al sentiments are mixed with the most repugnant erotic
images. On the same basis are developed the sexual orgies of different
religious fetes in the ancient world, as well as in certain modern
sects.

Mysticism, religious ecstasy and sexual voluptuousness are often
combined in a real trinity, and one often sees unsatisfied sensuality
seek compensation in religious exaltation. Krafft-Ebing cites the
following cases from Friedreich's "Legal Psychology" (p. 389):

In this way the nun Blaubekin was perpetually tormented by the
thought of what happened to the part of Jesus' body removed by
circumcision.

In order to make his devotions to the lamb of God, Veronique
Juliani, who was canonized by Pope Pius II, took into his
chamber a terrestrial lamb, embraced it and sucked its breasts.

Saint Catherine of Genes often suffered from such internal heat,
that, to cool herself, she laid on the ground, crying: "Love,
love, I can do no more!" In doing this she felt a peculiar
inclination for her confessor. One day, putting his hand to her
nose, she perceived an odor which penetrated her heart, "a
celestial odor the voluptuousness of which could wake the dead."

=The Role of Mental Pathology in Religious Eroticism.=--Among the
insane, and especially in women, but also in men afflicted with
_paranoia_ (a mental disease) we often find a strange and repugnant
mixture of eroticism and religious images. Such are the everlasting
betrothals with Christ, the Virgin Mary, with God or with the Holy
Spirit, betrothals in which the venereal orgasm is combined with
imaginary coitus and masturbation, followed by imaginary pregnancy and
childbirth. These symptoms give us a clear indication of the relation
which exists between eroticism and religious exaltation. The French
alienists have even designated them by the characteristic term of
"erotico-religious delirium." A single visit to the female division of
a lunatic asylum is often sufficient to satisfy the visitor.

A point which has received less attention is the immense historical
influence which certain psychopathological personalities, chiefly
hysterical subjects, but also some crazy persons or hereditary
visionaries, have exercised at all times on human destiny, usually by
the aid of the suggestive effects of sexual and religious ideas
(erotico-religious), the connections of which have not always been
clear.

Every psychiatrist knows the