Bynum, Gender, and the Western Christian Middle Ages

Abstract

Abstract As a contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Caroline Walker Bynum across the Disciplines,” this article argues that Bynum's work on gender has overturned bedrock interpretations of the religious significance of the widespread ascetic practices of the Western Christian Middle Ages. Bynum's claim has been that medieval asceticism is best understood not as an upshot of dualism — of the soul and body understood as in opposition — but as “an effort to plumb and realize all the possibilities of the flesh.” Drawing on underused religious sources, analyzing in their larger social and cultural context the images that medieval women and men used, and employing a comparative analysis of female and male spiritualities, she has demonstrated that each had its own different emphases. In this effort, she has pioneered what is sometimes called a “history of masculinities.” Focusing on women's own experience and ferreting out basic assumptions of their religious thought and practice, she has argued for women's profound contributions to their contemporary theological culture by drawing on the dominant culture's hierarchical gender binaries in order to undermine them and accentuate their shared (bodily) humanity with Christ. Bynum has shown successfully that medieval women had confidence in their own ability to love and imitate Christ and thus to participate in the salvation of the world.