This reflection derives from a discussion that took place at the 2018 “Comparative Hagiology” pre-conference workshop of the American Academy of Religion. The goal during that meeting was to articulate points of dialogue for the comparison of exemplary figures in various historic, geographic, and faith traditions. Here, I offer an open-ended descriptive index as a heuristic device for beginning a comparative study, whether collaborative or single-authored. After positioning my inquiry from within my own field of study, medieval European Christianity, I offer a brief “test case” for the portability of the index by using its terms to think through a text that is widely-regarded within my subfield as deeply complicated and difficult to interpret, the Life of Christina Mirabilis. I conclude by re-describing some of the terms of the index and by inviting further re-description.

No abstract

Trees abound in the manuscripts, visions and prayers, on the walls, altars and vestments of the Middle Ages. Their presence indicates a spiritual arborescence, a profound proliferation of arboreal imagery constituent in Christian devotion. Spiritual arborescence is the process of conjuring Christ in the imagination through contemplation of trees. It is a practice that mediates the individual meditant’s relationship with the larger religious community and with Christ. The examples of medieval spiritual arborescence explored in this essay demonstrate profound concerns about accessing divinity in the material world.

According to long-standing scholarly opinion, the twelfth century discovered nature. This essay argues that earthly nature was not discovered in the twelfth century. The twelfth-century authors of the philosophia mundi or the sculptors who fashioned the acanthus capitals at Rheims Cathedral in fact did not think of their work as belonging to the category of nature but to something entirely different from nature–to the order of creation. Continuing to seek “nature” in the medieval past risks overlooking or misunderstanding some profoundly suggestive materials about how people once experienced God, each other, and the world. Examining metaphor and imagery that adopts features of the natural world, this essay thinks through the implications for twelfth-century people's spiritual lives of the idea that God, through the Incarnation, entered not nature, but creation. In particular, the essay examines the role of “trees of incarnation” as contemplative models in women's religious communities for making Christ present in the imagination and in the world. M. D. Chenu's attention to the category of nature in his historical and theological writings is then revisited in order to propose ways of rethinking the manner in which medieval religiosi perceived the material world as a medium for experiencing and continuing the Incarnation of Christ.

No abstract