2) Imagining the Passion in a Multiconfessional Castile II: Sufi and Jewish Influence and Responses (panel discussion, with author’s participation)
Rethinking Christian spirituality from within Iberia, however, not only calls for reconsidering the devotional art and texts in relation to Christian theology, but also calls for greater attention to Spain’s multiconfessional circumstances. Robinson suggests that the elevation of Christ and Mary as glorious rather than suffering was intrinsically related to the pluri-religious contexts of medieval Iberia; images of Christ and Mary were not meant for private Christian meditation alone, but for the conversion of the religious ‘other.’ Not only does the conversion context shift any assessment of images, but Robinson is the first to propose direct influence from Sufi devotional practices such as dhikr chant on Christian spirituality. Her argument thus addresses a long-problematic gap between the popularity of 13th century Muslim mystical texts and their apparent influence on sixteenth century Christian writers such as John of the Cross by discerning the parallels between late medieval Muslim and Christian devotion on the peninsula. Participants in this panel discussion are invited to propose papers concerning the ways in which fifteenth century Jewish and/or Muslim devotion influenced or responded to a Castilian Passion spirituality that emphasized divinity rather than humanity, or that use Robinson’s model as a basis for reconsidering other types of relationships and exchanges between the different faiths in late medieval Iberia.
A paper proposal comprises a one-page abstract and a completed Participant Information Form available at website, deadline: September 15, 2013.
Please send all questions and proposals to jboon@email.unc.edu.
Cynthia Robinson’s 2013 publication, _Imagining the Passion in a Multiconfessional Castile: The Virgin, Christ, Devotions, and Images in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries_ (Penn State Press), is being hailed as a “frame-breaking” work that radically challenges current assumptions that Castilian Christianity paralleled European trends before 1492.ASPHS plans to convene one session of papers and one panel discussion to allow scholars to begin the work of rethinking late medieval Iberian spirituality in light of the new methods and conclusions that Robinson proposes.1) Imagining the Passion in a Multiconfessional Castile I: Christ and Mary Divinized (session of papers)Robinson’s work is the first of its kind to draw together a wide range of cultic images and spiritual texts from across Iberia and across religious distinctions, and her analysis reveals that late medieval Castilians focused their devotions on Christ’s divinity and Mary’s divine qualities rather than on Christ’s painful suffering. Robinson locates this ‘Castilian particularity’ in the influence of the Catalan Eiximenis’ Vita Christi rather than extra-peninsular texts such as Pseudo-Bonaventure’s Meditaciones Vitae Christi, a forceful argument that requires scholars of Castilian spirituality to rethink the panorama of Christian devotion within the contours of the peninsula instead of gesturing to broader European movements. This session seeks papers that take up Robinson’s call to integrate the study of art history with the study of devotional texts, or that address the influence of peninsular devotion to Mary on the development of a unique Castilian Passion spirituality, or that consider the shift in Passion spirituality post 1492 once interest in Christ’s suffering is newly introduced to Castile.
