Poetics of wonder
Subtitle: testimonies of the new Christian miracles in the Late Antique Latin world
By: by Giselle de Nie
Series: Studies in the early Middle Ages -- v. 31; Studies in the early Middle Ages -- v. 31.
Publisher: Brepols
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Turnhout
Language: eng
Number of pages: 528
ISBN-13: 9782503531489
Subjects: Miracles; Religious life and customs; Provinces; Miracles in literature; Religious Psychology; Sources; Church history; Roman provinces
Description: The unexpected return of contemporary public Christian miracles in the late antique Latin west, after a centuries-long assumption that these had ceased after apostolic times, helped to create a religious mentality there that would continue to characterize the western European Middle Ages. While the social and political functions of the new miracles have been gaining greater scholarly attention, this study is the first in-depth treatment of their experiential dimension. It examines this dimension in the first reactions to the new phenomenon - enthusiasm, puzzlement, deep suspicion, and outright rejection - as they are reflected and, especially, imagined in the earliest contemporary narrative and poetic sources that describe them.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 491-516) and indexes.

British Library not licensed to copy 0.
Table of contents: title: Prologue. Discovering and Imaging the New Experience; title: Introduction. Modern Views and the Early Christian Tradition about Miracles; title: 'The Miracles of Ancient Times Are Renewed': Enthusiasm, Doubt, and Resistance Around the Year 400; title: 'Empty Superstitions'? Sulpicius Severus's Defence of a Living Saint's Deeds of Power; title: 'Conceive Divine Apprehensions': Paulinus of Nola's Envisioning of a Dead Saint's Miracles; title: 'Healing the Eyes of the Heart': Augustine's Views on Miracles up to c. 424; title: 'A New Face': Discovering/Dreaming a Saint in Early Fifth-Century North Africa; title: 'Instead of a Document, a Face': Augustine on the Martyrs' New Miracles; title: 'Let All Perceive What Mysteries Miracles May Teach our Souls': The Miracle Story as Sacrament in Sedulius's Paschal Song; title: 'You Will See Him Present Through his Power': Refiguring Saint Martin's Miracles in Troubled Fifth-Century Gaul.