Bodies Breaking Down: Pain, Suffering, and Christian Identity in Merovingian Gaul, c. 481–751 (2012)

Undergraduate: Amelia Kennedy

Faculty Advisor: Marcus Bull
Department: History

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This project examines the role of pain in the development of Christian identity in Merovingian Gaul, c. 481-751. During this time, Christian bishops rose in status as they filled the power voids left by the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire. Through their ministry to the laity and their promotion of saints’ cults, these religious authorities shaped attitudes toward the relationship between the body and the supernatural. Bishops and other educated Christians authored the sources analyzed in this project. Many of their texts are hagiographical, though chronicles, sermons, epitaphs, letters, and poems have been consulted as well. In particular, the project explores narratives of disease, demonic possession, and self-mortification. It argues that representations of pain crafted a view of the body as something that interacted constantly with supernatural forces and that was remarkably susceptible to influence from those forces. Two major implications of this view include the diminishment of individual identity and the recognition of the body, which was inseparable from religious experience, as a source of both positive and negative potential. Bodily mutability meant that – for better or worse – the individual could be completely remodeled and assimilated into a new, collective role.