The weight of love

“Take a corpse, and place it where you like. You will see that it puts up no resistance to motion, nor does it grumble about its position, or complain when it is put aside. If it is propped up on a throne, it does not raise its head up, but rather looks down. If it is clothed in purple, it will look twice as pale. This is the truly obedient one, who does not judge why he is moved, and does not care where he is placed.” According to his thirteenth-century hagiographers, the Umbrian saint Francis of Assisi responded with these words to a group of followers asking for spiritual instruction by offering, as an example of true obedience, a dead body (exanime corpus, literally, a body without a soul).
[New York: 2017]

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