Perfumes and Christendom
Patricia Grau-Dieckmann
Original title: Los Perfumes en el Cristianismo
Published in Mirabilia 3 (2003)
Keywords: Christendom, aromas, incense, myrrh, perfumes, spikenard.
In several religions, pleasant smells –perfumes– play an important role in the rites and in the liturgy, during meditation and in the prayers, while communing with the divinities. Christianity did not keep aside from this practice but infused it with a new signification. Christ Himself entered in contact with the most valuable perfumes since his early childhood. The incense and the myrrh offered by the wise men from Orient, the oil of spikenard and the funeral oils used to anoint His body mark only the initiation of a relation with the aromas which will flourish in Jesus Christ’s legacy for the many centuries in which Christendom was formed and consolidated.
The Construction of Space(s) and Identity(s) in Medieval Literature: Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales as a Case Study
Mourad EL FAHLI
Published in Music in Middle Ages and Early Modernity
Keywords: Christendom, Cultural Interchange, Europe, Heathendom, Identity, Infidels, Representation.
This paper examines the engagement of medieval literature in the construction of identities, particularly those of Europe and Muslims. While the former is represented as a unified Christian space, the latter is depicted as an external threat that endangers God’s plan and kingdom. Hence, medieval literature distinguished two opposing spatiality’s namely Christendom and Heathendom. Such spatial configuration deliberately overlooked internal schisms and antagonisms that characterized medieval Europe and instead opted for an ideal utopian vision, which has its origin in crusading discourses that emphasized unity in the face of “infidels.” To examine these issues, the paper takes as an example Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, which is considered by many as one of the most influential medieval literary works. Medieval ideological othering has-ad still- shaped understandings and configurations of the various contacts between West and East and between Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The paper further enriches the discussion by a focus on cross-cultural interchange that informs Chaucer’s oeuvre, particularly the influence of Medieval Arabic scientific studies on his conception of lovesickness. Such interchange paradoxically problematizes the western condemnatory attitude towards Islam.
