Books by Jessica A . Boon
The End of the World in Medieval Thought and Spirituality
festschrift in honor of E. Ann Matter, 2019
This essay collection studies the Apocalypse and the end of the world, as these themes occupied t... more This essay collection studies the Apocalypse and the end of the world, as these themes occupied the minds of biblical scholars, theologians, and ordinary people in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Early Modernity. It opens with an innovative series of studies on “Gendering the Apocalypse,” devoted to the texts and contexts of the apocalyptic through the lens of gender. A second section of essays studies the more traditional problem of “Apocalyptic Theory and Exegesis,” with a focus on authors such as Augustine of Hippo and Joachim of Fiore. A final series of essays extends the thematic scope to “The Eschaton in Political, Liturgical, and Literary Contexts.” In these essays, scholars of history, theology, and literature create a dialogue that considers how fear of the end of the world, among the most pervasive emotions in human experience, underlies a great part of Western cultural production.
Mother Juana de la Cruz, 1481–1534: Visionary Sermons. Ed. Jessica A. Boon and Ronald E. Surtz. I... more Mother Juana de la Cruz, 1481–1534: Visionary Sermons. Ed. Jessica A. Boon and Ronald E. Surtz. Introductory material and notes by Jessica A. Boon. Trans. Ronald E. Surtz and Nora Weinerth. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series. Toronto: Iter Academic Press; Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2016.
The Mystical Science of the Soul reveals the previously unexamined influence of scientific theori... more The Mystical Science of the Soul reveals the previously unexamined influence of scientific theories of cognition and embodied religious practices on the Renaissance Castilian genre of recollection mysticism (recogimiento). Bernardino de Laredo (1482-1540?), a lay Franciscan, influential apothecary, and author of a key recogimiento text pivotal to Teresa of Avila’s development and shipped to the New World, melded the traditionally distinct spiritual techniques of Passion meditation and negative theology into one path towards mystical union in his Subida del Monte Sión (1535, revised 1538). In part one, I suggest that Laredo’s privileging of Passion meditation in the midst of an abstract mystical method drew on the embodied practices foregrounded by the recent Spanish Franciscan reform, while also appealing to an Inquisitorial audience potentially preoccupied by Laredo’s professional interactions with New Christians (converts from Judaism). In part two, I argue that Laredo’s familiarity with Galenic medicine, optics’ role in scholastic epistemology, and monastic mnemotechnique led him to theorize the ‘embodied soul’ as central to a mystical method. He therefore configured the goal of recollection, the ‘transformation of the soul into God through love,’ as initially requiring transformation of the embodied soul into the brutally crucified God cognitively located in the midst of the soul’s ‘entrails.’ By recovering the Castilian understanding of the embodied soul and contextualizing Golden Age mysticism in the predominant scientific models of the age, my project calls scholars to consistently situate analysis of Spanish mystical texts in light of their authors’ theories of cognition rather than our own.
Papers by Jessica A . Boon
Bodies Beyond Labels: Finding Joy in the Shadows of Early Modern Spain, 2024
Heavenly pastries. Top-shelf liquor. Bejewelled clothing. Games, dice, and horse racing. Theatre.... more Heavenly pastries. Top-shelf liquor. Bejewelled clothing. Games, dice, and horse racing. Theatre. Cuddling, regardless of gender. Nude dancing. This list might at first glance seem to be a rehearsal of all that con- temporary fundamentalist Christians would likely critique – and even more so, Spanish Christians in the time of the Inquisition. Yet all are luxuries or leisure activities that the Franciscan visionary Juana de la Cruz (1481–1534) claimed that Jesus, the angels, and the saints enjoyed on the feast days of the liturgical year, a claim constantly re-asserted in her thirteen-year series of "sermones;" they were heard not only by the nuns in her convent but also by prelates, bishops, political leaders, and inquisitors. Ultimately Juana’s sermons are a series of remarkable reflections on the fluidity of heavenly corporeality at play: food, drink, clothing, games, marriage beds, dances, bodies, genders, and sexualities not only are all glorious and elite but also transform constantly across the binary differences or material fixity usually attributed to them on earth. Angels become animals, adornments become animate, anyone who was ever human becomes an infant and then returns to old age, and so on. Indeed, the transformation of matter is central to both the new episodes of biblical stories that Jesus narrates in the sermons, and the figuras or allegorical pageants put on in heaven – a kind of perpetual trans-figura-tion. This chapter considers the fluidity of embodiment in Juana’s heaven by tracking her iterations of playful joy. The heavenly celebrations on liturgical feast days revolve around food, drink, and sensual interactions – variations on Huizanga’s concept of religious play – all of which are accomplished through the transformation of embodied materiality on a celestial plane. I argue that, for Juana and her audiences, joy was to be found in the earthly shadows of Inquisition Spain only because it could be justified as a worldly approximation of early modern heavenly bodies trans-figura-d in joy.
