá por donde há-de caminhar. O verdadeiro caminho he Noso Senhor e Redemtor Jesus Cristo, como elle mesmo dis, que nimguém pode ir ao padre senão por ele. Este Senhor <he> o verdadeiro caminho, a verdadeira verdade e vida da mesma vida. [ANTT 45v-46r]

It seems to me that the water springs from its springing source\* [and] runs to the river, bringing water from that same source, yet those who seek

135 Bluteau, *Vocabulario Portuguez e Latino*, s.v. "noticia," 5: 754.

136 Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. "notice, n.," accessed October 31, 2012, http://www .oed.com/view/Entry/128591?rskey=a4YvTI&result=1&isAdvanced=false.

water do not leave the source, no matter how much it pours and flows down to the river, as they know well that it is better to drink from the pure source than in the river which is already murky. We can thus also consider all those that the Lord carries along this supernatural path, for the pure source is that same God and the river are the notices and further feelings that are born from this source and which, when they truly come from God, will bring great riches for the soul. It is inconvenient to welcome the gift with open arms and abandon its author and giver; because if the river abandons the true [ANTT 46r] source it can happen that, whenever he wants to go back to the former, he will find the path full of brambles and will not be able to find the way through which he came, nor shall he know the path which he must walk. The true path is Our Lord and Redeemer Jesus Christ. As said by Him, nobody can reach the Father unless they go through Him. This Lord is the true path, the true truth, and life of the same life. [ANTT 45v-46r]

The river of Godhead is the flow of 'noticias e sentimentos' (notice and feelings) redeeming humankind. This revelatory and interpretive communication of the mystery is the primordial news or notice Joana constantly repeats. The ontological dimension of anxiousness, which is always correlated to the physicality of its experience, evolves into a gnoseological demand: the notice consists in what is knowledgeable and what is urgent (the news). It is not only what is known but also what *ought* be known, and to be saved (the News).137

This need and urgency constitutes the revelation: the drift and *duty* towards otherness. What is ethical mixes with what is desirable, gnoseological, and epistemological, because news/notice not only pays attention to the other or the others (ethical concern) but also because news/notice aspires to belong in the 'depositum Fidei', where it can be established as dogma, during its transformation into truthfulness. Consequently, it needs to be submitted to an epistemological praxis or validation. The language of need trespasses all the situations of anxiousness: there is a need for an encounter (which correlates to desire and the mourning for its eminent loss), as was seen above, in section 3.1. There was also an elemental need within anxiousness: the lack of air,water,and awareness brought outits explosion; a needful knowledge and its impossible acknowledgement by those who were not chosen for the encounter, as in section 3.2.

The positioning of *notice* is, therefore, consequent to the extreme gift received through the encounter. It is in Joana's response and responsiveness to the (secret) commu-nication and (open) gathering in the several networks where she preaches the *notice*.

137 Compare, for instance, with other mystics; see Leonce Reypens, "Connaissance mystique," in *Dictionnaire de Spiritualité Ascétique et Mystique*, 3: 883–930.

#### 3.4.1 The Community of Saints

In the second chapter, I presented the several networks (the family, the professional) that could become part of a community of the faithful and through which Joana circulated. Besides these human networks, it is also possible to speak of a 'network of saints' that can serve as spiritual sacrifice within fleshly and deathly realms.138

Throughout her narrative, Joana introduces a number of well-known saints that enable her to speak with the God-Man. The notices she receives, or, at least, shares with her community's other members, are a result of grace's endeavors, which, paradoxically, also enable her to achieve her own saintliness. Her longing for and her sense of belonging to the community of saints are ascertainable when Joana receives notice from specific ones. Some exemplary and exceptional beings that maintain direct conversations with the Divine are extremely relevant to her.