The Symbolism of Marriage in Early Christianity and the Latin Middle Ages: Images, Impact, Cognition [Paperback]

In the Middle Ages everyone, it seems, entered into some form of marriage. Nuns - and even some monks - married the bridegroom Christ. Bishops married their sees. The popes, as vicars of Christ, married the universal Church. And lay people, high and low, married each other. What united these marriages was their common reference to the union of Christ and Church. Christ's marriage to the Church was the paradigmatic symbol in which all the other forms of union participated, in superior or inferior ways. This book grapples with questions of the impact of marriage symbolism on both ideas and practice in the early Christian and medieval period. In what ways did marriage symbolism - with its embedded concepts of gender, reproduction, household, and hierarchy - shape people's thought about other things, such as celibacy, ecclesial and political relations, and devotional relations? How did symbolic cognition shape marriage itself? And how, if at all, were these two directions of thinking symbolically about marriage related?|multidiciplinary approach, high-precision conceptual analyses, a case study of symbolical cognition1 Introduction: A Case Study of Symbolic Cognition Line Cecilie Engh and Mark Turner 2 Conjugal and Nuptial Symbolism in Medieval Christian Thought Philip L. Reynolds 3 Marriage Symbolism and Social Reality in the New Testament: Husbands, Wives, Christ and the Church Anna Rebecca Solev?g 4 Single Marriage and Priestly Identity: A Symbol and Its Functions in Ancient Christianity David G. Hunter 5 'Put on the dress of a wife, so that you might preserve your virginity': Virgins, Brides, and Dress in Late Antiquity Karl Shuve 6 Veiled Threats: Constraining Religious Women in the Carolingian Empire Abigail Firey 7 Double Standards? Medieval Marriage Symbolism and Christian Views on the Muslim Paradise Alessandro Scafi 8 Marriage, Maternity and the Formation of a Sacramental Imagination: Stories for Cistercian Monks and Nuns around the Year 1200 Martha G. Newman lè