The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell: Metaphor and Embodiment in the Lives of Pious Women, 200-1500 (The Middle Ages Series)

477 Pages·2011·4.44 MB·English

by  Dyan Elliott

The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell
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THe Middle AGes series
ruth Mazo Karras, series editor
edward Peters, Founding editor
A complete list of books in the series
is available from the publisher.
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The Bride of Christ
Goes to Hell
Metaphor and embodiment
in the lives of Pious Women,
200–1500
dyan elliott
university of pennsylvania press
philadelphia
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Copyright © 2012 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. except for brief quotations used for
purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book
may be reproduced in any form by any means without
written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
www.upenn.edu/pennpress
Printed in the United states of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
elliott, dyan, 1954–
The bride of Christ goes to hell : metaphor and embodiment
in the lives of pious women, 200–1500 / dyan elliott. — 1st
ed.
p. cm. — (The Middle Ages series)
includes bibliographical references and index.
isBN 978-0-8122-4358-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Virginity—religious aspects—Christianity—History of
doctrines—early church, ca. 30–600. 2. Virginity—religious
aspects—Christianity—History of doctrines—Middle Ages,
600–1500. 3. Marriage—religious aspects—Christianity—
History of doctrines—early church, ca. 30–600. 4. Marriage—
religious aspects—Christianity—History of doctrines—Middle
Ages, 600–1500. 5. Women in Christianity—History—early
church, ca. 30–600 6. Women in Christianity—History—
Middle Ages, 600–1500. i. Title. ii. series: Middle Ages series
BV4647.C5e45 2012
241'.660820940902—dc23
2011023302
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For my dear friend, susan Gubar
An inspiration
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late medieval thought . . . frequently moves living thought from
the abstract in the direction of the pictorial as if the whole of
intellectual life sought concrete expression, as if the notion of gold
was immediately minted into coin. There is an unlimited desire to
bestow form on everything that is sacred, to give any religious idea
a material shape so that it exists like a crisply printed picture. This
tendency towards pictorial expression is constantly in jeopardy of
becoming petrified. . . . [i]n this supernaturalized atmosphere, the
religious tension of true transcendence, the stepping away from the
material, cannot always occur.
—Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages
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Contents
introduction 1
Chapter 1. A Match Made in Heaven: The Bride in the early Church 9
Chapter 2. The Church Fathers and the embodied Bride 30
Chapter 3. The Barbarian Queen 63
Chapter 4. An Age of Affect, 1050–1200 (1): Consensuality and Vocation 106
Chapter 5. An Age of Affect, 1050–1200 (2): The Conjugal reflex 150
Chapter 6. The eroticized Bride of Hagiography 174
Chapter 7. descent into Hell 233
Conclusion 280
list of Abbreviations 287
Notes 293
Bibliography 409
index 451
Acknowledgments 465
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