| Achoimre: | This thesis considers Christian moral teachings and ethical practices relating to the five senses in Latin Europe in the period c. 500 to c. 900. The basic argument that moralists in the early Middle Ages presented was that the senses were apertures through which spiritual corruption could pass. If they were left unguarded, the purity of the heart would be compromised. This imagery conceived the body in microcosmic terms as a walled city or palace besieged by enemies; the senses were the body’s gateways or windows – its weak points. Ideas about the senses helped Christians to locate themselves in time: it was argued that earlier stages of Salvation History had been childishly devoted to the life of the senses, whereas in the Sixth Age Christians had learned to rise to the level of spiritual understanding. This line of reasoning also helped Christians to think about hierarchies in their own era: contemporary Jews were sometimes portrayed as anachronisms in their attachment to the sensory realm, reflected in their continued adherence to the Old Law’s ‘carnal’ teachings. The ideology of restraint, in turn, gave rise to a set of practices intended to manage the vulnerability of the sensory apertures – most notably, the confession of sins relating to the senses, and the anointing of the sense-organs. These practices are comprehensible in a context in which sensory restraint was thought to confer moral authority on its practitioners: indeed, some teachers went so far as to claim that those guilty of sensory excess would emit signs of their spiritual inadequacy from their sensory ‘windows’. Although the senses therefore evoked feelings of anxiety, early medieval writers nonetheless believed that God had granted them as providential gifts to humankind. Through wilful self-governance, it was expected that the senses could be restored to their state of primordial perfection.
|
|---|