Th is essay explores the question of whether medieval asceticism is annihilation of the self or a means of constituting the self. It reads Gary Lease's conclusion, that religion is programmed suicide, against studies of medieval asceticism that argue for an understanding of religion as an embodied discipline which forms the subject and provides a means of resisting social norms. It suggests that the project of understanding the forms of power embedded in particular concepts of religion requires not only historicizing the term "religion" but also analyzing concepts of self, body, and agency. Drawing on the writings of the twelfth-century monk Bernard of Clairvaux as a case study, it argues that Bernard's conception of religion described a variety of ways in which embodied discipline could form a subject, and that he employed these variations ideologically to defi ne the boundaries of his community and Church.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.