«Comme si » : Le corps/texte de Francesca Toccafondi (1638-1685)

In light of Jacques Le Brun's seminal studies on ‘written bodies’ and mystical experience, this article proposes to reflect on the case of the Sienese mystic Francesca Toccafondi (1638-1685) and the group of devout women and men who gathered around her. I have analysed in particular the marks on Toccafondi's body and the practices of bodily manipulation. My intention was to examine the modalities and characteristics of these practices, and the cultural meanings that the social actors who practised them attributed to them, thereby elaborating codes and languages that were not only original but also to a large extent independent from those of the ecclesiastical institutions. This analysis aims to draw attention especially to the agency of certain charismatic women who used the writing on their bodies as a means for the construction of their own individual identity, but also as a practice that was approved within their (invisible) community of men and women who shared the same forms of spirituality and religious devotion. The identity of the group was thereby constructed around the writing on an individual body, a practice of physical manipulation that the group interpreted as a mark of spiritual leadership of the women in question, but also as a sign of the transmission of a shared religious message and of their own collective memory.