Pain and Memory in the Formation of Early Modern Habitus

Abstract

Between the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, pain and memory became interdependent in three domains of social and religious life: religious devotion, education, and criminal justice. The grounds for this affiliation were prepared by a training of individuals in the control of affect and the acceptance of memory training as a regimen of virtual self-wounding, often facilitated by violent imagery. Across the three domains examined here Christian subjectivity was quietly reformed, and an embodied habitus inculcated, to meet the demands of an age no longer anchored in unquestioned truths.