alth, which seemed miraculous, she
studied more perfectly to die to her senses, and to advance in a
penitential life and spirit, in which God had begun to conduct her, by
practising the greatest austerities which were compatible with the
obedience she had professed: she fasted two or three days a week on
bread and water, and sometimes passed the whole day without taking any
nourishment, and chastised her body with disciplines and a sharp iron
chain which she wore next her skin. Her obedience, humility, and
meekness, were still more admirable than her spirit of penance. The
least shadow of distinction or commendation gave her inexpressible
uneasiness and confusion, and she would have rejoiced to be able to lie
hid in the centre of the earth, in order to be entirely unknown to, and
blotted out of the hearts of all mankind, such were the sentiments of
annihilation and contempt of herself in which she constantly lived. It
was by profound {407} humility and perfect interior self-denial that she
learned to vanquish in her heart the sentiments or life of the first
Adam, that is, of corruption, sin, and inordinate self-love. But this
victory over herself, and purgation of her affections, was completed by
a perfect spirit of prayer: for by the union of her soul with God, and
the establishment of the absolute reign of his love in her heart, she
was dead to, and disengaged from all earthly things. And in one act of
sublime prayer, she advanced more than by a hundred exterior practices
in the purity and ardor of her desire to do constantly what was most
agreeable to God, to lose no occasion of practising every heroic virtue,
and of vigorously resisting all that was evil. Prayer, holy meditation,
and contemplation were the means by which God imprinted in her soul
sublime ideas of his heavenly truths, the strongest and most tender
sentiments of all virtues, and the most burning desire to give all to
God, with an incredible relish and affection for suffering contempt and
poverty for Christ. What she chiefly labored to obtain, by meditating on
his life and sufferings, and what she most earnestly asked of him was,
that he would be pleased, in his mercy, to purge her affections of all
poison of the inordinate love of creatures, and engrave in her his most
holy and divine image, both exterior and interior, that is to say, both
in her conversation and affections, that so she might be animated, and
might think, speak, and act by his most holy