History of Tears

Abstract: This article discusses briefly the tragic episode after the Shahadat of Moula al Husain (as) which was Qiyamat for Ahl al Bait (as). This painful history is recorded in the authentic Maqtal of Shaikh Abbas al Qummi. ‘Aahhin Summa Aahhin’ on what the children of Rasulullah(S) faced. Pretender of the seat of the so-called caliph committed such heinous crimes with the grandson of Rasulullah(S), Moula Abi Abdillah al Imam al Husain ibn Ali(as), at Karbala in 61 (AH), the precedent of which is not found in the history of the previous nations. Yazid (L), his supporters and their like minded are that cancerous part of the Ummah who executed the family of Rasulullah(S) and continue to treat their followers with contempt and cruelty. The family of Rasulullah(S) faced such Zulm and Masaib in the long journey from Karbala to Kufa to Syria, which in the past wasn't even faced by Sualeh (as) and Hud (as) from their nations, Samud and A’ad.  Even today, the successors of Shimar and Yazid never respect Ahl al Bait (as) and deliberately ignore the injunction of the Qur’an: “Muwaddatu Fil Qurba” (expressing love for the close of kin of Rasulullah(S) – Ali, Fatimah, Hasan and Husain). What justifications will the killers of Ahl al Bait (as) (the children of Rasulullah (S)) present to Allah on the Day of Qiyamah? How will the supporters of Yazid (L) who are always ready to defend him face Rasulullah(S) on the Day of Judgement? Allah is not ignorant of the Zulm done to His servants; the victims of Zulm will have their day, a day of great importance (the Day of Qiyamah when Qis’as of their Shahadat will be taken and the criminals punished). The clarion call of Husain:“Hal Min Nasirin Yansurna”(Is there anyone to help me) still resounds and demands that the devotees practice Shariah in their daily affairs, for which Moula al Husain(as), his Ahl al Bait(as) and Ash’ab(ra) embraced Shahadat and faced trials and tribulations at the land of Karbala. For which the grand-daughters of Rasulullah(S), ladies of Bani Hashim and others bore unbearable pain. The reply to the call of Husain (as) is: “Labbaiyyka Ya Husain” which means that one is present at Karbala in the battlefield, even if alone, deserted by others, with people accusing and letting you down. It states that you, your money, your parents, family and children are all ready to participate in this battle. This is the short meaning of "Labbaiyyka Ya Husain". The unique feature of this tearful description is the side by side Marasi of the four outstanding Shia Fatemi Ismaili Du’at. These Marasi are pure from distortion.  Contrary to the Urdu and Persian poets, these Du’at focused their skill of writing poetry towards the facts and Haqaiq. They never used their pen to show the grandeur of their literary talent, like the Urdu and Persian poets.

This essay puts Michelangelo's infamous attack on Flemish painting in its aesthetic and political context. The anarchy and philistinism which he imputes to Flemish painting draws on a historic association between those who lived north of the Alps with the Goths and Vandals who destroyed ancient Rome. Their modern mercenary descendants were still invading Italy, and their artforms - musical as well as visual - had done so too. However, Michelangelo’s main concern was not so much with Flemish art per se, as with the fact that it was so influential on Italian artists. These artists included Michelangelo himself, and the ferocity of his attack is due in large measure to the problems he was encountering while painting that most crowded of subjects - the Last Judgment. To make matters worse, he was working in the Sistine Chapel, filled with supreme examples of Flemish visual and musical culture.

