Imitation of Christ

Long before Christianity, ritual sacrifice was part of pagan religions as the primary means of communing with the gods. In Judaism, religious sacrifice was called "Korban," meaning "to come closer to God." A Korban was a sheep or bull that was ritually slaughtered and burned on an altar. In the Old Testament, God issues several commandments to the Israelites to sacrifice animals as a sign of the covenant between themselves and the inhabitants of Israel.

The basis for Christian notions of sacrifice and atonement may thus be found in the Old Testament. However, in its early years, to separate itself from Judaism and the mystery cults, Christianity developed its own unique sacrificial tradition: the idea of sacrifice as a spiritual, self-directed act. In this view, Christ's death on the cross was a necessary atonement for the sins of the human race—a final sacrifice that replaced the need for animal sacrifices, offered in the past by high-ranking clergy. Christians thus turned away from the notion of animal sacrifice in favor of self-sacrifice to Jesus as the ideal.

In early Christianity, the example of Jesus' suffering and dying was imitated and confirmed by the experiences of Christian martyrs. The claim that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church has been confirmed by Christian history. The cross itself became a symbol of Christian triumph, in which all those who endured pain before passing away in joy participated. When the persecutions ended, the Christian concept of sacrifice shifted from traditional to a more spiritual offering.

The late Middle Ages witnessed a new and extraordinary focus on the passion of Christ. The prevailing image of Jesus, both in art and writing, contributed to depicting his crucifixion in a level of detail unknown in the Gospels and in early Christian tradition. Humiliated, tortured, flogged, nailed, pierced, dying, yet in this way, the life-giving body of Christ became the reigning icon and sacrifice, which the Church cultivated and approved. German theologian Eckardt Meister (c. 1260-1327) argued that a human being, by denying his or her own personality, could experience an identification of his or her soul with God. In his published "Imitatio Christi," arguably the most widely read spiritual book in the world, author Thomas Kempis (1379-1471) stated: "Go where you will, seek where you will; you will find no higher or safer path than the path of the Holy Cross."

This emphasis on the passion of Christ revived the importance of physical suffering in the lives of the saints, and later also in the lives of ordinary Christians. Many people, especially women, were inspired by the study of religious paintings and sculptures, by texts read aloud or silently, by the liturgy, by basic prayers, even by the ordinary lives of the saints. New forms of religious life, especially those of the Franciscan and Dominican orders and independent religious women called beguines, contributed to the impetus of this new mysticism.

For many of these people, deliberate and systematic punishment became part of daily life. Angela Foligno (1248-1309) drank water "from the washing of lepers' scabs" and rejoiced when one got stuck in her throat, while Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510) ate scabs and burned herself. Eustochia Calafato (1434-1468) wore a piece of pigskin sewn to her skin, whipped herself, melted wax over her head, burned her face, and used ropes "to stretch her arms in the shape of a cross." Jeanne Marie de Maille (1331-1414) wore a crown of thorns to commemorate Christ's crown of thorns. Other ascetic practices included wearing hair shirts, binding the body with tightly twisted ropes, rubbing self-inflicted wounds with lice, whipping the breasts with nettles, rolling on broken glass, jumping into a furnace, hanging from a gallows, wounding the body to draw blood, and all kinds of lashes.