Resumen de ConTact. Tactile Experiences of the Sacred and the Divinity in the Middle Ages

Victoria Cirlot Valenzuela, Blanca Garí

• This chapter aims to address the sense of touch within the sphere of the sacred, starting from the hypothesis that touch is the sense that most radically introduces a life-oriented female horizontality. Touch is the only sense that implies reciprocity, because it is always a shared ‘contact’. This work explores the role played by touch within the framework of the five spiritual senses, from devotional practices to mystical union. The first part analyses the devotional, spiritual, and apotropaic uses of the sacred object, understood as possessing a potential for haptic transfer, as well as the evangelical models of tactile experience. The second part studies touch in female mysticism, discussing the contact with the divinity as a loving experience through some examples and the texts of Hadewijch and Mechthild von Magdeburg.