The symbolism of marriage in early Christianity and the Latin middle ages : images, impact, cognition /
edited by Line Cecilie Engh.
- Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, (c)2019.
- 1 online resource (354 pages) : illustrations
- Knowledge communities ; 8 .
Includes bibliographies and index.
Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- 1. Introduction: A Case Study of Symbolic Cognition / 2. Conjugal and Nuptial Symbolism in Medieval Christian Thought / 3. Marriage Symbolism and Social Reality in the New Testament: Husbands and Wives, Christ and the Church / 4. Single Marriage and Priestly Identity: A Symbol and its Functions in Ancient Christianity / 5. 'Put on the dress of a wife, so that you might preserve your virginity': Virgins as Brides of Christ in the Writings of Tertullian / 6. Veiled Threats: Constraining Religious Women in the Carolingian Empire / 7. Double Standards?: Medieval Marriage Symbolism and Christian Views on the Muslim Paradise / 8. Marriage, Maternity, and the Formation of a Sacramental Imagination: Stories for Cistercian Monks and Nuns around the Year 1200 / 9. Marriage Symbolism in Illuminated Manuscripts of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Visualization and Interpretation / 10. 'His left arm is under my head and his right arm shall embrace me': The Bride and the Bridegroom in Trastevere / 11. Marriage in the Divine Office: Nuptial Metaphors in the Medieval Conception of the Officium / 12. What Kind of Marriage Did Pope Innocent III Really Enter Into?: Marriage Symbolism and Papal Authority / 13. 'Please don't mind if I got this wrong': Christ's Spiritual Marriage and the Law of the Late Medieval Western Church / Index of Biblical Passages -- Index of Names Engh, Line Cecilie / Turner, Mark -- Reynolds, Philip L. -- Solevĺg, Anna Rebecca -- Hunter, David G. -- Shuve, Karl -- Firey, Abigail -- Scafi, Alessandro -- Newman, Martha G. -- Ramírez, Marta Pavón -- Hodne, Lasse -- Salvadó, Sebastián -- Engh, Line Cecilie -- Müller, Wolfgang P. --
In the middle ages everyone, it seems, entered into some form of marriage. Nuns - and even some monks - married the bridegroom Christ. Bishops married their sees. The popes, as vicars of Christ, married the universal church. And lay men, high and low, married carnal woman. What unites these marriages was their common reference to the union of Christ and church. Christ's marriage to the church was the paradigmatic symbol in which all the other forms of union participated - in superior or inferior ways. This book grapples with questions of the impact of marriage symbolism on both ideas and practice in the early Christian and medieval period. In what ways did marriage symbolism - with its embedded concepts of gender, reproduction, household, and hierarchy - shape people's thought about other things, such as celibacy, ecclesial and political relations, and devotional relations? How did symbolic thinking, contrariwise, shape marriage regulation and law? And how, if at all, were these two directions of thinking symbolically about marriage related?
9789048537150 9048537150
Marriage--Religious aspects--Christianity--Early works to 1800. Christian art and symbolism--History.