Caroline Walker Bynum explore les idées et pratiques religieuses du Moyen Âge européen. Son travail examine cette période charnière, s'étendant de l'Antiquité tardive au seizième siècle. Bynum cherche à comprendre la formation et l'évolution de la pensée et du comportement religieux dans le contexte dynamique de l'Europe médiévale. Ses recherches offrent des aperçus profonds sur la vie spirituelle des gens de cette époque.
Bynum argues that Christ's blood as both object and symbol was central to late medieval art, literature, and religious life. As cult object, blood provided a focus of theological debate about the nature of matter, body, and God and an occasion for Jewish persecution; as motif, blood became a central symbol in popular devotion.
Late Medieval Christianity's encounter with miraculous materials viewed in the context of changing conceptions of matter itself.
A classic of medieval studies, this book 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.
"Between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries, European Christians used in worship a plethora of objects, not only prayer books, statues, and paintings but also pieces of natural materials, such as stones and earth, considered to carry holiness, dolls representing Jesus and Mary, and even bits of consecrated bread and wine thought to be miraculously preserved flesh and blood. Theologians and ordinary worshippers alike explained, utilized, justified, and warned against some of these objects, which could carry with them both anti-Semitic charges and the glorious promise of heaven. Their proliferation and the reaction against them form a crucial background to the European-wide movements we know today as "reformations" (both Protestant and Catholic). In a set of independent but inter-related essays, Caroline Bynum considers some examples of such holy things, among them beds for the baby Jesus, the headdresses of medieval nuns, and the footprints of Christ carried home from the Holy Land by pilgrims in patterns cut to their shape or their measurement in lengths of string. Building on and going beyond her well-received work on the history of materiality, Bynum makes two arguments, one substantive, the other methodological. First, she demonstrates that the objects themselves communicate a paradox of dissimilar similitude-that is, that in their very details they both image the glory of heaven and make clear that that heaven is beyond any representation in earthly things. Second, she uses the theme of likeness and unlikeness to interrogate current practices of comparative history. Suggesting that contemporary students of religion, art, and culture should avoid comparing things that merely "look alike," she proposes that humanists turn instead to comparing across cultures the disparate and perhaps visually dissimilar objects in which worshippers as well as theorists locate the "other" that gives their religion enduring power"-- Provided by publisher
Explores the ways in which food practices enabled women to exert control within the family and to define their religious vocations. This title describes what women meant by seeing their own bodies and God's body as food and what men meant when they too associated women with food and flesh.
Features essays that apply the method to the broader question of differences between regular canons and monks and the narrower question of differences between one kind of monk - the Cistercians - and other religious groups, monastic and nonmonastic, of the twelfth century.
Focusing on the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, this book delves into how metamorphosis and hybridity shape personal identity. It examines the transformative processes individuals undergo and the blending of different cultural and social elements that contribute to self-definition during this pivotal historical period. The exploration highlights the complexities of identity formation in a time of significant change and interaction among diverse influences.
Die Autorin untersucht, wie Frauen im Hochmittelalter kreative Wege fanden, traditionelle Geschlechterrollen zu manipulieren. Sie beleuchtet, wie Frauen sich von Fortpflanzungsdruck befreiten, gesellschaftliche Rollen in Städten übernahmen und christliche Dichotomien nutzten, um ihre eigene Identität zu formen und zu hinterfragen.
Kniha Svatá hostina a svatý půst, napsaná v roce 1988, zevrubným způsobem pojednává o specifických podobách ženské zbožnosti především v období 13. a 14. století. Pronikavě přitom ukazuje, jak byla ženská zbožnost a ženská askeze provázána s ženským vztahem k jídlu, který v mužském prostředí vůbec nenajdeme. Koncept raně středověkého mnišství, jehož podstatou byl přísný půst, podle autorčina soudu v pozdním středověku plně přebraly ženy. Zároveň však půst propojily s eucharistickou zbožností, jež ve svém důsledku vedla k vytváření představ, v němž ženy pojídaly Krista jako svého Boha, a tím se s ním tělesně nejen ztotožňovaly, ale i spojovaly. Hlavními hrdinkami její knihy jsou ale nejen ženské poustevnice, ale i nejrůznější mystičky, na něž mužská středověká společnost pohlížena s velkou ostražitostí. Kniha Svatá hostina a svatý půst tak představuje jeden z nejoriginálnějších pokusů o genderově pojatou historii středověku.
