Bynum examines several periods between the 3rd and 14th centuries in which discussions of the body were central to Western eschatology, and suggests that Western attitudes toward the body that arose from these discussions still undergird our modern notions of the individual. He explores the "plethora of ideas about resurrection in patristic and medieval literature--the metaphors, tropes, and arguments in which the ideas were garbed, their context and their consequences," in order to understand human life after death.
Bynum examines several periods between the 3rd and 14th centuries in which discussions of the body were central to Western eschatology, and suggests t...
From the Introduction, by Caroline Walker Bynum: The opportunity to rethink and republish several of my early articles in combination with a new essay on the thirteenth century has led me to consider the continuity-both of argument and of approach-that underlies them. In one sense, their interrelationship is obvious. The first two address a question that was more in the forefront of scholarship a dozen years ago than it is today: the question of differences among religious orders.These two essays set out a method of reading texts for imagery and borrowings as well as for spiritual...
From the Introduction, by Caroline Walker Bynum: The opportunity to rethink and republish several of my early articles in combination with a new ...
These studies . . . not only illuminate the past with a fierce and probing light but also raise, with nuance and power, fundamental issues of interpretation and method."--from the Foreword by Caroline Walker Bynum Female saints, mystics, and visionaries have been much studied in recent years. Relatively little attention has been paid, however, to the ways in which their experiences and voices were mediated by the men who often composed their vitae, served as their editors and scribes, or otherwise encouraged, protected, and collaborated with the women in their writing projects. What...
These studies . . . not only illuminate the past with a fierce and probing light but also raise, with nuance and power, fundamental issues of interpre...
Last Things Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages Edited by Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman "Last Things will repay the serious attention of readers concerned with any aspect of medieval religion."--Speculum When the medievals spoke of "last things" they were sometimes referring to events, such as the millennium or the appearance of the Antichrist, that would come to all of humanity or at the end of time. But they also meant the last things that would come to each individual separately--not just the place, Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, to which their souls would go...
Last Things Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages Edited by Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman "Last Things will repay the serious a...
Arguing that historians must write in a comic mode, aware of history's artifice, risks, and incompletion, Caroline Walker Bynum here examines diverse medieval texts to show how women were able to appropriate dominant social symbols in ways that allowed for the emergence of their own creative voices. By arguing for the positive importance attributed to the body, these essays give a new interpretation of gender in medieval texts and of the role of asceticism and mysticism in Christianity.Caroline Walker Bynum, a MacArthur Fellow and winner of the Schaff Prize for Church history for her Holy...
Arguing that historians must write in a comic mode, aware of history's artifice, risks, and incompletion, Caroline Walker Bynum here examines diver...
The quiet market town of Wilsnack in northeastern Germany is unfamiliar to most English-speakers and even to many modern Germans. Yet in the fifteenth century it was a European pilgrimage site surpassed in importance only by Rome and Santiago de Compostela. The goal of pilgrimage was three miraculous hosts, supposedly discovered in the charred remains of the village church several days after it had been torched by a marauding knight in August 1383. Although the church had been burned and the spot soaked with rain, the hosts were found intact and dry, with a drop of Christ's blood at the...
The quiet market town of Wilsnack in northeastern Germany is unfamiliar to most English-speakers and even to many modern Germans. Yet in the fiftee...
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 through such activities as bleeding, weeping, and walking about. Challenging Christians both to seek ever more frequent encounters with miraculous matter and to turn to an inward piety that rejected material objects of devotion, such phenomena were by the fifteenth century at the heart of religious practice and polemic. In...
In the period between 1150 and 1550, an increasing number of Christians in western Europe made pilgrimage to places where material objects -- among...
A classic of medieval studies, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 traces ideas of death and resurrection in early and medieval Christianity. Caroline Walker Bynum explores problems of the body and identity in devotional and theological literature, suggesting that medieval attitudes toward the body still shape modern notions of the individual. This expanded edition includes her 1995 article "Why All the Fuss About the Body? A Medievalist's Perspective," which takes a broader perspective on the book's themes. It also includes a new introduction, which...
A classic of medieval studies, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 traces ideas of death and resurrection in early a...
