Isolated Islands in Medieval Nature, Culture and Mind

Religious Athletes--On the Perception of the Body in Medieval Asceticism

RELIGIOUS ATHLETES – ON THE PERCEPTION OF THE BODY IN MEDIEVAL ASCETICISM Torben Kjersgaard Nielsen And I feel your fist And I know it’s out of love And I feel the whip And I know it's out of love And I feel your burning eyes burning holes Straight through my heart It’s out of love I accept and I collect upon my body The memories of your devotion I accept and I collect upon my body The memories of your devotion. 1 This article will not deal with sports or athletics in the modern meanings of these terms. Rather, I propose to consider religious men and women of the Middle Ages as using the capacities and strengths of their human bodies to achieve a religious goal, almost like professional athletes and sports people do nowadays. I aim to show how the body was in fact a decisive “target area” for religious achievements. In their own understanding, the religious athletes would – through different kinds of asceticism and numerable kinds of bodily mortifications – work to bring themselves nearer to God. The playground for this, the athletic arena if you will, was the human body. In this process, the human body was seemingly violently denigrated and made low in a rather conscious process of disparagement. From another viewpoint, however, the human body was also revered and honoured, in a way the sine qua non of these spiritual athletics. I shall attempt to show examples of this in this article. 1 Excerpt from “Fistful of Love” by Antony & The Johnsons (lyrics: Antony; music: Antony and the Johnsons ) (from the CD: I am a Bird Now, Roughtrade Records 2004). TORBEN KJERSGAARD NIELSEN 46 The famous medieval classificatory system of laboratores, bellatores, and oratores was installed by the oratores themselves.2 The system was, of course, refined endlessly over the course of the Middle Ages, but one aspect remained in the numerous classifications available: Ecclesiastics and the men and women religious always stayed at the top of these hierarchic classifications – closest to God. Any social or religious classificatory system of a hierarchic nature, however, involves some sort of marginalisation or exclusion. What was special about the religious classificatory systems of the High Middle Ages was that the minorities excluded in these systems were the religious groups and persons themselves. They were marginalised and isolated at the pinnacle of these systems , not at the base as minorities normally are. It is thus fair to say that the religious minorities, themselves the authors behind the classificatory systems, were successful in at least two ways: They excluded themselves in exalted and isolated positions in these classificatory systems, and at the same time established their own choice of life as the ideal for the whole of society. In this sense, the religious men and women in the High Middle Ages were isolated and excluded , but at the same time also beloved and honoured, since their isolation and exclusion was of their own choice and it was believed to be a common good for all members of society. In the central Middle Ages, furthermore, a number of new religious movements were born, and with them also new spiritual achievements and ideas. The new religious movements no longer saw themselves only as intercessors asking God for mercy on behalf of a sinful mankind and thus working socially for the salvation of man. In this period the “inner,” “personal,” or “spiritual” growth of the religious himself became important.3 The monastery or the hermitage was acknowledged as the school of life, in which the religious athlete would be offered the opportunity to commit himself to moving closer to God through the use of deliberate methods developed exactly for such purposes. Behind this lay a simple – Augustinian and Neo-Platonic – idea, that the religious athlete, by using different self-sacrifices, readings, prayers, meditations, and body-controlling techniques, and progressing up and in a forward-going movement, would work himself towards exactly that likeness to God which was thought to have been lost with the Fall and Original Sin. The ninth prior in the monastery of La Grande Chartreuse, Guigo II (d. 118 authored a small treatise – the Scala claustralium or Monk’s ladder. Guigo’s treatise under2 Cf. the brilliant chapter: “The Orders of Society” in Giles Constable, Three Studies in Medieval Social and Political Thought. The Interpretation of Mary and Martha, the Ideal of the Imitation of Christ, the Orders of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 3 Cf. the many interesting...