abstract: This dissertation focuses on the connections between childbirth and spirituality in fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century England. It argues that scholastic interest in conception and procreation led to a proliferation of texts mentioning obstetrics and gynecology, and that this attention to women's medicine and birth spread from the universities to the laity. This dissertation contends that there is interdependence between spiritual and physical health in late medieval English religious culture, correlated with and perhaps caused by an increasing fascination with materialism and women's bodies in religious practices and rhetoric. The first chapter provides an analysis of birth in medical and pastoral texts. Pastoral works were heavily influenced by the ecclesiastical emphasis on baptism, as well as by scholastic medicine's simultaneous disdain for and reluctant integration of folk medicine. The second chapter examines birth descriptions in narratives of saints' miracles and collections of exempla; these representations of childbirth were used in religious rhetoric to teach, motivate, and dissuade audiences. The third chapter turns to the cycle play representations of the nativity as depicting the mysteries of human generation and divine incarnation for public consumption. The fourth chapter analyzes the abstract uses of childbirth in visionary and other religious texts, especially in descriptions of spiritual rebirth and the development of vice and virtue in individuals or institutions. By identifying their roles as analogous with the roles of midwives, visionaries authorized themselves as spiritual caretakers, vital for communal health and necessary for collective spiritual growth. These chapters outline a trajectory of increasing male access to the birthing chamber through textual descriptions and prescriptions about birth and midwifery. At the same time, religious texts acknowledged, sought to regulate, and sometimes even utilized the potential authority of mothers and midwives as physical and spiritual caretakers. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. English 2014

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-06-24T13:56:05Z No. of bitstreams: 1 adrianaandradedesouza.pdf: 786976 bytes, checksum: 1786e04c5379bbcb5d4ffe6872499136 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-07-13T15:45:25Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 adrianaandradedesouza.pdf: 786976 bytes, checksum: 1786e04c5379bbcb5d4ffe6872499136 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-13T15:45:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 adrianaandradedesouza.pdf: 786976 bytes, checksum: 1786e04c5379bbcb5d4ffe6872499136 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-03-19 / O tema central deste trabalho, “Entre o um e o dois: Mestre Eckhart e o aberto da Abgeschiedenheit” baseia-se na compreensão de que o pensamento eckhartiano acerca do desprendimento (Abgeschiedenheit) oscila entre três dimensões. Uma destas dimensões se refere ao que se poderia chamar uma “pedagogia” da conversão, na qual está em jogo a necessidade do esforço do homem em desapropriar-se de si mesmo. Outra dimensão do desprendimento seria a compreensão da busca da identidade com Deus como um “em si”, ou seja, como dádiva previamente dada, assim expressa nas palavras de Eckhart: “o fundo da alma e o fundo de Deus são um fundo.” A partir desse permanecer em si, o desprendimento ainda se descobre em uma dimensão vivida, ou seja, trata-se de um permanecer “em si”, no próprio da ação sem porquê, tal como é expresso na célebre frase eckhartiana: “frutificar a dádiva é a única gratidão para com a dádiva.” Assim compreendido, o desprendimento revelase como uma negação da negação, que é pura afirmação sem porquê, a que neste trabalho chamamos o aberto da Abgeschiedenheit. O “sem-porquê” é a dinâmica de retração na qual a Deidade se mantém ao criar o mundo. O próprio do pensamento de Eckhart é que essa dinâmica se estende imediatamente à existência humana, pelo ser uno de homem e Deus no fundo. Tornar-se interior no fundo da alma significa, para o homem, desprender-se da perspectiva de dualidade própria do seu ser criado, para tornar própria a pureza que não é, nas palavras de Eckhart, “nem no mundo, nem fora do mundo.” Ou seja, aquela pureza do fundo da Deidade da qual é próprio um brotar-se em si mesmo – sem nenhum porquê. O “semporquê”, em Eckhart, é essa idéia que diz não ser o desprendimento somente uma interiorização extática, mas plenitude efetiva, bem exercitada – muito mais do que só de dentro. Para nós, este é o modo como Eckhart une um dos grandes temas dos místicos renanos, a saber, o fundo sem fundo da Deidade e a abertura sem porquê, ao tema maior do nascimento de Deus na alma – nascimento que implica uma reciprocidade, porque a alma só é verdadeiramente bem-aventurada quando em retorno ela “gera Deus”. Esse “gerar” é o cumprimento da perspectiva da Deidade na existência humana, é o “sem-porquê” vivido. É o caminho do distinto à pura indistinção de Deus (da Abgeschiedenheit) em seu brotar-se em si mesmo – o caminho de volta para dentro da vida vivida. / The central theme of this work, "Between the one and the two: Meister Eckhart and the open of the Abgeschiedenheit", is based on the understanding that Eckhart’s thought about the detachment (Abgeschiedenheit) ranges