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The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell: Metaphor and Embodiment in the Lives of Pious Women, 200 – 1500

The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell: Metaphor and Embodiment in the Lives of Pious Women, 200 – 1500 Dyan Elliott, The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell: Metaphor and Embodiment in the Lives of Pious Women, 200 ­ 1500 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 466 pp. With yet another book characterized by her distinctive combination of wit and learning, Dyan Elliott solidifies her claim to be the foremost historian of medieval religious women in the Anglophone world. Analyzing the many changes in content and context of the phrase "the bride of Christ," which she terms, in a marvelous aside, "predatory symbolism," Elliott joins detailed explication of well-known theologians such as Tertullian, Thomas of Cantimpré, Jean Gerson, and John Nider to studies of more obscure figures such as Odilia of Liège and Martin Le Franc. Much of the basic story will be familiar to medievalists and historians of Christianity--from Tertullian's complex assimilation of actual virgins to metaphorical brides, through high medieval appropriations of the term sponsa Christi for the somatic and spiritual experiences of female visionaries, to the fear of fifteenth-century confessors and inquisitors that ecstatic women might literally be brides of the devil -- yet many of Elliott's interpretations of specific figures, such as Radegund or Abelard and Heloise, are fresh and original. As Elliott http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell: Metaphor and Embodiment in the Lives of Pious Women, 200 – 1500

Bynum, C. W.
Common Knowledge , Volume 20 (2) – Mar 20, 2014
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Duke University Press
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Copyright © Duke Univ Press
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0961-754X
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1538-4578
DOI
10.1215/0961754X-2423016
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Abstract

Dyan Elliott, The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell: Metaphor and Embodiment in the Lives of Pious Women, 200 ­ 1500 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 466 pp. With yet another book characterized by her distinctive combination of wit and learning, Dyan Elliott solidifies her claim to be the foremost historian of medieval religious women in the Anglophone world. Analyzing the many changes in content and context of the phrase "the bride of Christ," which she terms, in a marvelous aside, "predatory symbolism," Elliott joins detailed explication of well-known theologians such as Tertullian, Thomas of Cantimpré, Jean Gerson, and John Nider to studies of more obscure figures such as Odilia of Liège and Martin Le Franc. Much of the basic story will be familiar to medievalists and historians of Christianity--from Tertullian's complex assimilation of actual virgins to metaphorical brides, through high medieval appropriations of the term sponsa Christi for the somatic and spiritual experiences of female visionaries, to the fear of fifteenth-century confessors and inquisitors that ecstatic women might literally be brides of the devil -- yet many of Elliott's interpretations of specific figures, such as Radegund or Abelard and Heloise, are fresh and original. As Elliott

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Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Mar 20, 2014

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