Female Visionary Saints: an alternative Interpretation. Female sanctity, Visionarysm and Hysteria in the Medieval and Modern Age

This study aims to provide an overview of the paroxysmal manifestations experienced by female mystics between the Middle Ages and the early modern period, showing how the phenomenology of female mysticism bears striking similarities to clinical cases documented in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From this perspective, the phenomenology of mysticism itself would appear to lend itself to interpretation as a set of manifestations associated with disorders of personality and behaviour—manifestations which today are routinely viewed through the lens of medical diagnosis rather than that of mysticism.