This article presents John Chrysostom’s views on mourning and tears with some of his Graeco-Roman philosophical predecessors in the background (Aristotle, Seneca and Plutarch). While Chrysostom’s views on mourning over the dead have much in common with the consolatory and philosophical writings of his pagan predecessors, his teaching on mourning over the living bears witness to an early Christian transformation in mourning. While Chrysostom urges his congregation to avoid excessive mourning over the dead, as advised many Graeco-Roman philosophers before him (although Chrysostom gives the additional reason that it compromises the Christian belief in the resurrection), he actively encourages mourning over the living. It is not the dead whom one should mourn for, but sin and sinners, because mourning over the dead can do nothing for them, while mourning with tears over sinners – both oneself and others – provides tremendous benefit both for the one who mourns and the one who is mourned for. Chrysostom identifies the proper place for such mourning to be not in public for outward display, but in private prayer. This alteration in the context (private rather than public) and objects of mourning (the living rather than the dead) qualifies it as an emotion– according to Aristotle’s definition (who himself had not considered mourning to be an emotion) – in that it is tied up with the interpersonal ramifications of actions,
alters one’s judgements, is ‘action-ready’; and is accompanied by pleasure and pain. Mourning was largely viewed as an obstacle to the philosophical life in pre- and non-Christian contexts, but due to the transformation of its understanding and function in the early Christian world, it was given a central role in the ‘philosophical’ life among Christians, as witnessed in the writings and preaching of John Chrysostom, who was influenced by contemporary ascetic thought and practices, in which mourning with tears had a central role. It holds such an important place in the preaching and ascetic program of John Chrysostom that he would have his hearers live in perpetual mourning.

This chapter investigates the significance of tears in the political culture of
the Roman Empire. Its starting point is the tears Pliny the Younger praises
the emperor Trajan for shedding in response to senatorial acclamations. I
will situate Trajan’s tears in Roman culture and read them against a range
of similar and contrasting tears shed in different contexts (the law court,
mourning, and political settings in a more narrow sense). Weeping in Roman
political culture was extrovert and passionate. The intensity was a
sign of the expressed emotion’s sincerity, which is why weeping conveyed
sincerity in the communication between significant groups in the political
system. Tears expressed virtues such as fides, pietas, clementia, civilitas,
and consensus. Weeping also articulated power-relations, and it was a sign
of respect or deference to weep in front of another. Tears are nonverbal
and are given meaning depending on the situation and how roles with
their scripts for behaviour were expected to be performed. If contexts,
roles, and scripts are unstable, unreliable, and contested, the same holds
true for tears. The duplicities of the Principate gave rise to dissimulatio,
which led to ambiguous communication in which emotional expressions
became separated from emotional content. During the reign of a “bad
emperor” (that is an emperor with a poor reputation in historical tradition,
often because of alleged repression of the Senate), Romans might
need to feign or withhold tears before the emperor, whose tears could
also not be trusted. During the reign of a “good emperor”, like Pliny’s
Trajan, tears could be trusted. False and true tears can be read either as
a literary representation or as a description of historical circumstances
in a pathological or sound political culture, respectively. Trajan’s tears in
Pliny’s Panegyricus stand out as a strong expression of sincerity and virtue
in an ideologically idealized text that highlights the importance that the
tears of those in power could be read.

English: This paper seeks to study, from the perspective of political representation and construction of the royal memory, gesture and literary motif of tears in relation to the figures of the Infanta of Castile and Princess of Portugal, Isabel (1470 - 1498), and elephant of King Manuel I, Anno (ca. 1510-1516), including in "Crónica de El-Rei D. João II", de Rui de Pina, y la "Crónica do Felicíssimo Rei D. Manuel", de Damião de Gois, respectively. In this direction, the tears are presented as an image capable of stress, from an emotional perspective, action and memory of a character in the context of the construction of narrative, allowing highlighted positively appreciated securities and their use as vehicle of social cohesion | Spanish: El presente trabajo busca estudiar, desde la perspectiva de la representación política y de la construcción de la memoria regia, el gesto y motivo literario de las lágrimas en relación con las figuras de la infanta de Castilla y princesa de Portugal, doña Isabel (1470-1498), y del elefante del rey Manuel I, Annón (ca. 1510-1516), incluidos en la "Crónica de El-Rei D. João II", de Rui de Pina, y la "Crónica do Felicíssimo Rei D. Manuel", de Damião de Góis, respectivamente. En esta dirección, las lágrimas se presentan como una imagen capaz de enfatizar, desde una perspectiva emotiva, la acción y memoria de un personaje en el marco de la construcción del discurso narrativo, permitiendo la puesta de relieve de valores positivamente apreciados y su uso como vehículo de cohesión social.

