The Mind's Bloody Sweat: (Dis)embodied Emotions in Erasmus, More, and Calvin

This article considers sixteenth-century interpretations of Christ's emotions, specifically of his sweating blood at the Mount of Olives (Luke 22), in an attempt to illuminate the ways in which emotions were (or were not) thought by Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More, and John Calvin to be embodied phenomena. The author attempts to show that an analysis of their exegesis reveals a general de-emphasizing of the physical aspects of affectivity, and that this is a broader trend in theological—as opposed to medical—discourse on emotions among Reformation-era biblical humanists.