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The heart is an iconic symbol in the medieval and early modern European world. In addition to being a physical organ, it is a key conceptual device related to emotions, cognition, the self and identity, and the body. The heart is read as a metaphor for human desire and will, and situated in opposition to or alongside reason and cognition. In medieval and early modern Europe, the “feeling heart” – the heart as the site of emotion and emotional practices – informed a broad range of art, literature, music, heraldry, medical texts, and devotional and ritual practices. This multidisciplinary collection brings together art historians, literary scholars, historians, theologians, and musicologists to highlight the range of meanings attached to the symbol of the heart, the relationship between physical and metaphorical representations of the heart, and the uses of the heart in the production of identities and communities in medieval and early modern Europe.
In this volume you will find stories about hyperactive relics, ghosts in spiritual or bodily form, as well as accounts of the dead being conjured, resurrected, and brought back to life from decomposing matter. This is not so much for the purpose of assembling a kind of Neapolitan Wunderkammer, but rather to allow these bodies – in physical or spiritual form, or sometimes both at the same time – to speak as protagonists, and to offer their own contribution to the historical anthropology of the Kingdom of Naples. This volume explores the boundaries between body and spirit, life and death, as well as the natural, preternatural, and supernatural in the long early modern era in southern Italy.
Eating God examines the history of the Eucharist as a means for understanding transformations in society from the late Middle Ages onwards. After an introduction on the sacrament from its origins to the Protestant Reformation, this book considers how it changed the customs and habits of society, on not only behavioural and imaginative levels, but also artistic and figurative level. The author focuses on Counter-Reformation Italy as a laboratory for the whole of Christendom subject to Rome, and reflects on how, even today, the transformations of the modern age are relevant and influence contemporary debate. This book offers an innovative path through the history of a sacrament, with consideration of its impact as an ‘object’ that was used, venerated, eaten, depicted and celebrated far beyond the sphere of liturgical celebration. It will be particularly relevant to those interested in cultural history and the history of Christianity.