In this Book
- Julian of Norwich and the Mystical Body Politic of Christ
- Book
- 1999
- Published by: University of Notre Dame Press
summary
In May 1373, the English mystic Julian of Norwich was healed of a serious illness after experiencing a series of visions of the Blessed Virgin and of Christ’s suffering. Her account, A Revelation of Love, is considered one of the most remarkable documents of medieval religious experience. In Julian of Norwich and the Mystical Body Politic of Christ, Frederick Bauerschmidt provides a close and historically sensitive reading of Julian’s Revelation of Love that addresses the relationship between our understanding of God and our vision of human community. By locating Julian’s images of Christ’s body within the context of late medieval debates over the nature and extent of divine power, Bauerschmidt argues that Julian presents an alternative account of divine power in which the crucified body of Christ becomes the locus and shape of divine omnipotence. For Julian, divine power serves as the norm of all human exercise of power, rendering the possibility of the “mystical body politic of Christ” as the exemplary form of human community. In this reading, the theological is irreducibly political and the political is irreducibly theological. As such, Bauerschmidt shows Julian to be both a theologian of the first rank and one who “imagines the political.”
Table of Contents
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- Front Matter
- pp. i-v
- INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- pp. ix-xii
- 1. IMAGINING THE POLITICAL
- pp. 1-31
- 2. "I DESYRED A BODELY SIGHT"
- pp. 33-62
- 3. "A FEYER AND DELECTABLE PLACE"
- pp. 63-123
- Conclusion: PERFORMING THE BOOK
- pp. 191-201
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- pp. 267-281
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- p. 291
Additional Information
ISBN
9780268075712
Related ISBN(s)
9780268011949
MARC Record
OCLC
607120174
Pages
304
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No