Denys Hay Lecture 2018

Join us for the 2018 Denys Hay lecture on 29th May. Professor Gábor Klaniczay will speak on 'Bodily signs of divine presence: Medieval Christianity in comparative context'. 

The lecture presents the agenda of a book in the making. It discusses, how the extraordinary miracle of Francis of Assisi, the stigmatization, led to the formation of a specific tradition of somatic religiosity in the subsequent centuries. This type of bodily communication with the supernatural was practiced above all by women: after a few Beguines and Cistercian nuns it was above all the Dominicans, the principal rivals of the Franciscans, who promoted stigmatic saints belonging to them, Catherine of Siena being the most prominent. Besides all this, towards the end of the Middle Ages, there also evolved another type of miraculous bodily transformation: the mystical pregnancy manifested by Bridget of Sweden. While stigmatization was a kind of initatio Christi, mystical pregnancy was imitatio Mariae - both phenomena reveal the powerful role bodily manifestations played in Christianity.

Free but ticketed, please reserve at the 'Register' link.