Although women were called the "pious sex" much earlier, it was during the nineteenth century, when the differences between men and women were being made more explicit, that an intense bond between women and religion was developed. Religiosity was thought to be a "natural" part of femininity and turned religious masculinity into an oddity. This clear-cut gender ideology, however, remains an ideology (prescribed and contested) that needs to be put in the perspective of its context of origin, the bourgeois milieu. How were these gender identities constructed and by whom?
Tine Van Osselaer seeks to clarify how the gender differentiation was created among Belgian Catholics. She brings to light the extent to which religiosity was inscribed in these constructions and how religious teachings contributed to it. It is clear that the limitations of the "feminization" thesis, a master narrative that has strongly contributed to the introduction of women in religious history, have gradually become more visible. Documenting pastoral care, the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Catholic Action, The Pious Sex offers critical commentaries on the master narratives, suggesting that even men could belong to a "pious sex."
As part of the process of consideration for sainthood, the body of Filippo Neri, "the apostle of Rome," was dissected shortly after he died in 1595. The finest doctors of the papal court were brought in to ensure that the procedure was completed with the utmost care. These physicians found that Neri exhibited a most unusual anatomy. His fourth and fifth ribs had somehow been broken to make room for his strangely enormous and extraordinarily muscular heart. The physicians used this evidence to conclude that Neri had been touched by God, his enlarged heart a mark of his sanctity.
In Pious Postmortems, Bradford A. Bouley considers the dozens of examinations performed on reputedly holy corpses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at the request of the Catholic Church. Contemporary theologians, physicians, and laymen believed that normal human bodies were anatomically different from those of both very holy and very sinful individuals. Attempting to demonstrate the reality of miracles in the bodies of its saints, the Church introduced expert testimony from medical practitioners and increased the role granted to university-trained physicians in the search for signs of sanctity such as incorruption. The practitioners and physicians engaged in these postmortem examinations to further their study of human anatomy and irregularity in nature, even if their judgments regarding the viability of the miraculous may have been compromised by political expediency. Tracing the complicated relationship between the Catholic Church and medicine, Bouley concludes that neither religious nor scientific truths were self-evident but rather negotiated through a complex array of local and broader interests.
Confessions ranks as one of the most widely translated and highly valued books in Christian theology and is considered the first autobiography ever written.
The work was penned around AD 397 when Augustine was in his forties and is an honest narrative of his sinful youth and ultimate conversion to Christianity. It seems Augustine's abilities as a young man were never in any doubt - a brilliant mind combined with a natural talent in rhetoric - but one little interested in Catholic Christian scripture. He describes his wilfulness as a boy growing up in the Roman province of Numidia, his later attachment to sexual pleasure and the vanity of academic acclaim. His dogged pursuit of truth led him from Manich ism to Neoplatonism and, eventually, after a slow and painful struggle, to his conversion and baptism at the age of thirty-two.
From this point in the autobiography Augustine focuses on a number of familiar Christian concepts, among them, Creation, the Trinity, the Origin of Evil and the Cause of Sin. His incisive analyses are a treat for any reader drawn to the Christian mysteries.
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