Revista de poética medieval, 2024
Juana de la Cruz (1481-1534), abbess of a beaterio turned Clarisan con-
vent, was known as a «liv... more Juana de la Cruz (1481-1534), abbess of a beaterio turned Clarisan con-
vent, was known as a «living saint» for her Marian visions and for the weekly ser-mones during which Jesus reportedly spoke through her enraptured body to extend the biblical narratives and describe celestial festivities. Juana’s Passion spirituality led her to contemplate the materiality of the arma Christi; in particular, the physicality of the cross as splintery yet living wood influenced Juana’s images of the cross as at once instrument of torture leading to death, while also as triumphant, animate,
and even violent. In her visionary sermons, Juana takes the animate materiality of this «holy matter» to its logical extreme, presenting the cross as able to mutate, feed others, enact the liturgy, and subdue the seraphim in a heavenly battle, all actions that helped justify the ultimate action of the living cross participating in the Last Judgment.
Mourning and anger at the foot of the cross: Mary’s pain in thirteenth-century Castile and León
Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 2024
50 free copies at https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/FNWTVYJ6FWHFNJQVXXC6/full?target=10.1080/175... more 50 free copies at https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/FNWTVYJ6FWHFNJQVXXC6/full?target=10.1080/17546559.2024.2318260
The Latin Marian lament “Quis dabit” (literally “Who will give”) began circulating in thirteenth-century Castile and León at a time when devotion to the Virgin Mary was principally associated with miracles and conquest. A central theme of this popular text was Mary’s physical pain rather than her disembodied mental distress at the foot of the cross. I argue that the reception of “Quis dabit” in Castile and León was twofold. In his Duelo de la virgen, Gonzalo de Berceo (c. 1196 – c. 1260) incorporated medieval mourning traditions to emphasize Mary’s rage (rabia) over the loss of her son, highlighting her military might as queen during an age of conquest. While the illustrators of the Cantigas de Santa María were directly informed by passages from the “Quis dabit” in two unusual representations of Mary grasping Jesus’s crucified feet and gazing up at him, these images echoed only her painful, active sorrow in the “Quis dabit,” rather than her rage. The contrasting treatment of the “Quis dabit” in thirteenth-century Castile and León sheds light on how spiritual practices concentrating on Mary’s pain could be incorporated into devotion to a powerful, conquering queen of heaven.
Viator 50.1, 2019
By examining medical and Scholastic theories of pain in general and for Jesus in particular, I de... more By examining medical and Scholastic theories of pain in general and for Jesus in particular, I demonstrate that the definitions and debates developed in Latin by university-trained theologians in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries found their ways into the vernacular Passion meditation manuals written by educated Castilian clerics, friars, and laypeople after 1492. Castilian Christians thoroughly integrated a medico-theological vocabulary for emotions, or passiones animae, with the physical pain and blood of Passion spirituality. In so doing, they anchored their narrative explorations of Jesus’s pain, from his agony in the garden to his crucifixion, within a continuum that might best be termed a “body-and-soul in pain.”
Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religious Materiality, ed. Vasudha Narayanan, 2020
Recent work on late medieval Catholic devotion has called for positioning embodiment under the br... more Recent work on late medieval Catholic devotion has called for positioning embodiment under the broader category of materiality. My study suggests that theorizing the incarnation as the justification for Christian materiality should not lead immediately to discussion of human material practices, but should begin with divine embodiment as an example of ‘living matter’. By focusing on the particular theme of Jesus' blood in medieval theology, devotion, and mysticism, this chapter follows the extensive material considerations resulting from the Incarnation. It closely considers late medieval views concerning Jesus' conception from Mary's menstrual fluid, the physiological possibility of sweating blood, his bloody wounds and the weapons that inflicted them, and the blood of Jesus resurrected entirely in heaven yet still bleeding in Eucharistic miracles and visionary experience.
