This article examines how the engagement with textiles and textile-craft in The Book of Margery Kempe facilitates the performance of Margery's female religious identity.Drawing on the fundamental precepts of performance theory, the article responds to recent scholarly interest in the manifestations of material devotional culture and the performative body. It first maps out the charged theological significations of textiles and their subsequent transformative potential. Then, it examines how Margery finds an active tool in "fabrics of devotion" in the form of saintly relics, images, and garments themselves, and how Margery's adoption of white garb refashions her body in the image
This paper examines Julian of Norwich’s representation of the Passion of Christ in her Revelation of Love, proposing that Julian reads the body of Christ through a medical hermeneutic which echoes vernacular texts of the spiritual ‘remedy’ genre. The essay’s overarching argument is that Julian’s engagement with humoral theory positions her as a participant in an emerging collective imaginary of vernacular medicine, related to the translation and transmission of medical texts in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Comparing the Latin and Middle English versions of William Flete’s Remedies Against Temptations and related works, I examine how this spiritual-medical discourse is expressed in vernacular texts contemporary to Julian’s life. I then consider Julian’s own sophisticated invocation of medical theory and practice in her description of the Passion, where she deploys diagnostic markers to depict an ‘ex-sanguination’ of Christ’s perfect disposition. These markers serve to reify the traditional figure of the ‘Man of Sorrows’ with a portrayal of Christ’s body as melancholic, a humoral affliction which reiterates both his suffering and his ‘love-longing’ for humanity. Finally, I show how this medical account functions in Julian’s optimistic theology, offering a reminder of the eternal presence of God’s love even in times of pain and disease.
son C. P. E. Bach noted -and Gant highlights -Bach only ever wanted music to speak on its own behalf, with glory to God.Gant -a church musician, singer, organist, choirmaster and composer -has produced a readily accessible gateway into Bach's life; it is well researched, drawing on a range of sources from manuscripts to personal correspondence. There is something for everyone in this book -the voyeur in the details of his life, the musicians in the musical analysis, the theologians in his drawing out of Bach's spirituality and the hints towards the theology of his music.
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