. . . ecstatic experiences and
mystical feeding were often not merely the result of reception of communion,
but a substitute for it, particularly in cases where confessors or superiors
denied the woman access to the elements. Alice of Schaerbeke, denied the cup
because of leprosy, was reassured by Christ in impeccable thirteenth-century
theology that she received both body and blood in the host; . . . (Caroline
Walker Bynum, “Women Mystics and Eucharistic Devotion in the Thirteenth
Century,” in Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on gender and the Human
Body in Medieval Religion [New York: Zone Books, 1992], 128)
The
source provided is:
Acta sanctorum .
. . edition novissima, ed. J.
Carnandet et al. (Paris: Palmé, etc., 1863-), June, vol. 2, p. 474
