check
Purity and Pollution in Late Antique and Early Medieval Culture and Society | Israel Institute for Advanced Studies

Purity and Pollution in Late Antique and Early Medieval Culture and Society

דשכשדכשכשכשדגכשדכשדכ

[RG # 168] Purity and Pollution in Late Antique and Early Medieval Culture and Society

September 1, 2021 – June 30, 2022

Organizer:

Yaniv Fox (Bar-Ilan University)

Late antique and medieval cultures were preoccupied with cleanliness. Everything they held dear was susceptible to corruption, a concern that weighed heavily on the minds of contemporary writers. Early Christians were driven to produce a response to Jewish and pagan perspectives on the question of purity and pollution very early on. As Muslims advanced into Christian lands, they too came into contact with competing notions of purity and pollution and were made to respond.

Views on purity and pollution reflected a wide range of cultural preoccupations and have been employed to effect profound social changes in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The concept of pollution is therefore a useful lens with which to observe late antique and medieval societies, whose most central convictions were often anchored to the complementary concepts of purity and impurity. For Christian communities, the liturgical year divided time by alternating between sacred and profane. Jewish and Islamic dietary laws restricted the body’s access to nourishment by forbidding certain foods and drinks, regulating the production of permitted food, and controlling bodily purification cycles. In Christianity, access to the shrines of saints and to their relics was gained only after a meticulous process of physical and emotional cleansing. Similarly, handling a Torah or a Qur’an were actions that had clear consequences in terms of purity and pollution. 

The pure/impure dichotomy is pervasive in contemporary compositions, from all fields of knowledge. Medicinal texts were aimed at restoring balance to the ailing body and expelling contaminants. This was also a prevalent motif of thaumaturgically themed episodes in hagiographies, which depicted the discharges and convulsions of the impure body healed by the presence of the saint. Heresiological and theological texts defined the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy and orthopraxy, condemning divergent expressions of the faith as agents of contamination. The detailed discussions of hypothetical ablution scenarios in Islamic ṭahāra legislation reflect a similar concern. 

The objective of the research group is to investigate how the concept of pollution was understood and applied by late antique and medieval authors, with a focus on the period spanning from the fourth to the thirteenth centuries, in all regions in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims wrote during this chronological timeframe. Thematically, it is interested in expressions of pollution in such areas as dogma, diet, medicine, sexuality, law, and violence.

 

Yaniv Fox: Featured Fellow>

 

Members

fellow

Jennifer Davis

FELLOW
The Catholic University of America

 

 

vis is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the Catholic University of America. Her research interest is early medieval
hJennifer Daistory, especially the Carolingians.

 

 

 

 

fellow

Éric Fournier

FELLOW
West Chester University

Éric Fournier is a Professor in the Department of History at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. His research interests are: late antiquity (history); Episcopal exile; persecution; rhetoric of persecution; early Christianity; North Africa; and vandals.

fellow

Yaniv Fox

FELLOW
Bar-Ilan University

Yanix Fox is a senior lecturer in the Department of General History at Bar-Ilan University. His research interests are Late Antique and Early Medieval history.

 

fellow

Angela Kinney

FELLOW
University of Vienna
Angela is a researcher in the Institute of Classical Philology, Medieval and Neo-Latin Studies at the University of Vienna.
fellow

Daniella Talmon-Heller

FELLOW
Ben-Gurion University
Daniella is a professor in the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Her research interests are the history of the Middle East in the Medieval period.
fellow

Deborah Tor

FELLOW
University of Notre Dame
Deborah Tor is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Notre Dame. Her research interest is medieval Islamic history.

Events