Mother Juana de la Cruz
Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets, 2000
The End of the World in Medieval Thought and Spirituality, 2019
Mother Juana de la Cruz (1481-1534), abbess of a Clarisan convent outside Toledo, Spain, preached... more Mother Juana de la Cruz (1481-1534), abbess of a Clarisan convent outside Toledo, Spain, preached publically for thirteen years, putatively channeling Jesus’ voice through her raptured body. This chapter argues that Juana’s blend of apocalyptic genres was a forerunner of the “Marian apocalyptic” described by E. Ann Matter for the 20th century. This genre of private Marian apparitions designated the seer, Juana, as authoritative, yet disseminated apocalyptic material through publically preached visions of the otherworld. Not only did these visions interweave interpretations of apocalyptic symbols with discussions of the fate of individual souls, but Mary herself was presented as an active agent in the otherworld, not simply interceding with Jesus but engaging the devil in battle. I argue that Mary as apocalyptic figure rather than apparitional message-bearer would have resonated strongly with Juana’s Iberian audience, as not only had Mary long been a focal point of devotion during reconquest on the peninsula, but Castilian leaders attempting at establishing an empire in the New World frequently justified their endeavors through apocalyptic rhetoric.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 2018
For thirteen years, the Clarissan Juana de la Cruz (1481 – 1534) gave public “sermones” during wh... more For thirteen years, the Clarissan Juana de la Cruz (1481 – 1534) gave public “sermones” during which Christ’s voice was reported to issue from her rapt body, expanding on the biblical record and describing festivities in heaven that feature considerable fluidity in gender and sexuality. Ecclesiastical support for a Castilian woman preacher during the early decades of the Inquisition is even more surprising, since Juana claimed that she experienced a sex change before birth. Although Juana identified publicly as a nun and therefore as female, such rubrics as trans or intersex can help parse the nuances of the distinctive narratives on which Juana rested her authority. In turn, contemporary terminology can aid in identifying certain subcategories within the celestial gender performances in Juana’s visions, such that analysis of trans, bigender, or genderqueer representations of Jesus, Mary, and the angels permits connections between different sermons that together shed light on Juana’s original theological interventions.
"Transactional Economy in Spanish Mysticism" in the forum “In Conversation: The Materiality of Sacred Economies"
Material Religion, 2015
“Transactional Economy in Spanish Mysticism,” in the forum “In Conversation: The Materiality of S... more “Transactional Economy in Spanish Mysticism,” in the forum “In Conversation: The Materiality of Sacred Economies,” ed. David Morgan, Material Religion 11.3 (2015): 395-7.
The late arrival of Passion spirituality to Castile produced the powerful rhetorical image of the... more The late arrival of Passion spirituality to Castile produced the powerful rhetorical image of the violent Jew, just as actual Jews had been expelled or had chosen conversion. Sylvia Tomasch’s postcolonial analysis of the “virtual Jew” in late medieval England can aid in examining the violence attributed to Jews in Passion prose narratives newly published in Castilian after 1492. In Prejano’s 1493 Lucero de la vida cristiana and Li’s 1494 Thesoro de la passion, both authors reflected the pro-converso side of the debates over New Christians in the 1460s–80s even while importing pan-European anti-Jewish stereotypes emphasizing the bestiality and effeminacy of first-century Jews. Two decades later, the anonymous 1511 Fasciculus myrrhe maximized the portrait of aggression by increasing Mary’s anti-Jewish rhetoric and by imagining Jewish violence against the Virgin Mary, contributing to the twin focus on Jesus’ and Mary’s pain in the “Passion of Two” narratives unique to early sixteenth-century Castile that predated the rise of Semana Santa processions.
