Skip to main content

IMC 2023: Sessions

Session 1521: To Be God with God: Mystical Networks and Entanglements, I - Mystical Relationality and Theological Anthropology

Thursday 6 July 2023, 09.00-10.30

Sponsor:Mystical Theology Network / Committee on the Study of Religion, Harvard University
Organiser:Lydia Shahan, Institute for the Study of Spirituality, KU Leuven / Ruusbroecgenootschap, Universiteit Antwerpen
Moderator/Chair:Amanda Langley, School of History, Queen Mary University of London
Paper 1521-a'Even if we cannot see one another, we can still kiss in the dark': Relation and Deification in Willem Jordaens' Kiss of the Mouth
(Language: English)
John Arblaster, Institute for the Study of Spirituality, KU Leuven / Ruusbroecgenootschap, Universiteit Antwerpen
Index terms: Language and Literature - Dutch, Religious Life, Sexuality, Theology
Paper 1521-bDuns Scotus's Theology of Union with God and Its Christological Dimension
(Language: English)
Dominic Abbott, Faculteit Theologie en Religiewetenschappen, KU Leuven
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Philosophy, Religious Life, Theology
Paper 1521-cLike Mother, like Son: Christ's Resemblance to His Mother in Late Medieval Devotional Literature
(Language: English)
Lydia Shahan, Institute for the Study of Spirituality, KU Leuven / Ruusbroecgenootschap, Universiteit Antwerpen
Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - Dutch, Religious Life, Sermons and Preaching
Abstract

These sessions collectively explore themes of relationality and entanglement inherent to medieval mystical literature and theologies as well as the articulation and circulation of these ideas within textual networks and communities. Session I considers expressions of the relationship of deifying union between human and divine, as well as the relationship between Christ's humanity and divinity, in theological and devotional texts from the high and later Middle Ages. Session II casts a critical eye on the construction of mystical textual canons, and on the identities of individual mystics, considering textual, theological, and codicological perspectives. Session III engages mystical networks in late medieval England and the Low Countries in the 14th and 15th centuries, considering both 'major' canonical mystics, such as John of Ruusbroec and the so-called English mystics and their lesser-known contemporaries, as well as how mystical ideas and understandings circulated through community relationships.