Description

This publication starts from a particular passage in the New Testament that tells the story of a "woman with an issue of blood." The gospel relates how the so-called Haemorrhoissa is healed the very moment she touches Christ's garment. This publication forms the first - and so far the only - interdisciplinary study of this particular biblical motif from an exegetical, art-historical and anthropological point of view. Contributing scholars interpret the impact of this biblical miracle on Christian texts, material culture and healing archetypes in the Middle Ages and Early Modernity. The story and its Nachleben in literary commentaries and various iconographies unveil a particular energy in Christendom related to ideas about the female body, the role of textile, and the magical impact of touch. This volumes contributes to all research in the humanities concerned with gender, the sensorium, Judeo-Christian attitudes towards blood and taboo, and early Christian material culture in the East and West. Its trajectory ultimately reveals the crucial mystery at the heart of image-making as such.