At frådse i kropslighed

Torben Kjersgaard Nielsen, At frådse i kropslighed – om krop og religion i middelalderen. (To gorge on carnality – about body and religion in the Middle Ages). The article examines how religious people in the European Middle Ages thought and talked about their bodies. One of the central points is that what we traditionally consider a medieval dualistic split between body and soul is not necessarily so unambiguous. Instead, many medieval thinkers distinguished between three spheres, body (corpus), spirit (spiritus) and soul (anima). The article exemplifies how in new translations this medieval understanding has been repressed. The article also discusses how the body has not just been negated, but rather used as a medium for religiosity. The article here introduces the concept of religious athletes, who showed a professional and conscious relationship to their bodies and the cultivation of them and the access to God through them.