Saint Margaret’s Tattoos: Empowering Marks on White Skin

Nyffenegger, Nicole

doi:10.1179/1041257313z.00000000039

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…In others, such as the Passio of Basil of Amasya, the saint is beheaded and his remains thrown into the sea, only to reappear, united and intact, in his hometown (Peeters 1944, 87). In the 13th century, other testimonies such as that of Margaret, who was swallowed by a dragon but emerged from its belly without so much as a scratch (see Nyffenegger 2013), or that of Christina Mirabilis (see Spencer-Hall 2017), who died and was resurrected three times with her body intact, are evidence of the widespread nature and persistence over time of this code. Some hagiographies claimed that earthly torture did not affect the bodies of the Christian saints.…”

Section: The Uncorrupted Skinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marked Bodies: Skin as Communicative Entity in Late Antique Hagiography

Benito¹

2023

Veleia

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This article analyses the communicative function of the skin, taking a Christian hagiographic text written in the early seventh century in the Sassanid Empire as a case study. The aim is to illustrate the creation of speech codes in Christian communities in the Sassanid Empire and their expression in the hagiographic literature, focusing on the representation of one aspect: the presence or absence of marks on the skin. By analysing these references and comparing them with other hagiographic testimonies, I shall explore how Christian communities in late antiquity constructed systems of meaning around the skin and used them to articulate their religious identity in relation to other communities. The Speech Codes Theory developed by Greg Philipsen is of relevance here, helping to elucidate how Christian communities, embedded in an agonistic socio-cultural, political, legal, and religious context where Zoroastrianism occupied the hegemonic spheres, developed a constellation of very specific meanings around the skin that enabled a perpetual process of creating, negotiating and defining a message of religious affiliation.

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Section: The Uncorrupted Skinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marked Bodies: Skin as Communicative Entity in Late Antique Hagiography

Benito¹

2023

Veleia

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“…48 I have proposed elsewhere to think of tattoos as having a multi-layered spatial and temporal existence. 49 A tattoo is more than a mark on skin. It begins its existence in a virtual form, as a thought that later becomes a plan.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Illicit Touch: Theorising Narratives of Abused Human Skin

Nyffenegger

2020

Touch

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Skin is the largest sensory organ of the human body. It touches the world around it and it feels the world touching back. The outside world's touch is often non-directed, allowing the recipients to subjectively evaluate the ensuing sensations, such as, for example, those caused by a brush of the lift doors. Directed touch, in contrast, objectifies the recipients. A loving touch makes them objects of adoration; a hateful touch makes them objects of disdain. The objectification is taken to extremes with the specific kind of directed touch that is at the centre of my project here. It is the one that violates the boundaries of what a given society considers to be morally, ethically or legally right: an illicit touch. When perpetrators touch human skin in such a way, they counteract norms in order to lay claim to the lived bodies of individuals.

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Saint Margaret’s Tattoos: Empowering Marks on White Skin

Cited by 2 publications

References 20 publications

Marked Bodies: Skin as Communicative Entity in Late Antique Hagiography

Marked Bodies: Skin as Communicative Entity in Late Antique Hagiography

The Illicit Touch: Theorising Narratives of Abused Human Skin

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