The Scourge and the Cross
Ascetic Mentalities of the Later Middle Ages
by D.F. Tinsley
Harsh asceticism, including ritual self-mortification, remains one of the most troubling and least understood aspects of monastic life in the Later Middle Ages. The nuns whose austere lives are celebrated in spiritual biographies and autobiographies in the Order of Preachers were long dismissed by traditional scholars as hysterics or inferior mimics of true mysticism. Some recent feminist studies either gloss over asceticism or portray its practitioners as traumatized victims of patriarchal oppression. Traditionalists and progressives seem to agree: extreme asceticism is best understood as pathetic or even pathological behavior. David Tinsley seeks to temper this view by exploring late-medieval asceticism on its own terms. Building on the work of Caroline Walker Bynum, Peter Dinzelbacher, and Jeffrey Hamburger, Tinsley analyzes the ascetic mentalities of Dominican convent culture in the 14th century, including the sources the nuns read, the famous ascetics they venerated, and their most common rituals and practices. The key question is how these nuns could see self-imposed suffering as so crucial to shaping the questing soul’s journey to God.
- By (author) DF Tinsley
Other Titles in this Series
Friars, Scribes, and Corpses
A Marian Confraternal Reading of The Mirror of Human Salvation (Speculum humanae salvationis)
Volume 12
Alexander Magnus Arabicus
A Survey of the Alexander Tradition through Seven Centuries: from Pseudo-Callisthenes to Suri
Volume 13
Rhetoric, Royalty, and Reality
Essays on the Literary Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Scotland
Volume 7
Literature and Religion in Late Medieval and Early Modern Scotland
Essays in Honour of Alasdair A. MacDonald
Volume 18
Northern Voices
Essays on Old Germanic and Related Topics, Offered to Professor Tette Hofstra. Germania Latina VI
Volume 11
Similar Books
Innovation and Medieval Communities
The Circulation of Ideas and Practices in and out of the Town (1200-1500)
Volume 63
Medieval Yeghegis, Armenia
History, Archaeology, Society. Local Multiplicities and Global Connections of a Rural Centre on the Silk Road(s)
Power and Women in Southeast and Central Europe in Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1300-1600)
Volume 10
Women in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Studies from Western Europe and North Africa
Volume 44
Los oficios de los diplomas latinos de la Cataluna altomedieval
Estudio de las innovaciones lexicas: XI Premio Internacional de Tesis Doctorales Fundacion Ana Maria Aldama Roy de Estudios Latinos
Volume 106
A Communication Ethic of Dialogic Reformation
Nicholas of Cusa on Care for Communities in Crisis
Volume 106
Ambiguum 10 of Maximus the Confessor in Modern Study
Papers collected on the Occasion of the Budapest Colloquium on Saint Maximus, 3-4 February 2021
Volume 97
Building the Presence of the Prince
The Institutions Responsible for the Construction and Management of the Buildings of European Courts (14th-17th centuries)
Volume 14
Byzantine Historiographical Prefaces (4th-15th Centuries)
A Study on Praxis and Culture of Writing History in Byzantium
Volume 23
Ceramics in Plain Sight: The Bacini of the Churches of Crete. “Reflections” of the Late Medieval and the Early Modern Material Culture of the Island
Volume II: The Regional Unit of Lasithi
Volume 13
Christian Settlements and Monasteries in the Northern Judaean Shephelah and the Western Samaria Hills during the Byzantine Period
Communicating the Passion
The Socio-Religious Function of an Emotional Narrative (1250-1530)
Volume 21
