Pain fragments: from cultivation to more everyday Catholic pain practices

While the book adopts a broader approach to Catholic pain practices by exploring the writing, remembering, and conserving of pain, this introduction focuses on practices intended to induce or cultivate pain, whether physical or emotional. By examining such practices (e.g., the meditation on the suffering Christ, religious weeping, and martyrdom) in the Middle Ages and the early modern period, the chapter sets the scene for the pain practices of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a period in which dolorist ideals were seemingly challenged by medical advances. Stressing the need to nuance this narrative of opposition, the chapter introduces the book’s praxeological approach and shows how attention to more “everyday” practices allows for a more diverse understanding of the Catholic way of engaging with pain in this period.