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IMC 2023: Sessions

Session 1621: To Be God with God: Mystical Networks and Entanglements, II - Re-Evaluating Mystical Genealogies: New Approaches to Textual Transmissions and Traditions

Thursday 6 July 2023, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:Mystical Theology Network / Ruusbroecgenootschap, Universiteit Antwerpen
Organiser:John Arblaster, Institute for the Study of Spirituality, KU Leuven / Ruusbroecgenootschap, Universiteit Antwerpen
Moderator/Chair:Einat Klafter, Cohn Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Ideas, Tel Aviv University
Paper 1621-a'Franciscan' Mysticism?: A (Re-)Evaluation of Medieval Mystical Genealogies
(Language: English)
Michael Hahn, Sarum College, Salisbury
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Monasticism, Religious Life, Theology
Paper 1621-bMapping Mysticism: New Approaches to (and Uses for) Stemmatology
(Language: English)
Jonas Hermann, Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures, Harvard University
Index terms: Manuscripts and Palaeography, Monasticism, Religious Life
Paper 1621-cWhere Are All the People?: Absence, Anonymity, and the Construction of 'Agnes Blannbekin'
(Language: English)
Amanda Langley, School of History, Queen Mary University of London
Index terms: Hagiography, Religious Life
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.