Wonderful blood
Subtitle: theology and practice in late medieval northern Germany and beyond
By: Caroline Walker Bynum.
Series: The Middle Ages series
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press; University Presses Marketing [distributor]
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Philadelphia, Pa; Bristol
Language: eng
Number of pages: 399
ISBN-13: 9780812239850
Subjects: Blood -- Religious aspects -- Christianity; Blood -- Symbolic aspects; Sacrifice -- Christianity; Germany -- Church history; Germany -- Religious life and customs
Description: "In Wonderful Blood, Caroline Walker Bynum studies the saving power attributed to Christ's blood at north German cult sites such as Wilsnack, the theological controversy such sites generated, and the hundreds of devotional paintings, poems, and prayers dedicated to Christ's wounds, scourging, and bloody crucifixion. She argues that Christ's blood as both object and symbol was central to late medieval art, literature, pious practice, and theology. As object of veneration, blood provided a focus of intense debate about the nature of matter, body, and God and an occasion for Jewish persecution; as motif, blood became a prominent subject of northern art and a central symbol in the visions of mystics and the prayers of ordinary people."--BOOK JACKET
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [351]-385) and index.