Body and Religion in the Middle Ages

The history of the body is one of the recently developed fields of historical anthropology. Inspired by Michel Foucault, explored by Peter Brown, Jacques Le Goff, Caroline Bynum and others, it became obvious that religious history provides ample material for understanding the historical formation of the attitudes concerning the body. Starting with the concept of the “original sin”, overviewing how Christianity’s negative attitude towards body and sexuality evolved in late antiquity, we will concentrate on medieval Christian attitudes to asceticism, religious symbolism of dress and hairdressing, sumptuary legislation, bodily imitation of Christ by acquiring stigmata, special medical views on male and female bodies, bodily symbolism in occult thought, theories of microcosm and macrocosm.