“I Rejoice in the Lord as if my Soul was with you … :” Experience, Embodiment, and the Jesuit Mission to Sweden

Abstract

The article looks at embodied experience in a letter sent home by a young Finnish student at a Jesuit college in Rome. Placing the letter against the wider context of Catholic Reformation teaching on images and letter-writing, this article explores the role of the body in both the images attached to the letter (or the verbal descriptions of the images) and in the use of those images in devotional meditation and prayer. Using a “history of experience” framework, it shows how the body was a medium used to create, share, and transfer experiences of faith and conversion across time and space.