ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers the role of Touch in the convents, leading to a discussion of the other proximate' sense which is said to have the body as its medium, namely taste, sound and smell. It discusses the nuns' own writing about sensitivity. It adopts an ecumenical approach, considering not only the history of a given sense but its social and cultural construction and its role in texturing the past'. It seeks to understand the role the senses played in the way the nuns structured their lives, considering particular early modern moments that seem to shape a Catholic conception of ensouled flesh'. The ensouled body must be something solid the body must be the naturally cohering medium for the faculty of touch, through which the plurality of perceptions is communicated'.