in three dimensions. One of these dimensions refers to what one might call a "pedagogy" of conversion, in which the need of human effort to evict itself is at stake. Another dimension of the detachment would be the understanding of the search for identity with God as a "per se", ie, as a previously given gift, which is expressed in Eckhart’s words as "the depth of the soul and the depth of God are one depth". From this remaining in oneself, the detachment still finds itself in a live dimension, ie, it refers to remaining "in itself" in the very action without reason, as it is expressed in the famous words of Eckhart: "to make the donation fruitful is the only gratitude for the gift." Understood in this way, the detachment is revealed as a negation of the negation, which is pure assertion without reason, and in this work is named the open of the Abgeschiedenheit. The "no why" is the dynamics of contraction in which the deity remains as it creates the world. The thought of Eckhart is properly that this dynamics is immediately extended to human existence, by the being one as man and God in the depth. To become interior in the depth of the soul means to man, to loosen up from the prospect of a created being’s own duality, in order to make proper the purity that, in the words of Eckhart, is "neither in the world nor out of the world ". That is, the purity of the depth of the Deity to whom is proper to spring in itself - without any reason. The "no why" in Eckhart, is this idea that says the detachment is not only an ecstatic internalization, but effective plenitude, well-exercised - much more than just the inside. For us, this is how Eckhart takes one of the major themes of the Rhineland mystics, namely the depth with no depth of the Deity, and without reason, and links it to the major theme of the birth of God in the soul - a birth that involves reciprocity, because the soul is only truly blessed when in return it "creates God." This "generating" is the fulfillment of view of the Deity in human existence, it is the lived "why not". Is the path from the separate to the pure indistinctness of God (the Abgeschiedenheit) in its spring in itself - the way back into the lived life.

This dissertation is presented in two parts. It first identifies the shape and content of an ancient system of Christian thought predicated on the theology of the cross of Jesus Christ, and proposes the marks typifying its theologians. Over against the ensuing hermeneutic it next finds the project of twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth to exhibit many of the defining characteristics of this system, and Barth himself to be fairly deemed a modern theologian of the cross. He crucially recovers, reshapes and reasserts the classical theologia crucis as a modern theological instrument, one answering enlightened theology’s self-glorifying accommodation to modernity with the living Word of the cross. The crucicentric system itself is found to comprise two major theological dimensions, epistemological and soteriological. Each of these comprises dialectically corresponding aspects connected with false and true creaturely glory. The cruciform Word (or theology) speaking through this system likewise moves in two directions. It declares negatively that any attempt by the creature to circumvent the cross so as to know about God directly, or to condition God's electing decision, is necessarily the attempt to know and act as God alone may know and act - an attempt therefore on the glory of God. It declares positively that in the crucified Christ God formally discloses the knowledge of God, and determines the creature for God. This knowledge and election are appropriated to the creature as, drawn into the cruciform environment, its attempt to glorify itself is negated and Christ's exalted humanity received in exchange. Thence it is lifted to participate in Christ's mind and in his glory, a process guided by the Holy Spirit and completed eschatologically. The database for this research includes selected primary materials in the Apostle Paul, Athanasius, a group of medieval mystical theologians, the reformer Martin Luther - particularly here his Heidelberg Disputation, and Karl Barth. It also pays attention to the recent secondary literature peripherally or more concertedly connecting itself to the theology of the cross, of whatever period. In this literature numerous suggestions for the content of the theology of the cross exist, a major methodological task in the current research being to bring these together systematically. To the extent that the inner structure of the system carrying the cruciform Word has not previously been made explicit, and Barth's crucicentric status not finally determined, in moving towards these achievements this dissertation breaks fresh ground. In the process a new test by which to decide the crucicentric status of any theological project is developed, and a further and crucicentric way of reading Barth proposed. / This dissertation identifies the shape, content, and marks of the theology of the cross, an ancient and still extant epistemological and soteriological system of Christian thought. Applying the resulting hermeneutic it then shows this system to be present with renewed vitality and future significance in the modern project of seminal Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968).

