Klik op een omslag om naar Google Boeken te gaan.
|
Bezig met laden... Kissing Christians: Ritual and Community in the Late Ancient Churchdoor Michael Philip Penn
Geen Bezig met laden...
 Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek.  Basileios919 | Mar 30, 2010 |  geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Onderdeel van de uitgeversreeks(en)
In the first five centuries of the common era, the kiss was a distinctive and near-ubiquitous marker of Christianity. Although Christians did not invent the kiss-Jewish and pagan literature is filled with references to kisses between lovers, family members, and individuals in relationships of power and subordination-Christians kissed one another in highly specific settings and in ways that set them off from the non-Christian population. Christians kissed each other during prayer, Eucharist, baptism, and ordination and in connection with greeting, funerals, monastic vows, and martyrdom. As Michael Philip Penn shows in Kissing Christians, this ritual kiss played a key role in defining group membership and strengthening the social bond between the communal body and its individual members. Kissing Christians presents the first comprehensive study of the ritual kiss and how controversies surrounding it became part of larger debates regarding the internal structure of Christian communities and their relations with outsiders. Penn traces how Christian writers exalted those who kissed only fellow Christians, proclaimed that Jews did not have a kiss, prohibited exchanging the kiss with potential heretics, privileged the confessor's kiss, prohibited Christian men and women from kissing each other, and forbade laity from kissing clergy. Kissing Christians also investigates connections between kissing and group cohesion, kissing practices and purity concerns, and how Christian leaders used the motif of the kiss of Judas to examine theological notions of loyalty, unity, forgiveness, hierarchy, and subversion. Exploring connections between bodies, power, and performance, Kissing Christians bridges the gap between cultural and liturgical approaches to antiquity. It breaks significant new ground in its application of literary and sociological theory to liturgical history and will have a profound impact on these fields. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
Actuele discussiesGeenPopulaire omslagen
 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)270.1Religions History, geographic treatment, biography of Christianity History of Christianity Apostolic; Nativity to ConstantineLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (5)
Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1
His contribution to understanding the holy kiss in the ancient Church varies from prevailing scholarship, as far as Penn argues for a "multivalent" thesis concerning the meaning and significance of the holy kiss. In this way, Penn counters the view that there existed a pristine view of the holy kiss among leaders of the Church throughout years leading to the Council of Chalcedon in the year 451.
He further asserts that the holy kiss symbolized embodied actions by the Church-within-the-walls, but also the Church in dialogue with others outside-the-walls. Rituals of the holy kiss regulated social boundaries within-the-walls in order to sustain order, as well as to help "...create a collective reality" (p. 122) through ritual. Ritualized practices, so conceived by Penn, served as mythical pathways for the Church to revisit the unity of faith symbolized by the holy kiss.
Penn sustains tension between appropriating the kiss from Graeco-Roman contexts and making the the kiss wholly (holy) Christian. Everyday gestures, of which kissing was but one, are interpreted by the author's method as embodied reconstructions of discourse, which disclose authority in ancient sources about the holy kiss that are lost otherwise to prior deconstructive methods. Penn entertains who kissed whom and under what contexts holy kisses became exchanged in ritual. His method, indeed, adds complexity to interpreting the ancient data concerning the holy kiss.
In light of perennial boundary infractions concerning intimate contact such as the holy kiss might signify if violated from within the Church, Penn's fourth chapter explores how Church leaders "...used the threat of transgressive kissing practices as a way to help solidify social boundaries" (p. 92). Penn ably views texts from Church leaders and rhetoric from society at large in order to explore how varied interpretations of purity governed ways that Christians employed rituals of the kiss, which they perceived as congruent with the Church's mission.
Again, the holy kiss bears with it tension that embraces opposing views, such as sealing prayer with a holy kiss in order to enhance purity, according to Tertullian, and ascetic restrictions as protecting purity, according to the 'Apocryphal Acts.'
Jennifer Wright Krust concludes her review of Penn's book in 'Church History" (Sept. 2006) by summarizing how Church leaders located the boundaries of the holy kiss across time, according to Penn: "As such, social locations within an evolving Christian hierarchy were both performed and created."
My own praise for this monograph points to Penn's avoidance of linguistic ideology and promotion of seeing and "tasting" the holy kiss within ancient discourse. (