A style of feeling known as the ‘cult of sensibility’ swept through Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century, stressing the importance of both sympathy and public tears. In this article, I argue that this new style to some extent also affected common people’s emotional practices in the Southern Netherlands. Primarily using trial records, three phases in the history of sensibility are roughly distinguished. Up to around 1770, few traces of the cult of sensibility could be found and trial records only reported women as occasionally weeping. This changed in the 1770s and early 1780s, when men were also said to have wept. Only in the 1780s and 1790s, however, when male tears were already disappearing again, explicit references to sympathy were found. In the conclusion, I reflect upon the possibilities of trial records to study the history of emotions.

Scenes involving weeping in biblical and Homeric literature can be corre­lated with each other and with modem scientific studies of weeping. Seen through the lens of attachment theory, weeping expresses a need for relationship and caregiving arising from pain or sorrow. But so-called tears of joy shed at moments of emotional reunion appear at first not to fit with this understanding. On closer examination, however, moments o f reunion involve emotional memories of loss, grief, and help­lessness. Consequently, tears shed at reunions appear consistent with an attachment-theoretical perspective on weeping. The present article applies this modem scientific understanding of tears of reunion to an analysis o f the motif o f weeping as deployed in recognition scenes in Genesis and the Odyssey. The two literatures show striking correspondences in their use o f the motif o f weeping in scenes o f recognition that tend to confirm an attachment-theoretical perspective on weeping and its utility in textual analysis. Indeed, the Homeric literature often explicitly identifies the emotional pain present in recognition scenes. The two corpora also evince significant and illuminating differences, particularly in the level o f narrative detail and emotional language.

Precious liquids associated with Christ, a saint, or holy sites were collected and treasured by pilgrims throughout the Middle Ages. By the high medieval period, flocks of pilgrims visited holy sites and saints’ tombs where liquids associated with a holy body could be collected. La Sainte Larme, the holy tear of Christ, boomed in popularity, leaving a trail of
associated ampullae across Europe. Nor was it just the Sainte Larme that was revered. Saints’ lives from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries confirm the importance of heavenly droplets shed by would-be saints. At this time, lachrymose piety became a salient feature of sanctity for religious men and women. Using the vitae of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century holy women and a wide range of sources relating to the Saint Larme, this essay puts together a picture of these little-known, yet highly revered, relics. Applying an interdisciplinary and integrated approach that examines the material, visual, and written sources for tears relics, it provides a textured analysis of the methods of collection, preservation, use, and veneration of tears. The article explores how tears relics were particularly fertile bearers of meaning and how Christians lived their religion through interaction with the material. The use and veneration of tears was multisensory and emotive, and it will be shown how tears relics were an apposite medium for stimulating emotional responses. In sum, it argues that tears relics, unknown before the eleventh century, were the product of the particular spiritual climate of the high Middle Ages when a tide of lachrymal piety swept across Western Europe and an emotional and multi sensory experience of relics was at the heart of pilgrims’ devotion.

This will be a short talk intended for a general audience. It will be a small part of a wider event which will include poetry, film and song, and it will focus on the importance of tears and other watery offerings in late medieval devotional prose, particularly Passion narratives. It will begin by delineating the relationship between women and water both medically and theologically in the fourteenth century. It will then argue that in many Passion narratives and meditations, particularly those directed primarily at women, water becomes the means through which readers can participate, whether they are washing Christ's feet with their tears, weeping alongside Mary, cleaning the spit from his face or drinking the water and blood from his body.