This dissertation is presented in two parts. It first identifies the shape and content of an ancient system of Christian thought predicated on the theology of the cross of Jesus Christ, and proposes the marks typifying its theologians. Over against the ensuing hermeneutic it next finds the project of twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth to exhibit many of the defining characteristics of this system, and Barth himself to be fairly deemed a modern theologian of the cross. He crucially recovers, reshapes and reasserts the classical theologia crucis as a modern theological instrument, one answering enlightened theology���s self-glorifying accommodation to modernity with the living Word of the cross. The crucicentric system itself is found to comprise two major theological dimensions, epistemological and soteriological. Each of these comprises dialectically corresponding aspects connected with false and true creaturely glory. The cruciform Word (or theology) speaking through this system likewise moves in two directions. It declares negatively that any attempt by the creature to circumvent the cross so as to know about God directly, or to condition God's electing decision, is necessarily the attempt to know and act as God alone may know and act - an attempt therefore on the glory of God. It declares positively that in the crucified Christ God formally discloses the knowledge of God, and determines the creature for God. This knowledge and election are appropriated to the creature as, drawn into the cruciform environment, its attempt to glorify itself is negated and Christ's exalted humanity received in exchange. Thence it is lifted to participate in Christ's mind and in his glory, a process guided by the Holy Spirit and completed eschatologically. The database for this research includes selected primary materials in the Apostle Paul, Athanasius, a group of medieval mystical theologians, the reformer Martin Luther - particularly here his Heidelberg Disputation, and Karl Barth. It also pays attention to the recent secondary literature peripherally or more concertedly connecting itself to the theology of the cross, of whatever period. In this literature numerous suggestions for the content of the theology of the cross exist, a major methodological task in the current research being to bring these together systematically. To the extent that the inner structure of the system carrying the cruciform Word has not previously been made explicit, and Barth's crucicentric status not finally determined, in moving towards these achievements this dissertation breaks fresh ground. In the process a new test by which to decide the crucicentric status of any theological project is developed, and a further and crucicentric way of reading Barth proposed.

This dissertation is presented in two parts. It first identifies the shape and content of an ancient system of Christian thought predicated on the theology of the cross of Jesus Christ, and proposes the marks typifying its theologians. Over against the ensuing hermeneutic it next finds the project of twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth to exhibit many of the defining characteristics of this system, and Barth himself to be fairly deemed a modern theologian of the cross. He crucially recovers, reshapes and reasserts the classical theologia crucis as a modern theological instrument, one answering enlightened theology’s self-glorifying accommodation to modernity with the living Word of the cross. The crucicentric system itself is found to comprise two major theological dimensions, epistemological and soteriological. Each of these comprises dialectically corresponding aspects connected with false and true creaturely glory. The cruciform Word (or theology) speaking through this system likewise moves in two directions. It declares negatively that any attempt by the creature to circumvent the cross so as to know about God directly, or to condition God's electing decision, is necessarily the attempt to know and act as God alone may know and act - an attempt therefore on the glory of God. It declares positively that in the crucified Christ God formally discloses the knowledge of God, and determines the creature for God. This knowledge and election are appropriated to the creature as, drawn into the cruciform environment, its attempt to glorify itself is negated and Christ's exalted humanity received in exchange. Thence it is lifted to participate in Christ's mind and in his glory, a process guided by the Holy Spirit and completed eschatologically. The database for this research includes selected primary materials in the Apostle Paul, Athanasius, a group of medieval mystical theologians, the reformer Martin Luther - particularly here his Heidelberg Disputation, and Karl Barth. It also pays attention to the recent secondary literature peripherally or more concertedly connecting itself to the theology of the cross, of whatever period. In this literature numerous suggestions for the content of the theology of the cross exist, a major methodological task in the current research being to bring these together systematically. To the extent that the inner structure of the system carrying the cruciform Word has not previously been made explicit, and Barth's crucicentric status not finally determined, in moving towards these achievements this dissertation breaks fresh ground. In the process a new test by which to decide the crucicentric status of any theological project is developed, and a further and crucicentric way of reading Barth proposed. / This dissertation identifies the shape, content, and marks of the theology of the cross, an ancient and still extant epistemological and soteriological system of Christian thought. Applying the resulting hermeneutic it then shows this system to be present with renewed vitality and future significance in the modern project of seminal Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968).

