This paper shows how self-inflicted pain enabled the expression of love for God among Christian monastic flagellant ascetics in medieval central Europe. As scholars have shown, being in a state of pain leads to a change in or a destruction of language, an essential attribute of the self. I argue that this transformation allows the self to transcend its boundaries as a conscious object, even if only in part, in a limited manner and temporarily, thereby enabling the expression of love for God, a non-object. To substantiate my argument, I show that the self’s transcendence of its boundaries as a conscious object and its consequent experience of being a non-object enable the imitation of God: not solely in the sense of imitatio Christi, of the physical and visual representations of God incarnate in the flesh of His son Christ, but also in the sense of the self’s experience of being a non-object, just like God, the telos of the self’s love.

本文展示了自我造成的痛苦如何使中世纪中欧的基督教修道院鞭笞苦行者能够表达对上帝的爱。正如学者们所表明的那样，处于痛苦状态会导致语言的改变或破坏，这是自我的一个基本属性。我认为，这种转变允许自我超越其作为有意识客体的界限，即使只是部分地、以有限的方式和暂时的，从而能够表达对非客体上帝的爱。为了证实我的论点，我表明自我作为一个有意识的客体超越其界限，以及随之而来的作为非客体的体验，使对上帝的模仿成为可能：不仅仅是在模仿基督的意义上, 上帝化身为他儿子基督的肉身的物理和视觉表现，而且在自我体验成为非对象的意义上，就像上帝一样，自我爱的目的。