This chapter will explore how ancient authors used the past by looking at de- scriptions of the emperor Tiberius’ mourning of family and kin. Mourning by and of imperial persons was a potentially contentious issue, not only because it involved public – and highly visible – >gures and often occurred in the context of the transfer of power, but also because what constituted a proper display of grief was controversial and shaped by expectations about elite behaviour and traditional gender roles.

A striking example of the paradoxical relationship between the roles of king and father can be found in the Chronicle of Alfonso X (Crónica de Alfonso X), written by Fernán Sánchez de Valladolid in the 1340s, on behalf of the ruling King Alfonso XI of Castile and León. In the midst of political turmoil and civil war raging because of a succession crisis, Alfonso is reached by false news of the death of his second son, Sancho (later IV), and is struck by grief. His counsellors, upon seeing his reaction, are mortified. In all probability this particular scene is not principally based on written evidence but a product of the chronicler’s imagination, and to understand this scene, we must consider what it was meant to convey to the intended audience of a historical discourse at court.

How are we then to approach the emotions of people in the Middle Ages, when they are so far away in time, and so ephemeral? Certainly we cannot be sure to reach anything more than an assumption of what this or that person may have felt in a particular situation. Nevertheless, the attitudes held towards emotive expressions and the ways in which they were interpreted are accessible to us. The shedding of tears is a constant human gesture, while its signification and cultural relevance are not. The meanings attributed to crying men and women vary according to each historical situation, with each cultural context or emotional community (to use a phrase coined by Barbara Rosenwein). As historians we need to be sensitive to the particular context in which emotional expressions were constructed.

This article examines crying, the emotions connected thereto, and the portrayal of kings as fathers and sons in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Spanish prose, in varying literary genres. The aim is to offer some reflections on the attitudes taken towards lachrymose behaviour, and to reach some insight into the distinction between the public and the private, the political and the emotional life in said context.

The Tears of Hagar.
“Hear my cry. Do not respond to my tears with silence.” —Psalms 39:13
The second voice we turn our attention to in the crying symphony of Rosh Hashanah is that of Hagar. The context of her tears is crisis and motherhood. Her tears are bound up with her child. As the stories of our symphony unfold, we will discover that this is a context shared by many of the key players in our drama. Hagar, Sarah, Rachel, Chanah, and, of course, Sisera’s mother, with whom we danced in the previous chapter. Each of these women represents a different face of the Shechinah; each is a mother struggling with family drama that takes place in the cracks between the generations. This is not accidental, as family is the crucible of our lives. It is there, in the arena of family, that we touch most intensely the primal world of tears.
Unlike the story of Sisera’s mother, the story of Hagar crying is not one that transcends the personal for the transpersonal, but rather it is a story at whose core stands a rejection of Hagar’s own story; a rejection of the personal and a reversion to the pre-personal that is born of Hagar’s radical alienation and pain. It is a rejection that is rejected by biblical consciousness itself, and which therefore invites, even demands, that Hagar rise to claim her story.

In Portuguese religious lyrics, the Holly Infant's tears are a poetic motive with a large impact, especially since the late 16th century. Following a scanning of the main authors who have dealt with this subject, an attempt is made to outline the main semantic-theological vectors of the motive. The connections between this poetic-religious discourse and some kinds of spiritual prose (ars orandi, sermons, meditations) are then underlined, with a particular incidence on the close and interactive dialogue involving these diverse textual modes.

