The Resurrection of the Body

by Bynum, Caroline Walker

• ISBN13: 9780231081276
• ISBN10: 0231081278
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-02-01
• Publisher: Columbia University Press

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

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
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