2025/01/01 by Jorge Tomás García · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Medieval Literature and History #Historical and Religious Studies of Rome #Death, Funerary Practices, and Mourning
paper · pdf · doi:10.4000/15jyv
The ritual and liturgical experience of devout communities in the geographical and cultural sphere of the ancient and medieval Mediterranean is usually analysed from an eminently spatial perspective. However, there are other categories of problematization that are shared between some liturgies of the ancient world and the Middle Ages. Here, we will take as a case study the textual presence of certain verbal formulas related to the fixed gaze that are present in a large corpus of texts describing liturgies and relations with the divine from the Greek world to the Early Middle Ages. Thus, the corporeality, gestures, and gaze adopted by these communities acquire an almost protocol-like character that allows them to enter contact with a divine signum through the sensoriality linked to certain physical attitudes.