Scenting Salvation
Regular price
€38.99
A01=Susan Ashbrook Harvey
affect theory
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
asceticism
Author_Susan Ashbrook Harvey
automatic-update
bodily senses
body
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBLA
Category=HRAX
Category=HRCS
Category=NHC
Category=QRAX
Category=QRM
Category=QRVK
ceremony
christianity
church history
COP=United States
cosmology
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
devotionals
divine order
divinity
doctrine
early christianity
embodiment
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eschatology
history
holy oils
homily
incense
Language_English
liturgy
mediterranean
mediterranean culture
mystagogy
nonfiction
olfactory
PA=Available
piety
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
religion and science
religious practice
religious studies
revelation
rite
ritual
sacred
sacred scents
scents
sensation
sense of smell
sensibilia
sensory experience
smell
softlaunch
spirituality
theology
tradition
Product details
- ISBN 9780520287563
- Weight: 635g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 25 Aug 2015
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
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.
Susan Ashbrook Harvey is Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University. She is the author of Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and The Lives of the Eastern Saints and coauthor of Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, both from UC Press.
