Citations:extasy

Noun: optional form of

 * 1883, Johann Joseph von Görres and H. Austin, The Stigmata: a History of Various Cases, Thomas Richardson and Son; Chapter VI, page #132:
 * When extasy has laid hold principally either of the mind or of the inferior region of a man, the organs of motion are ordinarily tied, so that visions, and stigmatization too in part, take place during a calm and motionless extasy.  But it happens sometimes that the Divine Spirit takes possession of this intermediate region, and works in it an extraordinary increase of activity.  Those organs, which in the two first forms of extasy were tied, are, on the contrary, in this case elevated to a much higher power.  Their movements, directed by the will in a supernatural state of exaltation, pass beyond their ordinary and natural limits, and so an extasy in movement succeeds to a motionless extasy.