From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800-1200

From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800-1200

by Rachel Fulton Brown
From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800-1200

From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800-1200

by Rachel Fulton Brown

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Overview

Devotion to the crucified Christ is one of the most familiar, yet most disconcerting artifacts of medieval European civilization. How and why did the images of the dying God-man and his grieving mother achieve such prominence, inspiring unparalleled religious creativity as well such imitative extremes as celibacy and self-flagellation? To answer this question, Rachel Fulton ranges over developments in liturgical performance, private prayer, doctrine, and art. She considers the fear occasioned by the disappointed hopes of medieval Christians convinced that the apocalypse would come soon, the revulsion of medieval Jews at being baptized in the name of God born from a woman, the reform of the Church in light of a new European money economy, the eroticism of the Marian exegesis of the Song of Songs, and much more.
Devotion to the crucified Christ is one of the most familiar yet disconcerting artifacts of medieval European civilization. How and why did the images of the dying God-man and his grieving mother achieve such prominence, inspiring unparalleled religious creativity and emotional artistry even as they fostered such imitative extremes as celibacy, crusade, and self-flagellation?

Magisterial in style and comprehensive in scope, From Judgment to Passion is the first systematic attempt to explain the origins and initial development of European devotion to Christ in his suffering humanity and Mary in her compassionate grief. Rachel Fulton examines liturgical performance, doctrine, private prayer, scriptural exegesis, and art in order to illuminate and explain the powerful desire shared by medieval women and men to identify with the crucified Christ and his mother.

The book begins with the Carolingian campaign to convert the newly conquered pagan Saxons, in particular with the effort to explain for these new converts the mystery of the Eucharist, the miraculous presence of Christ's body at the Mass. Moving on to the early eleventh century, when Christ's failure to return on the millennium of his Passion (A.D. 1033) necessitated for believers a radical revision of Christian history, Fulton examines the novel liturgies and devotions that arose amid this apocalyptic disappointment. The book turns finally to the twelfth century when, in the wake of the capture of Jerusalem in the First Crusade, there occurred the full flowering of a new, more emotional sensibility of faith, epitomized by the eroticism of the Marian exegesis of the Song of Songs and by the artistic and architectural innovations we have come to think of as quintessentially high medieval.

In addition to its concern with explaining devotional change, From Judgment to Passion presses a second, crucial question: How is it possible for modern historians to understand not only the social and cultural functions but also the experience of faith—the impulsive engagement with the emotions, sometimes ineffable, of prayer and devotion? The answer, magnificently exemplified throughout this book's narrative, lies in imaginative empathy, the same incorporation of self into story that lay at the heart of the medieval effort to identify with Christ and Mary in their love and pain.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780231500760
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication date: 12/18/2002
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 752
Lexile: 1840L (what's this?)
File size: 20 MB
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About the Author

Rachel Fulton is asssociate professor of history at the University of Chicago. She has held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Lilly Endowment, and she has been a Fellow at the National Humanities Center, where she began work on this book. Her current project is a study of the cognitive and ritual making of prayer in the monastic culture of the medieval West.

Table of Contents

Part 1. "Christus Patiens"
1. History, Conversion, and the Saxon Christ
2. Apocalypse, Reform, and the Suffering Savior
3. Praying to the Crucified Christ
Part 2. "Maria Compatiens"
4. Praying to the Mother of the Crucified Judge
5. The Seal of the Mother Bride
6. The Voice of My Beloved, Knocking
7. Once Upon a Time...
8. "Commortua, Commoriens, Consepulta"

What People are Saying About This

Bernard McGinn

History on the grand scale--a book that is impressive in range, revealing in insight, and challenging in its new and often bold interpretations.... The result is one of the most important books on medieval religious history of the past decade.

Bernard McGinn, Author of Antichrist:Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil

Jeffrey F. Hamburger

Ambitious in scope and deep in historical sympathies, Rachel Fulton's compelling study is... a rich and textured book that tackles some of the most familiar texts in the monastic tradition and restores to them their urgent originality... From Judgement to Passion will change the way in which historians of art, literature, and religion view central chapters in the history of Christianity.

Barbara Newman

From Judgement to Passion is a rare and magisterial book... Only the existence of such a book makes one aware of the crying need for it. Fulton is extraordinarily sophisticated... she has given us our most intelligent work on the history of liturgy since the passing of Jean Leclercq and Jean Daniélou. This book combines historical rigor and empathy in the highest measure.

Barbara Newman, Northwestern University

Caroline Bynum

An exciting and beautifully written exploration of one of the most important questions in medieval history: the origins of devotion to the human Jesus.

Amy G. Remensnyder

Placing empathy at the heart of her discussion, Fulton leads her reader through the intricacies of medieval liturgy, theology, and biblical commentary to propose a new and persuasive interpretation of imitative devotion to the suffering Christ and his grieving mother in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Amy G. Remensnyder, Brown University

Caroline Bynum

An exciting and beautifully written exploration of one of the most important questions in medieval history: the origins of devotion to the human Jesus.

Caroline Bynum, author of Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336

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