The Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages

by Gordon Rudy

Overview

First Published in 2002. This book is about the way medieval authors wrote about union with God and how they used language that refers to the senses to articulate their ideas about how a person can be one with God. Rudy argues that such explicit concepts of the spiritual senses are not sharply distinct from the ideas implicit in broader usage of sensory language in theological writings. These ideas are significant in the history of Christian mysticism, because language that refers to the senses bears directly on several ideas that are central to ideas about union with God.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415867023
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/11/2014
Series:	Studies in Medieval History and Culture
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Chapter 1 Sensory Language and Theological Concepts 1

Rhetoric of Sensation 7

Sensory Language, Experience, and the Study of Mysticism 9

Chapter 2 Other Senses 17

Origen: Spirit in Exegesis and Anthropology 17

Exegesis, Sense, and Intellect 19

The Senses of the "Inner" Person 24

A Dualist Anthropology 30

Body and Matter in Resurrection and Incarnation 32

Later Dualist Concepts of the Spiritual Senses 35

Chapter 3 Bernard of Clairvaux: Spiritual Sensation 45

Incarnation, Experience, and the Song of Songs 46

Three Fragmentary Discussions of the Spiritual Senses 51

The Order of Senses 54

The Touch and Taste of Union, Grace, and Wisdom 56

Chapter 4 Hadewijch: The Touch and Taste of Minne 67

Genre, Hadewijch's Narrator, and Theological Concepts 69

Sensory Language and Spiritual Senses 76

Minne 78

Minne-Nature and the Nature of Touch and Taste 81

Christ, Minne, and Bodily Language 89

Eucharist and Somatic Language of Indistinction 93

Chapter 5 Echoes and Ambiguities 101

Bonaventure 103

Rudolf of Biberach 109

Jan Ruusbroec 112

Epilogue 121

Notes 125

Select Bibliography 163

Index 177