Suchergebnisse

Medieval clerics believed that original sin had rendered their "fallen bodies" vulnerable to corrupting impulses--particularly those of a sexual nature. They feared that their corporeal frailty left them susceptible to demonic forces bent on penetrating and polluting their bodies and souls. Drawing on a variety of canonical and other sources, Fallen Bodies examines a wide-ranging set of issues generated by fears of pollution, sexuality, and demonology. To maintain their purity, celibate clerics combated the stain of nocturnal emissions; married clerics expelled their wives onto the streets and out of the historical record; an exemplum depicting a married couple having sex in church was told and retold; and the specter of the demonic lover further stigmatized women's sexuality. Over time, the clergy's conceptions of womanhood became radically polarized: the Virgin Mary was accorded ever greater honor, while real, corporeal women were progressively denigrated. When church doctrine definitively denied the physicality of demons, the female body remained as the prime material presence of sin. Dyan Elliott contends that the Western clergy's efforts to contain sexual instincts--and often the very thought and image of woman--precipitated uncanny returns of the repressed. She shows how this dynamic ultimately resulted in the progressive conflation of the female and the demonic, setting the stage for the future persecution of witches

This volume investigates the ways in which people in western Europe between the fall of Rome and the twelfth century used the past: to legitimate the present, to understand current events, and as a source of identity. Each essay examines the mechanisms by which ideas about the past were subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) reshaped for present purposes. As well as written histories, also discussed are saints' lives, law codes, buildings, Biblical commentary, monastic foundations, canon law and oral traditions. The book thus has important implications for how historians use these sources as evidence: they emerge as representations of the past made for very special reasons, often by interested parties. This was the first volume to be devoted fully to these themes, and as such it makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the role of the past within early medieval societies

Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Introduction: Remembering Perpetua -- Notes -- The Passio Perpetuae -- Notes -- The Acta Perpetuae -- Notes -- Saint Augustine's Sermons on Perpetua -- Notes -- Perpetua in the Early Middle Ages -- Notes -- Perpetua in Medieval England -- Notes -- Dominican Legendaries and the Legenda Aurea -- Notes -- Conclusion: Perpetua Remembered -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

This book, first published in 2000, is a pioneering study of politics and society in the early Middle Ages. Whereas it is widely believed that the source materials for early medieval Europe are too sparse to allow sustained study of the workings of social and political relationships on the ground, this book focuses on a uniquely well-documented area to investigate the basis of power. Topics covered include the foundation of monasteries, their relationship with the laity, and their role as social centres; the significance of urbanism; the control of land, the development of property rights and the organization of states; community, kinship and lordship; justice and dispute settlement; the uses of the written word; violence and the feud; and the development of political structures from the Roman empire to the high Middle Ages