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The Written World is a thoughtful book. More connected essays than a comprehensive treatment of its themes, it inevitably leaves much ground unbroken. In particular, a fuller comparison of Orderic with his peers would have helped make... more
The Written World is a thoughtful book. More connected essays than a comprehensive treatment of its themes, it inevitably leaves much ground unbroken. In particular, a fuller comparison of Orderic with his peers would have helped make some of Hingst’s claims stick, especially in the final chapter where, toward the end, more general conclusions about twelfth-century historiography are ventured. Nonetheless, this is a useful contribution to our understanding of Orderic and a stimulus to further study of an important chronicler who, as Hingst rightly observes, warrants further attention in his own right.
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Mary: Images of the Mother of Jesus in Jewish and Christian Perspective. By JAROSLAV PELIKAN, DAVID FLUSSER, and JUSTIN LANG. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986. 105 pp. In the past twenty years, some Catholic and ex-Catholic women have... more
Mary: Images of the Mother of Jesus in Jewish and Christian Perspective. By JAROSLAV PELIKAN, DAVID FLUSSER, and JUSTIN LANG. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986. 105 pp. In the past twenty years, some Catholic and ex-Catholic women have criticized the image of the virgin-mother Mary as negative and oppressive, while a number of Protestant and ex-Protestant women have striven to enrich their religious experience with goddesses and feminine images. But one would never guess from the little picture book under review here that questions about the nature and function of female symbols in religion are currently popular, even urgent. Indeed, despite Jaroslav Pelikan's efforts to underline the agreement of Protestant and Catholic teaching about Mary and David Flusser's even more generous-spirited discussion of the Jewish mother of Jesus as a universal symbol of suffering, this set of three loosely connected essays is an anachronism. Neatly divided into Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic approaches and stressing doctrine rather than piety, it reflects the world of the early twentieth century when Mariology rather than Mary was the issue. The volume appears to have been hastily thrown together. Only Pelikan's essay is written with any grace of style or precision; both Flusser's article and Lang's are badly translated from the German. Modern Christians with limited historical knowledge may find Flusser's and Pelikan's observations thoughtful, even moving. But it is difficult to imagine anyone learning much from Lang's rambling remarks, which allude to Catholic feasts, hymns, and iconographic themes without providing any information about them and pass unjustified and probably unjustifiable judgments on pious practices as "wheat" or "chaf." Moreover, the juxtaposition on facing pages of medieval paintings with modern photographs of the Holy Land is disconcerting to the eye, and the point of many of the captions is unclear. Scholars will not read this book, and I suspect that captions taken from the apocryphal gospels and the Golden Legend will merely confuse conventional devout readers in the absence of discussion of how and why such legends grew. There is no aspect of Christianity that cries out more loudly for study and reinterpretation than the history of devotion to Mary. But aside from the attractive ecumenical tone of the first two essays, there is nothing about this book that suggests what direction such reinterpretation might take.
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In the period between 1150 and 1550, an increasing number of Christians in western Europe made pilgrimage to places where material objects—among them paintings, statues, relics, pieces of wood, earth, stones, and Eucharistic... more
In the period between 1150 and 1550, an increasing number of Christians in western Europe made pilgrimage to places where material objects—among them paintings, statues, relics, pieces of wood, earth, stones, and Eucharistic wafers—allegedly erupted into life by ...
In this chapter the renowned medievalist scholar Caroline Walker Bynum brings our attention to a striking historical occurrence: in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Europe the concern with and attachment to Eucharistic devotion was... more
In this chapter the renowned medievalist scholar Caroline Walker Bynum brings our attention to a striking historical occurrence: in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Europe the concern with and attachment to Eucharistic devotion was overwhelmingly female. Why this gender bias, and at that time? Christian women were predominantly “inspired, compelled, comforted and troubled by the Eucharist” and in many different forms—from miraculous apparitions, to experiences of ecstasy connected to the attendance and ingestion of the Eucharist, to the showing of sensorial excesses in its presence. Bynum shows how material and physical receptions of the body of Christ were expressed not only as forms of ecstasy but also as gendered modes of living the Imitatio Christi. This thirteenth-century corporeal, female experience of the Eucharist is connected to a particular moment in the life of Christ—the transition between life and death. Positioned as “brides” and hence as the erotic counterparts of Chri...
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Publications of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA i. Jeffrey Burton Russell: Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages 2. CD O'Malley: Leonardo's Legacy: An International Symposium 3. Richard H. Rouse:... more
Publications of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA i. Jeffrey Burton Russell: Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages 2. CD O'Malley: Leonardo's Legacy: An International Symposium 3. Richard H. Rouse: Guide to Serial Bibliographies in Medieval ...
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Publications of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA i. Jeffrey Burton Russell: Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages 2. CD O'Malley: Leonardo's Legacy: An International Symposium 3. Richard H. Rouse:... more
Publications of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA i. Jeffrey Burton Russell: Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages 2. CD O'Malley: Leonardo's Legacy: An International Symposium 3. Richard H. Rouse: Guide to Serial Bibliographies in Medieval ...
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... Alick Isaacs doi 10.1215/0961754x-2006-014 ... He bor-rows highly generalized and compacted ideas from biology (Lewontin, Gould), sociology (Elias, Weber, Latour), linguistics (Deacon, Bickerton), psychology Page 11. C o m m o n K n o... more
... Alick Isaacs doi 10.1215/0961754x-2006-014 ... He bor-rows highly generalized and compacted ideas from biology (Lewontin, Gould), sociology (Elias, Weber, Latour), linguistics (Deacon, Bickerton), psychology Page 11. C o m m o n K n o W L E D g E ...
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In one of our earliest descriptions of meditation on the crucifix, Aelred of Rievaulx (d.1166) described the body on the cross, pierced by the soldier's lance, as... more
In one of our earliest descriptions of meditation on the crucifix, Aelred of Rievaulx (d.1166) described the body on the cross, pierced by the soldier's lance, as food and urged the female recluses for whom he wrote not only to contemplate it but also to eat it in gladness: “Hasten, linger not, eat the honeycomb with your honey, drink your wine with your milk. The blood is changed into wine to inebriate you, the water into milk to nourish you.” Marsha Dutton, who has written so movingly of Cistercian piety, speaks of this as a eucharistic interpretation of the literal, physical reality of the crucifixion and points to the parallel with Berengar of Tours' oath at the synod of Rome in 1079: “The bread and wine which are placed on the altar … are changed substantially into the true and proper vivifying body and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord and after the consecration there are the true body of Christ which was born of the virgin … and the true blood of Christ which flowed from his side … in their real nature and true substance.”
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The holy bread strengthened her heart; the holy wine inebriated her, rejoicing her mind; the holy body fattened her; the vitalizing blood purified her by washing. And she could not bear to abstain from such solace for long. For it was the... more
The holy bread strengthened her heart; the holy wine inebriated her, rejoicing her mind; the holy body fattened her; the vitalizing blood purified her by washing. And she could not bear to abstain from such solace for long. For it was the same to her to live as to eat the body of Christ, ...