| Summary: | "Louise du Néant, ill-timed saintliness"Louise du Néant, interned in the La Salpêtrière asylum in 1677, had all the trappings of a saint. Her ecstasy, conversations with God, ascetic excess and longing for spiritual prostration made her the descendant of the great mystic spiritualists of the earlier part of the century. However, her internment signals that this form of spirituality was no longer seen as acceptable at a time marked by the triumph of civil devotions and the rejection of spiritual illusions. Her case signals the shift from the mystic’s extraordinary bodily experiences into the realm of pathology.
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