Studies on Medieval Empathies

Edited by Karl F Morrison Edited by Rudolph M Bell

Book cover: Studies on Medieval Empathies

Extent: 384, 384 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Medieval Studies, Religious Studies

Series: Disputatio

Series volume number: 25

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(May 2013)

ISBN: 9782503530314

Price: $138.00

In stock

Empathy is a deep feeling or intuition for kinship transcending self-preoccupied individuality. This book is about empathy in the Middle Ages, before it had a name.The authors begin by tracing the origins of empathy in pre-Christian Antiquity and early Christianity, especially in mysteries of divine justice, by which the good often s


Empathy is a deep feeling or intuition for kinship transcending self-preoccupied individuality. This book is about empathy in the Middle Ages, before it had a name.The authors begin by tracing the origins of empathy in pre-Christian Antiquity and early Christianity, especially in mysteries of divine justice, by which the good often suffered and the wicked prospered and, as with surgical healing, compassion was manifested by inflicting pain. The authors also explore many facets of empathy’s development in the Latin West, criss-crossing the artificial borders of academic departments to reveal interlocking connections that give emotional power to images, whether verbal, pictorial, or performative. In a powerful multi-disciplinary collaboration, they identify conditions and limits of empathy, and areas in which the dynamic between insiders and outsiders forced subversive explorations of what it meant to be human. The doctrine of Christ as mediator of divine love dominated medieval thought about empathy as a human instinct. Taken together, like magnetic poles, two pictures in this book represent that mediation in action. The cover illustration, a mid-ninth-century ivory plaque from Carolingian Gaul, depicts Christ, the Divine Word, Love incarnate, glorified, enthroned, and adored by angels as creator, judge, and teacher. The second, Plate 1, from the same period and region, represents the act that sealed the mediation of divine love to humanity: Christ the man, tortured and dying for love.

Preface - Rudolph M. Bell Karl F. Morrison Biographical Context A Chronological Bibliography of Karl F. Morrison's Published Works Framing the Subject: Humanity and the Wounds of Love - Karl F. Morrison Part I. Empathy before the Word? Mutatio sensus: Poetics of Holiness and Healing in Paulinus of Perigueuxs Life of Saint Martin - Giselle de Nie Reconstructing Sanctity and Refiguring Saints in Early Medieval Gaul - Constance B. Bouchard Anselm and Praying with the Saints - Rachel Fulton Brown Part II. Performing Empathy: Learning by Practice Lupus, or the Wolf in the Library: New Commentary, Edition, and Translation of Lupus of Ferrieres, Epistola 1 - Michael I. Allen A Sanctifying Serpent: Crucifix as Cure - Herbert L. Kessler Part III. Assimilations of Empathy into Theology Indwelling: A Meditation on Empathy, Pregnancy, and the Virgin Mary - Barbara Newman Love: Active, Contemplative, Essential - Bernard McGinn Ramon Lull's Book of the Gentile and the Three Sages: Empathy or Apology? - Marcia L. Colish Part IV. Humanism and Humanity: Testing the Limits of Empathy Hell and Punishment, Pain, and Salvation in Augustine and his Commentator Juan Luis Vives - Sabine MacCormack Rome and the Romans in the Medieval Mind: Empathy and Antipathy - Thomas F. X. Noble Empathy for the Oppressor - Richard Kieckhefer Index

  • Edited by Karl F Morrison
  • Edited by Rudolph M Bell