Scenting salvation : ancient Christianity and the olfactory imagination

The Resource Scenting salvation : ancient Christianity and the olfactory imagination

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Scenting salvation : ancient Christianity and the olfactory imagination

Title remainder

ancient Christianity and the olfactory imagination

Statement of responsibility

Susan Ashbrook Harvey

Language

eng

Summary

This book explores the role of bodily, sensory experience in early Christianity (first - seventh centuries AD) by focusing on the importance of smell in ancient Mediterranean culture. Following its legalization in the fourth century Roman Empire, Christianity cultivated a dramatically flourishing devotional piety, in which the bodily senses were utilized as crucial instruments of human-divine interaction. Rich olfactory practices developed as part of this shift, with lavish uses of incense, holy oils, and other sacred scents. At the same time, Christians showed profound interest in what smells could mean. How could the experience of smell be construed in revelatory terms? What specifically could it convey? How and what could be known through smell? Scenting Salvation argues that ancient Christians used olfactory experience for purposes of a distinctive religious epistemology: formulating knowledge of the divine in order to yield, in turn, a particular human identity. Using a wide array of Pagan, Jewish, and Christian sources, Susan Ashbrook Harvey examines the ancient understanding of smell through religious rituals, liturgical practices, mystagogical commentaries, literary imagery, homiletic conventions; scientific, medical, and cosmological models; ascetic disciplines, theological discourse, and eschatological expectations. In the process, she argues for a richer appreciation of ancient notions of embodiment, and of the roles the body might serve in religion

Cataloging source

CUS

Government publication

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

dictionaries
bibliography

Series statement

The transformation of the classical heritage
The Joan Palevsky imprint in classical literature

Series volume

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Context of Scenting salvation : ancient Christianity and the olfactory imagination

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