DESCRIPTION OF THE SEMINAR

Fanciful, scientific, and deeply moving devotional artworks from the early to late middle ages attest to the lived personal experiences of medieval men and women.  As crafted confessions of their spiritual engagement with the cosmos and the divine through regulated and novel strategies of study and ascetic praxis, the objects in this course investigate normative spirituality and marginal mystical practices from the medieval period.  Rather than focus exclusively upon straightforward hegemonic and orthodox Christian artistic celebrations of piety, heterodox and banned spiritual practices will also be examined in this seminar.  This seminar will attempt to assess and to define more clearly the nature of medieval mystical encounters.  We will study various medieval engagements with the supernatural and divine, as recorded by the artistic record and literary lives, or vitae, complemented by contemporary methodological treatments of ascetic experience, marginal praxes, and the place of the body within the cosmos.  Topics covered include: Carolingian celestial modeling, eschatology, millenarianism, astrological prediction, horoscopes, talismans and crystals, apotropaic signs, spells and incantations, medieval gynecology, Herrad of Hohenburg, Hildegard of Bingen, late medieval courtly astrology, military machinations, saintly mutilation and martyrdom, Margery Kempe, alchemical theory, and Hieronymus Bosch.