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Related Topics: History >> Medieval
God And The Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, And Belief In The Middle Ages,9780812219111
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God And The Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, And Belief In The Middle Ages


Author(s): Newman, Barbara
ISBN10:  0812219112
ISBN13:  9780812219111
Format:  Paperback
Pub. Date:  3/8/2005
Publisher(s): Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

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SummaryTable of ContentsAuthor Biography

Contrary to popular belief, the medieval religious imagination did not restrict itself to masculine images of God but envisaged the divine in multiple forms. In fact, the God of medieval Christendom was the Father of only one Son but many daughters—including Lady Philosophy, Lady Love, Dame Nature, and Eternal Wisdom. God and the Goddesses is a study in medieval imaginative theology, examining the numerous daughters of God who appear in allegorical poems, theological fictions, and the visions of holy women. We have tended to understand these deities as mere personifications and poetic figures, but that, Barbara Newman contends, is a mistake. These goddesses are neither pagan survivals nor versions of the Great Goddess constructed in archetypal psychology, but distinctive creations of the Christian imagination. As emanations of the Divine, mediators between God and the cosmos, embodied universals, and ravishing objects of identification and desire, medieval goddesses transformed and deepened Christendom's concept of God, introducing religious possibilities beyond the ambit of scholastic theology and bringing them to vibrant imaginative life.

Building a bridge between secular and religious conceptions of allegorized female power, Newman advances such questions as whether medieval writers believed in their goddesses and, if so, in what manner. She investigates whether the personifications encountered in poetic fictions can be distinguished from those that appear in religious visions and questions how medieval writers reconcile their statements about the multiple daughters of God with orthodox devotion to the Son of God. Furthermore, she examines why forms of feminine God-talk that strike many Christians today as subversive or heretical did not threaten medieval churchmen.

Weaving together such disparate texts as the writings of Latin and vernacular poets, medieval schoolmen, liturgists, and male and female mystics and visionaries, God and the Goddesses is a direct challenge to modern theologians to reconsider the role of goddesses in the Christian tradition.



Explores the idea that the medieval religious imagination did not restrict itself to masculine images of God but envisaged the divine in multiple forms.

List of Illustrations ix
Preface xi
1. God and the Goddesses 1(50)
St. Francis and Lady Poverty
3(7)
The Soul and Lady Love
10(2)
The Servant and Eternal Wisdom
12(2)
Will and Lady Holy Church
14(5)
Christine and the Female Trinity
19(5)
Vision, Imagination, and Belief
24(11)
Why Goddesses?
35(16)
2. Natura (I): Nature and Nature's God 51(39)
The Birth of Nature: Bernard Silvestris's Cosmographia
55(11)
Nature's Fall and Lament: De planctu Naturae
66(7)
Nature as Redeemed Redeemer: Anticlaudianus
73(13)
A Hildegardian Coda: Nature or Nature's God?
86(4)
3. Natura (II): Goddess of the Normative 90(48)
"Ganymede and Helen" and Nature's Grammar
91(6)
In Nature's Forge: From Alan of Lille to Jean de Meun
97(14)
Nature at the Court of King Richard: Chaucer's Parlement of Fowles
111(4)
Nature and Culture: Christine's Revisionist Myths
115(7)
Testing the Norms: Nature, Nurture, Silence
122(12)
The Realm of the Natural
134(4)
4. Love Divine, All Loves Excelling 138(52)
Caritas and Amor: The Twelfth Century
140(11)
Love's Violence: The Thirteenth Century
151(18)
The Beguine as Knight of Love: Hadewijch's Stanzaic Poems
169(12)
Dante, Beatrice, and l'amor che move it sole
181(9)
5. Sapientia: The Goddess Incarnate 190(55)
Liturgical Wisdom: Poised Between Christ and Mary
194(12)
Devotional Wisdom: Henry Suso and His Legacy
206(16)
Contemplative Wisdom: Julian of Norwich
222(12)
Esoteric Wisdom: The Alchemical Virgin
234(11)
6. Maria: Holy Trinity as Holy Family 245(46)
The Trinity as a Family
247(7)
Divinizing the Virgin: The Marian Trinity in Art
254(19)
Enacting the Virgin: The Lability of Female Roles
273(10)
Domesticating the Virgin: The Invention of the Holy Family
283(8)
7. Goddesses and the One God 291(38)
Imaginative Theology
294(10)
The Gender of God and the Limits of Intolerance
304(13)
Medieval Christianity as an Inclusive Monotheism
317(12)
List of Abbreviations 329(2)
Notes 331(78)
Works Cited 409(28)
Index 437
Barbara Newman is Professor of English and Religion at Northwestern University and author of From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

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