In recent years, scholars have turned their attention to the deluge of tears in medieval texts. This is no straightforward task as diverse meanings are attributed to lachrymose behaviour. Despite the ubiquity of tears in thirteenth century saints’ lives and their widespread acceptance as an expression of holiness, the crying face could, however, present a special challenge for interpretation and be the subject of doubt. Using a selection of thirteenth-century saints’ lives, this paper will demonstrate how reading the face could be problematic and how tears were often misinterpreted. It will be shown that divinely bestowed tears might be subject to criticism and uncertainty over whether they could be read as an authentic sign of devotion and the presence of God. It will be argued that this doubt, particularly surrounding the tears of religious women, was a reflection of broader changes in the acceptance of physical and emotional expressions of sanctity during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

In several of the earliest Dominican hagiographical texts we read how the brothers would be drawn to tears when they witnessed the lacrimation of the their founder, Dominic of Caleruega (d.1221). This lachrymose response occurred during the preaching of sermons and in moments of seemingly private prayer focussed on empathising with Christ’s suffering. Should we read this as an empathic impulse and, if so, what stimulated it and what emotions were being shared? Given the opacity and multivalence of tears as an emotional expression, could the brothers accurately interpret them and empathise with their leader or was their engagement based on brotherly affection (dilectio) or a desire to foster prosocial behaviour? Where recent studies of empathy in hagiography have explored the techniques used to arouse an empathic response from the reader (de Nie; Bouchard, 2013), this paper will analyse the episodes of ‘empathic contagion’ between saint and follower and consider whether emotions were transmitted through tears. It will be argued that this response, triggered by the crying face, engendered several layers of meaning: it countered any incredulity associated with tears, encouraged inter-fraternal bonding, helped to define the early Dominican identity and worked towards the collective goal of salvation.

The study of tears, and in particular of gratia lacrymarum (the Gift of Tears), provides a deep insight into male religious life in the thirteenth century. Despite the frequency of gratia lacrymarum in saints’ vitae, it is often the affective female lives that have caught the attention of scholars. This lachrymose emotional response to experiencing God was not, however, the preserve of religious women. Aird (2010) has recently argued in an examination of the vita of Gundulf of Rochester (1023/4-1108) that the bishop’s tearful spirituality was part of a ‘feminisation’ that connected him with the Magdalene and unburdened him of the demands of his secular duties. This paper will argue, instead, that tears were not simply a tool of feminisation nor solely a female symbol. In the context of thirteenth-century religious life, the shedding of tears was not viewed as a female act but expressed an intense and meaningful way of connecting with God that could not be gendered.
This paper aims to provide a new insight into male devotion in the thirteenth century by examining where the tears of religious men fit into a tradition of scholarship that has been traditionally affective and female. It will demonstrate that the language used to describe the Gift of Tears is shared, and not gendered. Using a selection of hagiographies, including the vitae of Arnulf of Villers (d.1228), Dominic of Caleruega (1170-1221) and Giovanni Bono (1169-1249), this paper will consider the importance of the Gift of Tears in the devotional lives of 13th-century religious men and explore what these tears meant to the recipients and those who read their vitae.

By the thirteenth century, tears were a ubiquitous feature of accounts of saints’ lives. Despite the widespread acceptance of tears as an expression of holiness, they could, however, present a special challenge for interpretation and female tears were often the subject of doubt. Divinely bestowed tears might be subject to criticism and uncertainty over whether they could be read as an authentic sign of devotion and the presence of God. This essay argues that doubt over the sincerity of tears was a topos in the narrative of saintly struggle – something a saint must endure as a test of faith and sanctity – and was a corollary to achieving certainty in thirteenth-century female saints’ lives. As the century came to a close, however, tears began to be more openly questioned. The essay assesses the evolving doubt surrounding lachrymose expressions of devotion in the fourteenth century and accounts for changing attitudes by drawing on both saints’ lives and theological sources. It is argued that this doubt was a reflection of broader changes in the acceptance of physical and emotional expressions of sanctity and was part of the ‘gradual criminalization’ of the female body in the fourteenth century.