This dissertation is presented in two parts. It first identifies the shape and content of an ancient system of Christian thought predicated on the theology of the cross of Jesus Christ, and proposes the marks typifying its theologians. Over against the ensuing hermeneutic it next finds the project of twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth to exhibit many of the defining characteristics of this system, and Barth himself to be fairly deemed a modern theologian of the cross. He crucially recovers, reshapes and reasserts the classical theologia crucis as a modern theological instrument, one answering enlightened theology’s self-glorifying accommodation to modernity with the living Word of the cross. The crucicentric system itself is found to comprise two major theological dimensions, epistemological and soteriological. Each of these comprises dialectically corresponding aspects connected with false and true creaturely glory. The cruciform Word (or theology) speaking through this system likewise moves in two directions. It declares negatively that any attempt by the creature to circumvent the cross so as to know about God directly, or to condition God's electing decision, is necessarily the attempt to know and act as God alone may know and act - an attempt therefore on the glory of God. It declares positively that in the crucified Christ God formally discloses the knowledge of God, and determines the creature for God. This knowledge and election are appropriated to the creature as, drawn into the cruciform environment, its attempt to glorify itself is negated and Christ's exalted humanity received in exchange. Thence it is lifted to participate in Christ's mind and in his glory, a process guided by the Holy Spirit and completed eschatologically. The database for this research includes selected primary materials in the Apostle Paul, Athanasius, a group of medieval mystical theologians, the reformer Martin Luther - particularly here his Heidelberg Disputation, and Karl Barth. It also pays attention to the recent secondary literature peripherally or more concertedly connecting itself to the theology of the cross, of whatever period. In this literature numerous suggestions for the content of the theology of the cross exist, a major methodological task in the current research being to bring these together systematically. To the extent that the inner structure of the system carrying the cruciform Word has not previously been made explicit, and Barth's crucicentric status not finally determined, in moving towards these achievements this dissertation breaks fresh ground. In the process a new test by which to decide the crucicentric status of any theological project is developed, and a further and crucicentric way of reading Barth proposed. / This dissertation identifies the shape, content, and marks of the theology of the cross, an ancient and still extant epistemological and soteriological system of Christian thought. Applying the resulting hermeneutic it then shows this system to be present with renewed vitality and future significance in the modern project of seminal Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968).

This dissertation is presented in two parts. It first identifies the shape and content of an ancient system of Christian thought predicated on the theology of the cross of Jesus Christ, and proposes the marks typifying its theologians. Over against the ensuing hermeneutic it next finds the project of twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth to exhibit many of the defining characteristics of this system, and Barth himself to be fairly deemed a modern theologian of the cross. He crucially recovers, reshapes and reasserts the classical theologia crucis as a modern theological instrument, one answering enlightened theology’s self-glorifying accommodation to modernity with the living Word of the cross. The crucicentric system itself is found to comprise two major theological dimensions, epistemological and soteriological. Each of these comprises dialectically corresponding aspects connected with false and true creaturely glory. The cruciform Word (or theology) speaking through this system likewise moves in two directions. It declares negatively that any attempt by the creature to circumvent the cross so as to know about God directly, or to condition God's electing decision, is necessarily the attempt to know and act as God alone may know and act - an attempt therefore on the glory of God. It declares positively that in the crucified Christ God formally discloses the knowledge of God, and determines the creature for God. This knowledge and election are appropriated to the creature as, drawn into the cruciform environment, its attempt to glorify itself is negated and Christ's exalted humanity received in exchange. Thence it is lifted to participate in Christ's mind and in his glory, a process guided by the Holy Spirit and completed eschatologically. The database for this research includes selected primary materials in the Apostle Paul, Athanasius, a group of medieval mystical theologians, the reformer Martin Luther - particularly here his Heidelberg Disputation, and Karl Barth. It also pays attention to the recent secondary literature peripherally or more concertedly connecting itself to the theology of the cross, of whatever period. In this literature numerous suggestions for the content of the theology of the cross exist, a major methodological task in the current research being to bring these together systematically. To the extent that the inner structure of the system carrying the cruciform Word has not previously been made explicit, and Barth's crucicentric status not finally determined, in moving towards these achievements this dissertation breaks fresh ground. In the process a new test by which to decide the crucicentric status of any theological project is developed, and a further and crucicentric way of reading Barth proposed. / This dissertation identifies the shape, content, and marks of the theology of the cross, an ancient and still extant epistemological and soteriological system of Christian thought. Applying the resulting hermeneutic it then shows this system to be present with renewed vitality and future significance in the modern project of seminal Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968).