Book description
With few exceptions, the scholarship on religion in late antiquity has emphasized its tendencies toward transcendence, abstraction, and spirit at the expense of matter. In The Corporeal Imagination, Patricia Cox Miller argues instead that ancient Christianity took a material turn between the fourth and seventh centuries. During this period, Miller…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Corporeal Imagination as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Where most people imagine Christian belief and experience as something that takes place in the heart and mind, Cox Miller looks at the many ways that early Christianity worked through the senses.
Touch and taste, the visual experience of spectacle and image, the scents of churches and tombs, and the powerful presence of material “things” like relics all rendered Christianity a religion of physical experience more than mindful faith.
From David's list on The best books that describe how ancient peoples embraced Christianity in late antiquity.
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