The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336

By: Caroline Walker Bynum

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Hardcover | 1 January 1995 | Edition Number 1

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Hardcover
384 Pages

Age
22+

Dimensions(cm)
2.38 x 1.6 x 0.31

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In their study of Christian visions of the afterlife and of apocalypse, religious historians have concentrated almost exclusively on the fate of the soul. But for medieval people, the fate of the body in resurrection posed the most troubling questions: if my body is resurrected, which of the many possible bodies will return - the child, the young adult, or the old woman?; or, if my body is dissolved in the grave, in what form will it come back? This study redresses the balance of historical inquiry by examining the idea of bodily resurrection in the ancient and medieval West with respect to persecution and conversion, social hierarchy, and cultural burial practices. Examining several periods between the 3rd and 14th centuries in which discussions of the body were central to Western eschatology, it suggests that Western attitudes toward the body that arose from these discussions still underlie our modern notions of the individual. Of particular interest is Bynum's investigation of the medieval use of metaphor in the debates surrounding material resurrection. By insisting that such debates must be understood in the context of burial practices and of gender and social status, she challenges views on hierarchy and difference.

Industry Reviews

"There are few historians of whom one can say that they have actually shifted some of the landscape of the writing of history in their own generation, but Bynum is one of them." -- The New Republic "Bynum's account is a very impressive and persuasive one... well supported by textual references and by connections she makes between what the ancients wrote and their burial practices, treatment of corpses and cults of relics... [A] fascinating and wide-ranging account that tells us a lot about medieval thinking and practice." -- New York Times Book Review "A remarkable achievement of scholarship and interpretation, an imaginative, determined, and persuasive probing of a counterintuitive thesis." -- Nicholas Terpstra, Sixteenth Century Journal

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Non-Fiction Religion & Beliefs Christianity Christian Theology History Regional & National History European History Society & Culture Cultural Studies Christian Spirituality & Religious Experience Christian Mysticism

List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction: Seed Images, Ancient and Modern	p. 1
Resurrection and Martyrdom: The Decades Around 200	p. 21
Early Metaphors for Resurrection: Fertility and Repetition	p. 22
The Second Century: Organic Metaphors and Material Continuity	p. 27
Irenaeus and Tertullian: The Paradox of Continuity and Change	p. 34
Martyrdom	p. 43
Burial Practices	p. 51
Resurrection, Relic Cult, and Asceticism: The Debates of 400 and Their Background	p. 59
The Legacy of the Second Century	p. 59
Origen and Methodius: The Seed versus the Statue	p. 63
Aphrahat, Ephraim, and Cyril of Jerusalem: Immutable Particles in Process	p. 71
Gregory of Nyssa: Survival, Flux, and the Fear of Decay	p. 81
Jerome and the Origenist Controversy: The Issue of Bodily Integrity	p. 86
Augustine and the Reassembled Statue: The Background to the Middle Ages	p. 94
Relic Cult	p. 104
Asceticism, the Church, and the World	p. 108
Reassemblage and Regurgitation: Ideas of Bodily Resurrection in Early Scholasticism	p. 117
Herrad of Hohenbourg: An Introduction to Twelfth-Century Art and Theology	p. 117
A Scholastic Consensus: The Reassemblage and Dowering of the Body	p. 121
Honorius Augustodunensis and John Scotus Erigena: An Alternative Tradition?	p. 137
Psychosomatic Persons and Reclothed Skeletons: Images of Resurrection in Spiritual Writing and Iconography	p. 156
Hildegard of Bingen: The Greening of Person and the Body as Dust	p. 157
Cistercian Writing: Images of First and Second Resurrection	p. 163
Peter the Venerable and the Pauline Seed	p. 176
Otto of Freising's Uneasy Synthesis: Resurrection "Clothed in a Double Mantle ..."	p. 180
The Iconography of the General Resurrection: Devouring and Regurgitation of Fragments and Bones	p. 186
Resurrection, Heresy, and Burial ad Sanctos: The Twelfth-Century Context	p. 200
Fragmentation and Burial Practices	p. 201
Hierarchy, Heresy and Fear of Decay	p. 214
Miracles	p. 220
Resurrection, Hylomorphism, and Abundantia: Scholastic Debates in the Thirteenth Century	p. 229
The Discourse of High Scholasticism: The Rejection of Statues and Seeds	p. 232
Bonaventure and the Ambivalence of Desire	p. 247
Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Giles of Rome: Resurrection, Hylomorphism, and Formal Identity	p. 256
The Condemnations of 1277 and the Materialist Reaction	p. 271
Somatomorphic Soul and Visio Dei: The Beatific Vision Controversy and Its Background	p. 279
Purgatory	p. 280
The Controversy Over the Beatific Vision	p. 283
Otherworld Journeys and the Divine Comedy	p. 291
The Hagiography and Iconography of Wholeness	p. 305
Fragmentation and Ecstasy: The Thirteenth-Century Context	p. 318
The Practice of Bodily Partition	p. 320
Devotional Literature: Body as Locus of Experience and as Friend	p. 329
Women Mystics and the Triumph of Desire	p. 334
Epilogue	p. 341
General Index	p. 345
Index of Secondary Authors	p. 359
Illustration Credits	p. 367
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336

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