Wounded by Love: The Agony of God’s Touch in Hadewijch and Ruusbroec
Hadewijch of Antwerp (c. 1250) employs the language of courtly love to describe mystical encounte... more Hadewijch of Antwerp (c. 1250) employs the language of courtly love to describe mystical encounters with God. In her texts, God as Lady Love (Minne) wounds the soul not only by inflicting loss or periods of spiritual dryness but also by means of painful physical impact, since the mystic encounters love through savage strokes or blows struck by God in a mutual love-joust. The medieval discourses of erotic pain, including biblical exegesis, theological understandings of pain, medical discussions of lovesickness, embodied mystical speech, and the courtly love tradition, prove to be in continuity with the modern proposals of Bataille and Elaine Scarry concerning pain and ecstasy. Hadewijch formulates “divine erotic wounding” as a method of embodied mystical speech that is apophatic in nature, a technique of linguistic negation and inversion that renders self and God in erotic proximity on the battlefield. Not only does her most famous reader, Jan van Ruusbroec, draw on her language of hunger and love at key points in his mystical treatises written for both men and women, but he also repeatedly references the weapons Hadewijch favors in her descriptions of "gentle wounding" inflicted by Love .
La Coronica, Dec 2012
t h e m a r i o l o g y o f t h e i n c a r n a t i o n i n t w o e a r l y m o d e r n c a s t i... more t h e m a r i o l o g y o f t h e i n c a r n a t i o n i n t w o e a r l y m o d e r n c a s t i l i a n m y s t i c a l s e r m o n s Jessica A. Boon Universit y of north carolina-chapel hill la corÓnica 41.1 fall 2012 35-60 By far the most popular spiritual guides across europe during the thirteenthfifteenth centuries articulated the technique of meditation on the life of christ. 1 devotees were encouraged to add fresh details to the known gospel narratives as long as the imaginative additions of participants, dialogues, and backdrops did not contradict the biblical accounts or orthodox doctrine. 2 the figure of christ, particularly during his suffering and death, was central to this form of devotion, yet mary's role, so brief in the actual gospels, typically received the most elaboration of any individual other than christ. mary's human story shared the stage with christ during his life on 1 for an overview of these works, see Bestul. for their centrality in devotional practices in england, see Beckwith and Karnes. for passion devotion in art, see hamburger and macdonald (et al). 2 see the directive in the preface of the lengthiest of the medieval Vita Christi. in latin, Vita Jesu Christi (1:7), in spanish, Vita Christi cartujano (fol. b2r). b o o n L A C o R Ó n I C A 4 1 . 1 , 2 0 1 2 36
Archiv für Reformationgeschichte (Archive of Reformation History) 102 (2011): 243-66.
The Sixteenth century journal, Jan 1, 2007
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Books by Jessica A . Boon
Papers by Jessica A . Boon
vent, was known as a «living saint» for her Marian visions and for the weekly ser-mones during which Jesus reportedly spoke through her enraptured body to extend the biblical narratives and describe celestial festivities. Juana’s Passion spirituality led her to contemplate the materiality of the arma Christi; in particular, the physicality of the cross as splintery yet living wood influenced Juana’s images of the cross as at once instrument of torture leading to death, while also as triumphant, animate,
and even violent. In her visionary sermons, Juana takes the animate materiality of this «holy matter» to its logical extreme, presenting the cross as able to mutate, feed others, enact the liturgy, and subdue the seraphim in a heavenly battle, all actions that helped justify the ultimate action of the living cross participating in the Last Judgment.
The Latin Marian lament “Quis dabit” (literally “Who will give”) began circulating in thirteenth-century Castile and León at a time when devotion to the Virgin Mary was principally associated with miracles and conquest. A central theme of this popular text was Mary’s physical pain rather than her disembodied mental distress at the foot of the cross. I argue that the reception of “Quis dabit” in Castile and León was twofold. In his Duelo de la virgen, Gonzalo de Berceo (c. 1196 – c. 1260) incorporated medieval mourning traditions to emphasize Mary’s rage (rabia) over the loss of her son, highlighting her military might as queen during an age of conquest. While the illustrators of the Cantigas de Santa María were directly informed by passages from the “Quis dabit” in two unusual representations of Mary grasping Jesus’s crucified feet and gazing up at him, these images echoed only her painful, active sorrow in the “Quis dabit,” rather than her rage. The contrasting treatment of the “Quis dabit” in thirteenth-century Castile and León sheds light on how spiritual practices concentrating on Mary’s pain could be incorporated into devotion to a powerful, conquering queen of heaven.