Thoughts on Bryant Essay

I thought the Bryant essay about expressions of female piety in the late middle ages was very interesting. I even think that a parallel can be drawn between the professions of love from women in the middle ages, to evangelical Christians today. One example of this is self mutilation. In the middle ages, Bryant stated that women would whip, cut, and injure themselves in a variety of ways in order to try and emulate the pain Christ went through during his crucifixion. While extremely rare today, there are still some scattered cases of self harm in order to try and experience Christ's suffering on the cross on a more personal level. Another example of this was women of the middle ages loving Christ in an erotic way. Many women of that time actually believed that they had fallen in love with Jesus. While not so much erotic, evangelical Christians often profess how deeply in love they are with Christ, and that might lead one to believe that they too are in love with Christ.