Bodies in Early Modern Religious Dissent

Bodies in Early Modern Religious Dissent: Naked, Veiled, Vilified, Worshiped, edited by Elisabeth Fischer and Xenia von Tippelskirch, contributes to an emerging theory of corporeality in the history of religion by introducing nuance into how scholars have traditionally understood the connection between bodily practices and religious affiliation. Whereas certain practices or items of clothing have been associated with particular early modern religious cultures, the editors of this collection posit that religious affiliation was sometimes best understood regionally and not always as a fixed identity. For this reason, corporeal practices could be multivalent and frustrate religious authorities intent on classifying them. In other words, bodies and practices have always been more fluid than public confession would lead one to believe. To support this contention, the essays included in this volume are intended to demonstrate how bodies were used to perform dissent, conflict, and other forms of religious tension.

The most interesting and fruitful contribution is Gianna Pomata’s essay, “Body, Remember: A Plaidoyer for a History of the Body’s Expressiveness” (25). Pomata argues that we do not yet have a theoretical framework for studying the body in history, saying that the mind has always been privileged over the body in the past, even in works seemingly focused on corporeality. For example, the author critiques queer histories that purport to be about the body, but which treat it as an object, as a vehicle for ultimately studying ideas, thus privileging the mind. She offers a potential solution, writing that to fully grasp the difference between being a body and having a body, we need to suspend our belief in the duality of the body and mind.

Pomata further suggests that historians of religion can incorporate non-Western approaches, such as Shigehisa Kuriyama’s study of bodily expression and medicine. Kuriyama focuses on the language of bodily expression and how its message is conveyed and understood by others. Pomata illustrates Kuriyama’s approach, and the differences between being a body and having a body, with the story of Elena Duglioli dall’Olio (1472-1520), who used religious vocabulary to make sense of the sensation of her milk letting down. Christ himself visits dall’Olio to tell her that she will lactate forever, even after the resurrection. This convinces dall’Olio that her body is not separate from her soul, and provides miraculous feeding and spiritual maternity to her male followers. Thus, her identity is inescapably tied to her body. dall’Olio is body as much as soul.

Pomata’s essay is thoughtful in making the distinction between having and being a body, and in suggesting ways that historians of religion can avoid the pitfall of simply using the body as an object to discuss ideas. In a similar vein,, Julian Herlitze and Anne-Charlotte Trepp explore Luther’s experience of his body in “God Be Praised That I Did Not Sweat to Death: The Power of the Body and Martin Luther’s Concept of Melancholy” (45). The authors describe how Luther made meaning out of his frequent bouts of constipation and sweating by ascribing to them the power of spiritual discernment. Luther often experienced painful illnesses which sometimes caused him to bleed, which he was able to translate into spiritual cleansing, much like the cleansing blood of Christ. In writing to his friends, he called these experiences “God’s School” (50) and in them discovered spiritual illness made physical, enabling him to learn through patient and prayerful suffering. Later, Luther sees the onset of sweating as a moment of spiritual discernment. Like Elena, Luther saw his body and soul as an entire unit, each dependant on the other. Herlitze and Trepp’s essay is well worth reading, but may require some supplemental reading for those early modernists less aware of the context of Luther’s illnesses and how they intersect with his correspondence.

In contrast, Jean-Pierre Cavaillé’s chapter, titled “From Quakers to Femen: Practices in Protest Nudity,” focuses on the utility of the body as a vehicle for protest rather than on the connection between body and soul. It is a fascinating essay that shows the connection between early modern nudity protests and those of the modern Femen movement, a feminist movement that uses toplessness to protest the sexualization and occupation of the female body. Cavaillé is as anxious to demonstrate the reluctance of Quakers who practiced nudity protest as he is to desexualize Femen protests. Both, he claims, stem from moral imperatives; the Quakers from the biblical example of Isaiah, and the Femen movement as a demonstration of the paradoxical power of the vulnerability of the oppressed. The essay is at its best when delving into the meaning of early modern nudity and its use in highlighting “spiritually naked” congregations (126). However, the essay falters when discussing Femen. Though Cavaillé goes to great lengths to show how the two are linked, he does it acerbically. For example, Cavaillé unnecessarily castigates readers who are perhaps a little less familiar with Femen and its ideology when he says that those who misunderstand their paradoxical use of nudity are either “acting in bad faith or else they are completely stupid” (122). Cavaillé does not need to berate the reader to make his point.

Fischer and von Tippelskirch achieved their goal in producing a volume that demonstrates the nuances of how early modern bodies practiced religious dissent and affiliation. This work is suitable for both junior early modernists just beginning to explore history through a corporeal lens, as well as for more senior scholars looking to further build upon a theory of corporeality in religious history.

Autumn Reinhardt-Simpson is a PhD candidate in the department of history, classics, and religion at the University of Alberta.

Autumn Reinhardt-Simpson

Date Of Review:

September 30, 2023