Divine Sensations: Sensory Language and Rhetoric in Bernard of Clairvaux's ‘On Conversion’

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-77
Author(s):  
Line Cecilie Engh
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Human Sense ◽  
Taste And Smell ◽  
Central Claim

What does it mean to speak of God in a sensory language? Christian exegetes in the middle ages were steeped in a Biblical language of visions and voices, not to mention the anthropomorphic and sensual imagery of the Song of Songs. Although they had inherited early Christian theologians' distrust towards human sense perception, medieval preachers and theologians from the twelfth century onwards talked about divinity in metaphorical language that systematically evoked not just seeing and hearing, but also the senses of touch, taste, and smell. This article discusses the wildly imagistic, sensory, and sensual language of the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux. Focusing on Bernard's sermon ‘On Conversion’ ( De conversione), given in Paris in 1140, I will interrogate the underlying theoretical assumptions in Bernard's rich rhetoric, and his emphasis on the senses. The central claim I make is that in these representations of the divine, embodied experience is both affirmed and negated at the same time. To bring out this point, I will consider why medieval Christian writers such as Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter the Venerable regarded Jewish and Muslim exegetes' ‘carnal’ hermeneutics—and the latter's use of sensual and sensuous imagery to convey conceptions of divine bliss—as radically different from their own approaches.

“They Saw What They Said They Saw”: Sense Knowledge in Early Christian Polemic

1988 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 239-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Hauck
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
Human Form ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Divine Knowledge ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Common Shape

A curious parallel exists between two early Christian discussions of prophetic or divine knowledge. Both deal with the Christian problem of sense knowledge about the divine in a thought world dominated by Platonic thinking: how can Christians base their knowledge of the divine upon the reports of the apostles who claim to have seen God in a human shape? The first of these discussions arises from criticisms from outside; Celsus, the second-century Platonist critic of Christianity, calls the Christians a carnal race who say that God is corporeal and has a human form, and complains, “How are they to know God unless they lay hold of him by sense-perception?” (C. Cel. 7.27, 37). The second comes from within the Christian camp, and is to be found in the Clementine Homilies. In this rather enigmatic text Simon Magus, the arch-heretic, accuses Peter in his reliance upon his apostolic experience of “introducing God in a shape,” and opposes to apostolic sense knowledge his own visionary experiences (Hom. 17.3). The examination of these two texts demonstrates that in their common terms and the common shape of their arguments the issue of the knowledge of the apostles was common in Christian polemics. It was also a problem for philosophically minded Christians who would prefer to place the knowledge of God, even if historically mediated by Jesus, in the intelligible knowledge of the soul, rather than in the senses.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Casey O'Callaghan
Keyword(s):  
Sense Perception ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Philosophy Of Perception ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Human Sense

This chapter presents the book’s thesis, its central themes, and its plan of attack. First, it describes the unisensory paradigms for investigating perception that until recently prevailed in science and in philosophy. Next, it introduces the critical respects in which perception is multisensory and explains why this is a problem for unisensory theorizing. Finally, it introduces the central questions any multisensory philosophy of perception must face, and it outlines the answers and arguments in the chapters that follow. The thesis to be defended is that coordination among the senses enhances the coherence and the reliability of human sense perception, extends its reach, and makes possible novel varieties of perceptual consciousness.

The Song of Songs and the Testament of Solomon: Solomon's Love Poetry and Christian Magic

2007 ◽  
Vol 100 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Rainbow
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Love Poetry ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Wisdom Of Solomon ◽  
The Middle Ages

A widespread early Christian tradition regarded Solomon as the great exorcist and magician of antiquity, the forerunner of the exorcistic activity of Jesus, and the genius of later Christian magic and divination. In time, this tradition (henceforth the “Solomon magus” tradition) would become increasingly syncretistic and would yield the numerous grimoires and claviculae of the Middle Ages, but in the early centuries of Christianity, the tradition produced texts which were more or less haggadic, that is, engaged in the exegesis of canonical materials and rooted in earlier Jewish interpretive traditions. Modern students of the documents of this tradition have long perceived its debt to the Old Testament, particularly to the portrait of Solomon in 1 Kgs 5:9–14 (4:29–34), a text which both traditional Christian and modern critical interpreters have subsequently explained in nonmagical terms. While Solomon's magical identity is widely recognized to be inspired by the biblical description of his greatness, little is known about how readers in the Solomon magus tradition interpreted the canonical books of traditional Solomonic authorship—the Song of Songs, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Wisdom of Solomon.

Touching Blind Bodies: A Critical Inquiry into Pedagogical and Cultural Constructions of Visual Disability in the Nineteenth Century

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Tilley ◽  
Jan Eric Olsén
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Blind People ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Visual Disability ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Educational Challenges ◽  
Impaired People ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Cultural Constructions

Changing ideas on the nature of and relationship between the senses in nineteenth-century Europe constructed blindness as a disability in often complex ways. The loss or absence of sight was disabling in this period, given vision’s celebrated status, and visually impaired people faced particular social and educational challenges as well as cultural stereotyping as poor, pitiable and intellectually impaired. However, the experience of blind people also came to challenge received ideas that the visual was the privileged mode of accessing information about the world, and contributed to an increasingly complex understanding of the tactile sense. In this chapter, we consider how changing theories of the senses helped shape competing narratives of identity for visually impaired people in the nineteenth century, opening up new possibilities for the embodied experience of blind people by impressing their sensory ability, rather than lack thereof. We focus on a theme that held particular social and cultural interest in nineteenth-century accounts of blindness: travel and geography.

The Wisdom of Desire in the Song of Songs

2018 ◽  
pp. 260-275
Author(s):  
Carey Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Arousal ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Female Voices ◽  
Human Desire

The Song of Songs offers a unique discussion of the experience of sexual longing through dialogues of an unnamed woman and man. The chapter focuses on the use of dialogic structure to frame three prominent discourses of desire: aesthetic appreciation, affective description, and subjective expressions of sexual arousal. These varied discourses affirm a polyphonic view on human desire from the embodied experience of the male and female voices of the Song. With its use of dialogue, the Song is characteristic of the Writings in offering a diversity of perspectives. The chapter further probes the canonical contribution of the Song’s testimony to human longing, sex, joy, and biodiversity.

Who Were the Scribes of Latin Manuscripts?

2020 ◽  
pp. 704-710
Author(s):  
Alison I. Beach
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Gender Education ◽  
The Status ◽  
Written Word

This chapter discusses scribes from antiquity and the early Christian era through the late Middle Ages: their professions, class, gender, education, religion, age, etc. The status of scribes varied dramatically from period to period, reflecting changes in literacy and respect for the written word. The author discusses monastic attitudes towards writing, the influence of different monastic orders and reform movements on ideas about scribes, and the place of scribal activity in Universities and secular bureaucracies.

The merging of the senses: integration of subthreshold taste and smell

10.1038/74797 ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 431-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Dalton ◽  
N. Doolittle ◽  
H. Nagata ◽  
P.A.S. Breslin
Keyword(s):  
The Senses ◽  
Taste And Smell
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