Scenting Salvation

"Susan Ashbrook Harvey has surely produced the definitive analysis of the role of scent in Early Christian ritual and theological discourse. This is a welcome new trajectory in the study of religion and the body."--Patricia Cox Miller, author of "The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography

Explores the role of bodily, sensory experience in early Christianity by focusing on the importance of smell in ancient Mediterranean culture. This book argues that ancient Christians used olfactory experience for purposes of a distinctive religious epistemology: formulating knowledge of the divine in order to yield a particular human identity.

Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction 1. The Olfactory Context: Smelling the Early Christian World A Martyr's Scent Sacrifice: The Aroma of Relation Daily Smells: Powers and Promises God's Perfume: Imagined Glory and the Scent of Life 2. The Christian Body: Ritually Fashioned Experience A New Place A Revelatory World Participatory Knowing: Ritual Scents and Devotional Uses Participatory Knowing: Scents and Sense Excursus: Incense Offerings in the Syriac Transitus Mariae 3. Olfaction and Christian Knowing Sense Perception in the Ancient Mind Christian Senses in a Christian World Olfactory Analogies as Theological Tools Revelatory Scents: Olfaction and Identity Remembering Knowledge: Liturgical Commentaries Excursus: On the Sinful Woman in Syriac Tradition 4. Redeeming Scents: Ascetic Models The Smell of Danger: Marking Sensory Contexts The Fragrance of Virtue: Reordering Olfactory Experience The Spiritual Senses: Relocating Perception Ascetic Practice and Embodied Liturgy The Stylite's Model A Syriac Tradition Continued 5. Sanctity and Stench Ascetic Stench: Sensation and Dissonance Stench and Morality: Mortality and Sin Ascetic Senses Asceticism: Holy Stench, Holy Weapon 6. Resurrection, Sensation, and Knowledge Bodily Expectation Salvific Knowing Notes Bibliography Index