The Embroidered Antependium of Wernigerode, Germany: Mary Magdalene and Female Spirituality in the Thirteenth Century∗

2007 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 147-167
Author(s):  
Barbara Baert
Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig

Chapter 3 analyses how stigmatization became predominantly linked to women and female spirituality. It considers the strong theological defence that evolved in the second half of the thirteenth century that asserted holy, virginal women were axiomatic stigmatics. It also inspects the religious lives of stigmatics that often consisted of routinized prayer, illness, and suffering. The nature of invisible stigmata is investigated; it is demonstrated that there is a connection between the development of invisible stigmatization and the increase in female stigmatics during the thirteenth century. As living icons of Christ, these women brought to mind the divine passion and inspired hope in human redemption. Illness and holiness blended into a powerful cocktail of salvation as represented in the stigmatic body. But it was not only their likeness to Christ, but also their likeness to Mary that was remarkable. As virgins, their flesh was sympathetic and open to wounding making them ideal bearers of stigmata.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Nygren

Titian made a painting of Mary Magdalene for Vittoria Colonna, perhaps identifiable with a painting in the Pitti Palace. Despite considerable scholarly attention over the last thirty years, scholars have not reached a consensus about most aspects of this exchange. Central to the debate has been the question of nudity: was it possible to have a devotional image that so knowingly exhibits female flesh? Can a painting gleefully subvert the rules of decorum and still discharge its function as a devotional image? Recent scholarship on the visual culture of female spirituality at this time helps illuminate how the picture operated within contemporary devotional culture, as does attention to Colonna’s own religious verse.


Derrida Today ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
McQuillan Martin

This text begins by considering the phrase ‘digital haptology’ as suggested by the closing pages of Derrida's Le Toucher. It suggests that this moment in telecommunications presents a model of ‘tele-haptology’. The text goes on to consider Jean-Luc Nancy's ‘Noli me tangere’ as a response to Le Toucher. In particular it is concerned with Nancy's hypothesis on Modern literature and art as having an essential link to the gospel parables. Through a reading of Nancy's text and the gospels, this hypothesis is placed in doubt. Notably, the argument is made that once again Nancy's discourse on touching leads him to make a too hasty fore-closure of otherness within his intended deconstruction of reading and his account of Mary Magdalene. In response to Nancy's formulation of literature as parable, an alternative consideration of literature as tele-haptology is proposed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 189-223
Author(s):  
Petra Kieffer-Pülz

The present contribution suggests the common authorship of three P?li commentaries of the twelfth/thirteenth centuries CE, namely the Vinayavinicchaya??k? called Vinayas?ratthasand?pan? (less probably Vinayatthas?rasand?pan?), the Uttaravinicchaya??k? called L?natthappak?san?, and the Saccasa?khepa??k? called S?ratthas?lin?. The information collected from these three commentaries themselves and from P?li literary histories concerning these three texts leads to the second quarter of the thirteenth century CE as the period of their origination. The data from parallel texts explicitly stated to having been written by V?cissara Thera in the texts themselves render it possible to establish with a high degree of probability V?cissara Thera as their author.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Jodie Eichler-Levine

In this article I analyze how Americans draw upon the authority of both ancient, so-called “hidden” texts and the authority of scholarly discourse, even overtly fictional scholarly discourse, in their imaginings of the “re-discovered” figure of Mary Magdalene. Reading recent treatments of Mary Magdalene provides me with an entrance onto three topics: how Americans see and use the past, how Americans understand knowledge itself, and how Americans construct “religion” and “spirituality.” I do so through close studies of contemporary websites of communities that focus on Mary Magdalene, as well as examinations of relevant books, historical novels, reader reviews, and comic books. Focusing on Mary Magdalene alongside tropes of wisdom also uncovers the gendered dynamics at play in constructions of antiquity, knowledge, and religious accessibility.


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