The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary

The summary of the selected article appears at the bottom of the page. In order to get back to the contents of the issue this article belongs to you have to access the link from the title. In order to see all the articles of the archive which have as author/co-author one of the authors mentioned below, you have to access the link from the author's name.

 
       
         
    STUDIA HISTORIA - Issue no. 1 / 2015  
         
  Article:   WHAT ELSE DO WE HAVE BUT A BODY? REFLECTIONS ON AN APPARENT PARADOX.

Authors:  .
 
       
         
  Abstract:  I began this paper emphasizing several aspects of bodily manipulation in a spiritual context – as traced by scholars over the last decades – and claiming that the particular case of Saint Catherine of Siena provides us with an enormous potential to analyse the bodyfocused spirituality. Thus, I have followed the various bibliographical clues, which – assembled – retrace a conflicting representation of the flesh, both doomed and source of redemption. Integrating this topic within the broader context of the Saint’s theological vision and of her devotional practices and linking it to the religious milieu she belonged to, I attempted to shed light on what appears to be a paradox, according to contemporary standards. Yet during the Late Middle Ages, the flesh was conceived in terms of an inherent ambivalence and body and spirit were thought to be an inseparable unit. As for Saint Catherine, the flesh has no meaning in itself, but only insofar as it is a means which serves the mystical yarning to achieve oneness with God and an expression to describe this state of grace.

Key words: embodied spirituality, redemptive suffering, bodily metaphors, body and spirit as interwoven principles, immersion into the divine.
 
         
     
         
         
      Back to previous page