And the Word was Made Flesh

Divining the Female Body in Nineteenth-Century American and Catholic Culture

Bibliographic Data

ID4517463
AuthorsMarie Pagliarini (corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume17
Issue2
Pages213-245
Publication date2007-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligion and American Culture A Journal of Interpretation (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1052-1151 • E-ISSN: 1533-8568
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1525/rac.2007.17.2.213
OpenAlexW2009871649
LanguageEN
References cited32

This article sheds light on the complex interactions among knowledge, power, and the body in nineteenth-century American and Catholic culture through examining a series of "miracle cures" of Catholic women that took place in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., between 1824 and 1838. It analyzes the gender and power dynamics of the cures and of the stories members of the Catholic hierarchy told about the cures, situating both within the religious and cultural context of nineteenth-century North America. The bodies of cured women were scrutinized and "read" very carefully by Catholic men as a means of access to divine knowledge, and the article explores the cultural and theological factors that legitimated this process. Finally, the reading of women's bodies took place in the context of Protestant anti-Catholicism, and I argue that, given the sympolic importance of female bodies at the time-pure, healthy female bodies "incarnated" spiritual power and truth-stories of miracle cures were a means of validating Catholicism in the face of attacks against it

Aesthetics · Art · Hierarchy · Miracle · Political science · Protestantism · Social science · Sociology · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Gender Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Moravian Church and William Blake · Philosophy · Religious studies

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