Exploring Influences
Wounded by the Love of God?: Correlation in the Flowing Light of the Godhead by Mechthild of Magdeburg
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Tabea Brixius
This paper explores the interconnected themes of wounds of love and the merits derived from the love of God and Christ in The Flowing Light of the Godhead, attributed to the Beguine mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg. Due to the loss of source materials in 1631 during the Thirty Years’ War and the complex editorial history of the text, a synoptic approach is necessary, focusing on key concepts: vulnerability, unio mystica (mystical union), and minne (divine love). Mechthild’s work is often described as a profound meditation on minne—the intimate, reciprocal love between the soul and God. The narrator portrays herself as a fragile woman wounded by Christ’s love, experienced through mystical union. These wounds, willingly embraced, are central to the narrator’s spiritual journey, forming the foundation of her relationship with Christ and God. The wounds, inflicted by God’s yearning for the soul, symbolize the mutual desire inherent in divine love. This longing is depicted as bilateral: Christ’s passion for the soul is so overwhelming that He must eventually stop inflicting these wounds to prevent fatal harm. The narrator, however, actively chooses to endure them as an act of devotion. In The Flowing Light of the Godhead, the wounds of divine love and the merits of the soul’s passion are uniquely emphasized. This surrender to God’s love and the pain it entails highlights the mystical union as both a transformative and deeply sacrificial process.
Narco Saints-Sanctity and Devotion : Belief and Prayer to Jesus Malverde, La Santa Muerte, San Judas and La Virgen de Guadalupe
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Angelica Loreto
The worship of saints in narco culture has created a following and devotion; one that came from the need to justify their world and offers a place in which the narcos could find some solace among the violence that the Mexican cartel is dishonorably known for. Robust literature explores this anomaly of the worship for narco saints, with studies on the communities in Mexico and the U.S. borderlands that believe in the “narco saints” show that loyalty plays a role in the deep belief there is for these saints. Although this trust in sainthood in the narco universe has been debated, the symbolism of Jesus Malverde, La Santa Muerte (Holy Death), San Judas (Saint Jude) and La Virgen de Guadalupe (Mexican Virgen Guadalupe) have notoriously been symbols of dedication. These saints are not only connected to the narcos, but also to the narco embodiment and personification of holiness. The reverence of these saints gets portrayed into the characteristics of narco corrido performers. This phenomenon has been publicly displayed through numerous chapels that have been built by narcos and the narco corridos (drug ballads) that have been commission by the protagonists in the narco world and the corrido performers who sing them - who also display respect and faithfulness for the saints. I explore the forms in which narco saints have cultivated a religious aspect in the narco cosmos. I draw from research and firsthand observation that provides a cultural analysis of religion, criminality, and humanity of the narco space.
Saint Simeon’s Pillar and the Apollo Myth of Python
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Beau Kilpatrick
This project examines representations of Simeon Stylites, also known as Saint Simeon (Syméon), and Simeon the Elder, as these representations draw parallel similarities to mythologies of ancient Greece. Simeon was an ascetic saint who spent more than three decades living upon pillars in the region of Syria during the Byzantium empire. Although the saint’s ascetic discipline is fascinating in its own right, this research focuses more closely on the depictions of Simeon upon the “Serpent Pillar.” This pillar is depicted by the Plaque de Saint Syméon that is currently on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. The plaque is thought to have been crafted in the late sixth century AD and shows Simeon upon a tall pillar, sitting beneath a seashell that represents the sun, and with a giant snake climbing up the column. Upon seeing this, one can’t help but be reminded of the Greek myth concerning Python of Mount Parnassus, Apollo, and his temple at Delphi. It is this connection between the Greek myth and Saint Simeon that this project intends to explore. The goal of this research is to illustrate how Greek culture influenced early figures of Christianity in a region that was predominantly ruled by Arab politics and Muslim religious influence.
The Jesuit Order and Religious Acceptability
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Eduardo Dawson
Alonso de Sandoval’s missionary efforts to newly arrived African subjects in colonial Latin America revolved around recognition of a discrete set of sensorial experiences. Trained under a Jesuit logic informed by St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, Sandoval understood that bodily gestures indicated an interior experience with the divine—movements that emerged out of an inner serenity that catechumens were directed to heed as life’s organizing principle. My paper analyzes the sensory as a methodological category to understand the unison that occurred between Jesuit actors and African neophytes. Beyond gesture and revelation as a shared space, sensorial events allowed Sandoval to inscribe Africans into the historical record, although that inclusion, as a result of historical process, placed Africans and Europeans into differentiated racialized categories. In sum, I trace the ways in which inner experiences realized through the imagination, enlightened thought, and movement, affirmed both celestial and temporal realities.
