Divine Domesticity
Subtitle: Augustine of Thagaste to Teresa of Avila (Studies in the History of Christian Thought)
Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers; Brill Academic Pub
Published: December 1996
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 295
ISBN-13: 9789004106758
Subjects: Christian social thought & activity; Family & relationships; Social history; BCE to c 500 CE; Modern period, c 1500 onwards; c 1000 CE to c 1500; c 500 CE to c 1000 CE; History: World; Church And Society; History; Religion - Theology - Biblical; Religion; Medieval; Home; Biblical Criticism & Interpretation - General; Interior Design - General; Christianity; History of doctrines; Religious aspects
Description: This volume is a cultural analysis of the home during the Christian centuries, when home was believed to be heaven. It investigates the traditional belief in the divine indwelling - but by reversing the history of doctrine to venture doctrine as history. Analysis proceeds not by speculation on faculties of the soul but by research on actualities of housing. What did believers experience about habitat? its relationships? its rooms?

The book examines four cultural constructs of dwelling: the inn, the sanctuary, the villa, and the castle. Its focus is the hearth as the familial place. A lesson in alterity, it exposes the rejection of the divine indwelling as at home (John 14:23). It discovers a fundamental disparity between domesticity and the asceticism that dominated western civilization.