Imagined Bodies: Intimate Reading and Divine Union in Gertrude of Helfta's <i>Legatus</i>

Barr, Jessica

doi:10.5325/jmedirelicult.43.2.0186

Cited by 16 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 11 publications

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“…Furthermore, I will breathe on him with the breath of my divinity, and so will this person be internally renewed through my spirit. This intimate scene constitutes what Barr calls a 'textual encounter' between the reader and Christ (Barr 2017(Barr , 2020. In the act of reading portrayed, the relationship between Christ, the reader, and the book is demonstrated through their physical placement -Christ pulls the reader in so closely that she can read the book as if between Christ's hands.…”

Section: S E N S U O U S R E a D I N G I N T H E H E R A L Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensuous reading in the Legatus divinae pietatis

Reitz

2021

Postmedieval

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Devotional practices in the later European Middle Ages were highly somatic, and they utilized the human sensorium to convey, incite, and engender knowledge and experiences of the divine. Reading does not normally stand out as one of the more somatic devotional practices, but as demonstrated by the example of the Legatus divinae pietatis, a devotional text written at the convent of Helfta around the end of the thirteenth century, reading was indeed imagined as a somatic, devotional experience that engaged the senses. In this article, I argue that the Legatus portrays a form of devotional reading that invokes all the senses in an effort to unite the book, the reader, and her community with the divine. Drawing on medieval conceptualizations of the human sensorium and theories of reading, my analyses of the Legatus’s sensual language, evocative imagery, and scenes of reading elucidate the embodied reading practices that the Legatus’s writers portrayed as fundamental to their communal, devotional lives.

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Section: S E N S U O U S R E a D I N G I N T H E H E R A L Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensuous reading in the Legatus divinae pietatis

Reitz

2021

Postmedieval

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From the Material to the Mystical in Late Medieval Piety

Kirakosian

2021

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The German mystic Gertrude the Great of Helfta (c.1256–1301) is a globally venerated saint who is still central to the Sacred Heart Devotion. Her visions were first recorded in Latin, and they inspired generations of readers in processes of creative rewriting. The vernacular copies of these redactions challenge the long-standing idea that translations do not bear the same literary or historical weight as the originals upon which they are based. In this study, Racha Kirakosian argues that manuscript transmission reveals how redactors serve as cultural agents. Examining the late medieval vernacular copies of Gertrude's visions, she demonstrates how redactors recast textual materials, reflected changes in piety, and generated new forms of devotional practices. She also shows how these texts served as a bridge between material culture, in the form of textiles and book illumination, and mysticism. Kirakosian's multi-faceted study is an important contribution to current debates on medieval manuscript culture, authorship, and translation as objects of study in their own right.

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Note on the Maps

Kirakosian

2021

From the Material to the Mystical in Late Medieval Piety

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Imagined Bodies: Intimate Reading and Divine Union in Gertrude of Helfta's Legatus

Cited by 16 publications

References 11 publications

Sensuous reading in the Legatus divinae pietatis

Sensuous reading in the Legatus divinae pietatis

From the Material to the Mystical in Late Medieval Piety

Note on the Maps

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