Description
Book SynopsisDiscusses continuity and change in ideas of personhood and community. This book argues for the viability of the comic mode and recovery of history. It features close readings of familiar and lesser known materials, offering provocative interpretations of John of Rupescissa's alchemym.
Trade ReviewAn excellent addition to medieval studies. -- Thomas O'Donnell Comitatus
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person, by Bruce Holsinger and Rachel Fulton Part I. Saints, Visionaries, and the Making of Holy Persons 1. Forgetting Hathumoda: The Afterlife of the First Abbess of Gandersheim, by Frederick S. Paxton 2. "If one member glories...": Community Between the Living and the Saintly Dead in Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermons for the Feast of All Saints, by Anna Harrison 3. The Pope's Shrunken Head: The Apocalyptic Visions of Robert of Uzes, by Raymond Clemens 4. Thomas of Cantimpre and Female Sanctity, by John Coakley 5. The Changing Fortunes of Angela of Foligno, Daughter, Mother, and Wife, by Catherine M. Mooney 6. "A Particular Light of Understanding": Margaret of Cortona, the Franciscans, and a Cortonese Cleric, by Mary Harvey Doyno Part II. Community, Cultus, and Society 7. Fragments of Devotion: Charters and Canons in Aquitaine, 876-1050, by Anna Trumbore Jones 8. Naming Names: The Nomenclature of Heresy in the Early Eleventh Century, by Thomas Head 9. Economic Development and Demotic Religiosity, by Richard Landes 10. Back-Biting and Self-Promotion: The Work of Merchants of the Cairo Geniza, by Jessica Goldberg 11. John of Salisbury and the Civic Utility of Religion, by Mark Silk Part III. Cognition, Composition, and Contagion 12. Understanding Contagion: The Contaminating Effect of Another's Sin, by Susan R. Kramer 13. Calvin's Smile, by John Jeffries Martin 14. Why All the Fuss About the Mind? A Medievalist's Perspective on Cognitive Theory, by Anne L. Clark 15. Aspects of Blood Piety in a Late-Medieval English Manuscript: London, British Library MS Additional 37049, by Marlene Villalobos Hennessy 16. Machiavelli, Trauma, and the Scandal of The Prince: An Essay in Speculative History, by Alison K. Frazier Part IV. The Matter of Person 17. Low Country Ascetics and Oriental Luxury: Jacques de Vitry, Marie of Oignies, and the Treasures of Oignies, by Sharon Farmer 18. Crystalline Wombs and Pregnant Hearts: The Exuberant Bodies of the Katharinenthal Visitation Group, by Jacqueline E. Jung 19. Gluttony and the Anthropology of Pain in Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio, by Manuele Gragnolati 20. "Human Heaven": John of Rupescissa's Alchemy at the End of the World, by Leah DeVun 21. Magic, Bodies, University Masters, and the Invention of the Late Medieval Witch, by Steven P. Marrone Afterword: History in the Comic Mode, by Rachel Fulton and Bruce Holsinger Notes Contributors Index
