This session is intended to focus on embodied knowledge and the multiple ways that knowledge is transmitted and received across time, space and cultures. Each paper explores a case study of a premodern artistic, ritual or textual knowledge transmission, showing how divine bodies materialized through human bodies, or human actions and representations, may act to influence the human world or deliver prognostic messages.
In November 1666, an illustrated book arrived in Edirne, Turkey, captivating its Ottoman spectators with peculiar images, including an image of a hybrid monster that theologian Muḥammad bin ‘Abd al-Rasūl al-Barzanjī (1630-1691) documented in one of his works. A close examination of al-Barzanjī's description led to an intriguing discovery: the images were Western astronomical maps that illustrated the trajectory of two comets that appeared in the years 1664-65, printed in Polish astronomer Stanislaw Lubieniecki's (1623-1675) Theatrum Cometicum. The appearance of these comets sparked scientific enthusiasm and apocalyptic fears in European and Ottoman lands, as reactions spread through the communication paths of the “Republic of Letters,” a community of intellectuals who exchanged ideas via correspondence. By delving into the intersections of science, religion, culture, and imagination, this paper explores this cross-cultural “encounter” and seeks to unravel the adaptability of celestial narratives and their impact on diverse audiences.
The tempura-on-panel predella was painted between 1467 and 1469 for the Confraternity of the Corpus Domini and their oratory in the Corpus Domini church in Urbino. It consists of six panels detailing an account of a popular antisemitic legend focused on the desecration of the host. While the work represents a set of intimate interiors, the scale of the action is cosmic, involving humans, angels, and demons interacting over the injury to God's body -- a suite of moments that simultaneously reflect ordinary urban interactions and a cosmic struggle. The cultural centrality of the Eucharist during this period, the somatic nature of Communion, and the positioning of the artwork within the church all contribute to the emotional impact of the depicted events -- an impact that derives from complex entanglements of culture, the senses, and sensemaking.
This paper theorizes ibbur (mystical pregnancy) as a model for ritual, cultural, and cosmic synthesis in Jewish kabbalistic works from the 16th-20th centuries. Over time, we see that while the porous, open models of body and cosmos are relatively consistent, both the body and the rituals to impregnate it absorb more and more so that it literally becomes pregnant with the entire cosmos, with different religious practies, and with new cultural and scientific discourse. This state of absorption is understood as a constant and idealized as spiritual, religious and psychological health.