Who knows to what degree mental illness has a genetic basis and how much it is environmentally created or exacerbated. Case in point is today’s saint–a woman with the birth name of Isabel who, because of her beautiful features as an infant, came to be called Rose. A Peruvian of Spanish extraction, she lived a relatively privileged existence in the late 1500s and early 1600s. She is held in extraordinarily high regard as “Saint of the Americas” and I have no wish to diminish the importance she holds for so many.
But I do want to point out that there were some decidedly horrific things that she did to her own body, that were allowed by her parents and later blessed by the church. Butler writes glowingly:
From her infancy her patience in suffering, and her love of mortification, were extraordinary, and whilst yet a child, she eat [sic] no fruit, and fasted three days a week, allowing herself on them only bread and water, and on other days, taking only unsavoury herbs and pulse (something apparently from the legume family). When she was grown up, her garden was planted only with bitter herbs, and interspersed with figures of crosses.
Though I am insinuating modern nutritional and parenting standards back to the late 1500s, I am still disturbed by allowing a child to fast multiple days per week and regarding that as her pursuing a holy path. And it gets still worse for our Rose, who then began to damage her own body (not unlike a cutter with a severe eating disorder):
One day, her mother having put on her head a garland of flowers, she [Rose] secretly stuck in it a pin, which pricked her so deep, that the maid at night could not take off the garland without some difficulty. Hearing others frequently commend her beauty, and fearing lest it should be a temptation to any one, whenever she was to go abroad to any public place, she used, the night before, to rub her face and hands with the bark and powder of Indian pepper, which is a violent corrosive, in order to disfigure her skin with little blotches and swellings. A young man happening one day to admire the fineness of the skin of her hand, she immediately ran and thrust both her hands into hot lime, saying, “Never let my hands be to any one an occasion of temptation.”
And how does Butler, on behalf of the Church, respond to these horrific actions by a deeply troubled Rose? By essentially saying, “Take that, you painted hussies!! Now here is true righteousness!!” What in fact Butler writes is this: “What a confusion is this example to those who make it their study to set themselves off by their dress, to become snares to others?”
Where to begin unpacking this horror? First, there is the idea that females are “snares” for males, who either plot to trap them into lustful sin or unwittingly (as with Rose) lead males to do such unmentionable things as compliment the skin of their hands! Men of course are merely animals in this sense, with no moral agency whatsoever. In this context it is perhaps unnecessary to state that attraction between people is a Very Bad Thing.
But even worse: WHAT KIND OF RELIGION COULD POSSIBLY CELEBRATE THIS GIRL’S SELF-MUTILATION?! Starving herself; driving a pin (think crude, 16th-century nail rather than modern-day straight pin) into her skull; disfiguring her face with corrosives; and thrusting her hands into hot lime! And the Church sits back and applauds Rose’s efforts to devote her body to God and to “save” males (and perhaps lesbians) from admiring the beauty with which God had gifted her?!
No. Just No. Do NOT do this to our females. Do NOT ignore (let alone applaud) such behaviors in our children. Do NOT call this a pleasing offering unto God (or at least do not even consider worshipping any Monster who would encourage such self-destruction).
I certainly don’t begrudge heaven to anyone who has ever gone through the suffering endured by Rose under the belief that it would please God. ¡Viva la Santa Rosa! Yet I draw the line at holding her up as an example for any other to follow.