The Modulated Scream

This book provides an integral, readable account of changing attitudes toward pain in late medieval Europe. Since pain itself cannot be known, the book looks at pain by chronicling what people wrote about it, and what they did with and about that.

Imprint -- Subvention -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1. Bodies in Pain: Ancient and Modern Horizons of Expectation -- 2. Text and Audience: Activating and Obstructing Expectations -- 3. Divine Analgesia: Painlessness in a Pain-Filled World -- 4. Whose Pain?: Pain as a Locus of Meaning in Christian Martyr Texts -- 5. Narratives and Counternarratives: Discourse and Early Christian Martyr Texts -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

This volume is the first in-depth analysis of how infirm bodies were represented in Italy from c. 1400 to 1650. Through original contributions and methodologies, it addresses the fundamental yet undiscussed relationship between images and representations in medical, religious, and literary texts. Looking beyond the modern category of ‘disease’ and viewing infirmity in Galenic humoral terms, each chapter explores which infirmities were depicted in visual culture, in what context, why, and when. By exploring the works of artists such as Caravaggio, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, this study considers the idealized body altered by diseases, including leprosy, plague, goitre, and cancer. In doing so, the relationship between medical treatment and the depiction of infirmities through miracle cures is also revealed. The broad chronological approach demonstrates how and why such representations change, both over time and across different forms of media. Collectively, the chapters explain how the development of knowledge of the workings and structure of the body was reflected in changed ideas and representations of the metaphorical, allegorical, and symbolic meanings of infirmity and disease. The interdisciplinary approach makes this study the perfect resource for both students and specialists of the history of art, medicine and religion, and social and intellectual history across Renaissance Europe.

The moments in Christ's human life noted in the creeds (his conception, birth, suffering, death, and burial) are events which would likely appear in a syllabus for a course in social anthropology, for they are of special interest and concern in human life, and also sites of contention and controversy, where what it is to be human is discovered, constructed, and contested. In other words, these are the occasions for profound and continuing questioning regarding the meaning of human life, as controversies to do with IVF, abortion, euthanasia, and the use of bodies or body parts post mortem plainly indicate. Thus the following questions arise, how do the instances in Christ's life represent human life, and how do these representations relate to present day cultural norms, expectations, and newly emerging modes of relationship, themselves shaping and framing human life? How does the Christian imagination of human life, which dwells on and draws from the life of Christ, not only articulate its own, but also come into conversation with and engage other moral imaginaries of the human? Michael Banner argues that consideration of these questions requires study of moral theology, therefore, he reconceives its nature and tasks, and in particular, its engagement with social anthropology. Drawing from social anthropology and Christian thought and practice from many periods, and influenced especially by his engagement in public policy matters including as a member of the UK's Human Tissue Authority, Banner aims to develop the outlines of an everyday ethics, stretching from before the cradle to after the grave.

The emotional turn in scholarship has changed the way in which historians of religion think about monotheistic traditions. New histories of religion have adapted and incorporated the totalizing sensibilities of twentieth century annalistes, the granular view of social historians, groundbreaking philosophical investigations, and the spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration between historical analysis, anthropology, and psychology. Religion as a principal bearer of culture has shaped emotional life profoundly, just as human emotion has constituted religious life. Taking a qualified constructivist approach to emotion enables understanding of the dynamism, fluidity, and ambiguity in emotional experience, alongside continuities, and facilitates analysis of how that feeling has animated religious life in monotheistic traditions. It equally sharpens insight into how monotheistic religion itself has made emotion. Affect, emotion, and mixed emotions are three categories of feelings evidenced in monotheistic religions. Each is illustrated with respect to the similarities and differences among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

•Detailed close analysis of early Middle English homiletic, hagiographic, guidance, and lyrical-meditative texts: provides readers with an insight into the affective literary strategies of a body of neglected material. •Contextualization of English material in Latin and Anglo-Norman: provides readers with a deeper knowledge of the multilingual culture of medieval England in the post-Conquest centuries. •Substantial commentary on church wall paintings: provides readers with a nuanced understanding of the ways in which the affective strategies of visual resources can be mapped onto texts.

The practice and the representation of flaying in the middle ages and after are considered in this provocative collection.

This volume brings together innovative research on miracles in the Christian West 1100-1500, and includes chapters on Anglo-Norman saints’ cults, late medieval Portugal and the legacy of medieval hagiography in the immediate Post-Reformation period. Contributors investigate miracle narratives in conjunction with broader socio-cultural ideals, practices and developments in medieval society. They also reassess the legacy of Peter Brown, challenge established dichotomies such as ‘medicine and religion’, and examine relics, lay beliefs and the liturgical evidence of a saint’s cult, moving beyond the traditional focus on canonization. Medical history features prominently alongside other approaches; these clarify the contexts of our sources, and demonstrate the methodological vibrancy in this field.