This article examines the historical and emotional consequences of the Victorian Football League's decision to ‘go national’. Many saw the emergence of the Australian Football League (AFL) as a threat to the authentic attachments of supporters. As many localized social practices were ‘rationalized’, however, engagement with the League increased across Australia. This article suggests that this success can be explained, in part, by the ways in which public representations of the AFL provided new points of identification for supporters. Drawing on recent work by critical theorists of emotion, I suggest that the already passionate culture of Australian rules supporting has been reworked by the animation of nationalistic attachments and the increasingly intimate representation of players in Australian public life. Ironically, though, these new modes of representation have opened the AFL out to heated debates about the emotions of the players themselves. The contested emergence of the crying AFL player in Australian public life since 2000 is both a product of these shifts and an example of the unruliness of identification and idealization. Attachments to players in the language of national identity, I suggest, are psychically volatile because they are connected to how supporters understand their own identities, lives, and losses.

Dominic of Caleruega (c.1170-1221), founder of the Dominicans, may not seem at first glance a remarkably lachrymose saint. The sources that inform us of his life and devotional practices vary in their treatment of his tears. In some texts Dominic’s tears barely wet the pages whereas in others, his tearful devotions stream from one passage to the next. Dominic’s affective piety and divine gifts have not been subject to the same scrutiny and scholarly examination as that of his contemporary, Francis of Assisi (d.1226). By comparison, Dominic has been characterised as a decorous saint who eschewed emotional displays of his sanctity. Using the breadth of thirteenth-century hagiographical sources relating to Dominic, this paper will elucidate how tears were both an essential marker of the founder’s sanctity and an important part of early Dominican spirituality. It will argue for a reassessment of Dominic and his early followers suggesting that scholarship, which has focused on the intellectualism of Thomism or the somatic piety of Francis and thirteenth- century female mystics, has precluded a true study of early Dominican spirituality, which was tender, affective, and lachrymose.

In recent years, scholars have turned their attention to the deluge of tears in medieval texts. This is no straightforward task as tears present a special challenge for interpretation. As sociologist Jack Katz wrote, ‘what [crying] ‘says’ may be inherently mysterious’. Tears are difficult to interpret and write about as they can express a variety of emotions. Indeed, recent studies on tears in the Medieval period demonstrate the breadth of emotions they can communicate. The difficulties in interpretation that face scholars today seem to be the same as those that medieval hagiographers experienced when conveying the details of emotional religious experiences. In his vita of the beguine Marie d’Oignies, Jacques de Vitry (d.1240) wrote about how he stayed with the holy woman as she experienced the gift of tears (gratia lacrymarum). Afterwards, Jacques asked Marie what she experienced in order to understand the grace. Marie’s response, transmitted through the pen of her hagiographer, is one of the few accounts that attempts to explain the experience of receiving this grace and the emotions that were associated with it. Using thirteenth-century saints’ lives, this paper will demonstrate that although hagiographers were somewhat reluctant to assign emotions when describing gratia lacrymarum, the gift of tears, a close analysis of these texts shows that  gratia lacrymarum was a multivalent figure and could be the response to a variety of emotions. By applying a concept developed in my doctoral thesis, I will demonstrate how the hagiographer could assign a number of emotional experiences to the grace depending on whether he understood it is a singular charismatic gift from God or as journey whereby the recipient moved through stages of ‘feeling’ culminating in the tears of spiritual perfection.

During the thirteenth century, weeping became an increasingly prevalent feature of personal sanctity for religious women. The Gift of Tears was understood as God-given and communicating a spiritual experience that represented reaching the highest point of spiritual perfection. Using the examples of a beguine, Marie d’Oignies (1177-1213), and a Cistercian, Ida of Nivelles (b.1197), this paper will show how tears were a type of non-verbal communication that went beyond language for these women. Tears were a bridge between the silence of their religious lives and the language of male preaching. They conveyed a message about their sanctity but for their confessors, the message was difficult to transmit. Indeed, what tears ‘said’ could be deeply mysterious and thus they were often understood as communicating what language could not- an experience of the divine. Finally, this paper will illustrate how the ‘language’ of tears was often seen as disruptive and how women were criticized for claiming to express divine grace.