Description
Book SynopsisHow, Barbara Newman asks, did the myth of the separable heart take such a firm hold in the Middle Ages, from lovers exchanging hearts with one another to mystics exchanging hearts with Jesus? What special traits gave both saints and demoniacs their ability to read minds? Why were mothers who died in childbirth buried in unconsecrated ground? Each of these phenomena, as diverse as they are, offers evidence for a distinctive medieval idea of the person in sharp contrast to that of the modern subject of individual.
Starting from the premise that the medieval self was more permeable than its modern counterpart, Newman explores the ways in which the self''s porous boundaries admitted openness to penetration by divine and demonic spirits and even by other human beings. She takes up the idea of coinherence, a state familiarly expressed in the amorous and devotional formula I in you and you in me, to consider the theory and practice of exchanging the self with others in five relational
