Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe

Abstract

Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe. By Caroline Walker Bynum. (New York: MIT Press, 2011, Pp. 408. $32.95); Bones, Dust: How Relics Shaped History of Medieval Europe. By Charles Freeman. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 201, Pp. xvii, 306. $35.00); Medieval Christianity in Practice. Edited by Miri Rubin. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009, Pp. xvi, 346. $27.95.)A significant development in study of medieval Christianity is a turn to examining how Christianity was lived and experienced beyond confines of literate elite who produced most of sources from this period. As part of a larger move to what has variously been termed social history, people's history, or history from below, scholars have proposed moving beyond written texts, commonly written by elites males for elite males, in order to gain a fuller sense of medieval Christian mentalities. Given that historical sources from middle ages remain limited, scholars have never advocated simply ignoring elite texts. Rather, they have argued for inclusion of other sources - liturgical, devotional, archaeological, architectural, artisanal, and artistic - that can provide a broader sense of what it meant to be a Christian in this period. three books under review in this essay, when considered together, represent degree to which this development in history of medieval Christian has developed and limitations of this historiography.By virtue of nature of her topic in Christian Materiality, Caroline Walker Bynum's book focuses on a full range of medieval cultural productions. Bynum's purpose is to illustrate that, The Christianity of later Middle was a of bodies in larger sense of objects - stuff of universe. It was, in other words, a of matter (265). This work builds upon Bynum's prior book, Wonderful Blood, and continues exploration of meaning of physical that has been a constant theme throughout her career. Christian Materiality can be read as a summation of her work in that here Bynum widens her scope to consider how material objects in themselves mattered in late medieval Western Europe. While attention is given to representations of physical bodies, especially Christ's, that serve as a link to prior books, Bynum directs attention of reader to how medieval Christians conceived of itself, physical stuff that surrounded them and of which they were composed.The cornerstone of Bynum's argument is that late medieval Christianity is best understood as a religion that focused around material practices. Bynum firmly rejects a two-tiered model of Christianity, born out of Enlightenment Protestantism, in which literate elite produced refined theological texts divorced from concerns of their cultural location while unlearned masses toiled in superstitious ignorance. Bynum argues instead that core Christian doctrines, particularly concerning creation and Christology, since all Christian concerns in this period were bound up with fact of and material world. It was because carried a complex set of signifiers as both corruptible and capable incorruption, as transitory and expressive of promise of eternity, as concerning both sacred and profane, that so many late medieval Christian debates centered on questions related to materiality. Holy was . . . both radical threat and radical opportunity in later Middle Ages (20). Expressions of enthusiasm or disdain for blood relics or veneration of consecrated host or outbreaks of iconoclasm revolved around nature of material objects, whether blood, wafer, or wood.The primary insight upon which entire book hinges is Bynum's argument that was not a static entity but a dynamic presence: the basic way of describing . . . was to see it as organic, fertile, and in some senses alive (30). …

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