God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (The Middle Ages Series) [Paperback]

Barbara Newman (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Middle Ages Series | Publication Date: February 15, 2005

Contrary to popular belief, the medieval religious imagination did not restrict itself to masculine images of God but envisaged the divine in multiple forms. In fact, the God of medieval Christendom was the Father of only one Son but many daughters—including Lady Philosophy, Lady Love, Dame Nature, and Eternal Wisdom. God and the Goddesses is a study in medieval imaginative theology, examining the numerous daughters of God who appear in allegorical poems, theological fictions, and the visions of holy women. We have tended to understand these deities as mere personifications and poetic figures, but that, Barbara Newman contends, is a mistake. These goddesses are neither pagan survivals nor versions of the Great Goddess constructed in archetypal psychology, but distinctive creations of the Christian imagination. As emanations of the Divine, mediators between God and the cosmos, embodied universals, and ravishing objects of identification and desire, medieval goddesses transformed and deepened Christendom's concept of God, introducing religious possibilities beyond the ambit of scholastic theology and bringing them to vibrant imaginative life.

Building a bridge between secular and religious conceptions of allegorized female power, Newman advances such questions as whether medieval writers believed in their goddesses and, if so, in what manner. She investigates whether the personifications encountered in poetic fictions can be distinguished from those that appear in religious visions and questions how medieval writers reconcile their statements about the multiple daughters of God with orthodox devotion to the Son of God. Furthermore, she examines why forms of feminine God-talk that strike many Christians today as subversive or heretical did not threaten medieval churchmen.

Weaving together such disparate texts as the writings of Latin and vernacular poets, medieval schoolmen, liturgists, and male and female mystics and visionaries, God and the Goddesses is a direct challenge to modern theologians to reconsider the role of goddesses in the Christian tradition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A wonderful book that makes a very big, new interdisciplinary argument. It will have as marked an effect on the field of medieval religious studies as anything published in the last few decades."—Nicholas Watson, Harvard University

"Newman has challenged and confused the established ways of medievalists. . . . When we look back fifty years from now, we will see this book as one that changed the face of scholarship and maybe even our understanding of Christianity itself."—Caroline Walker Bynum, Common Knowledge

"Extraordinary. . . . Although it is impossible to do justice to the breadth of knowledge so impressively displayed in this book, it is important to note how pleasurable it is to follow Newman's path through the alternatingly familiar and strange material she examines."—Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"In this provocatively and eloquently written study, Barbara Newman has directed her lifelong passion for the feminine in medieval Christian literature toward a finely tuned reading of female figures who have previously been approached (or misunderstood?) as allegories, personifications, symbols, or perhaps at best as feminine archetypes."—Speculum

"When Barbara Newman refers to 'goddesses' in the context of medieval belief, she is entirely serious. She cautions us that uncompromising monotheism should not be thought of as an inflexible norm. . . . Her range of evidence is phenomenal. . . . The lack of easy recognizability has impeded us from seeing what Barbara Newman has now placed majestically before us."—Times Literary Supplement

"The thesis is succinctly rendered by the book's title God (not Gods) and the Goddesses. This thesis suggests that the Church failed in its efforts to create a truly monotheistic religion. . . . An important contribution to medieval historical and literary scholarship."—Utopian Studies

"In her erudite and provocative book, Newman has given historians of Christianity much to discuss and to ponder."—International Review of Biblical Studies

"Rich and absorbing."—Modern Philology

"This is a big book, not simply in pages but in sheer breadth of vision."—Medium Aevum

About the Author

Barbara Newman is Professor of English and Religion at Northwestern University and author of From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press (February 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812219112
• ISBN-13: 978-0812219111
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 13.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,483,283 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Barbara Newman does it again, July 6, 2007

By 

D. Kovacs (San Antonio, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (The Middle Ages Series) (Paperback)

Barbara Newman's study of the amazing Hildegard of Bingen (Sister of Wisdom) remains one of the best in the field. In this book, she introduces us to imaginative theology and reveals that the God of medieval Christendom was the Father of one Son but also of many daughters -- including Lady Philosophy, Lady Love, Dame Nature, and Eternal Wisdom. Newman shows us that these goddesses are not just pagan survivals but are distinctive creations of the Christian imagination. Dense and scholarly, this book is also a pleasure to read and has ramifications for our own age of self-conscious struggle with the language and symbols of the Divine.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant scholarship and profound insight, September 16, 2007

By 

Lori Pieper "immaginativa" (Bronx, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (Middle Ages Series) (Hardcover)

I discovered this book some months ago, and have been reading it steadily ever since. It is one of those books that synthesizes so much of what has gone before, but is almost revolutionary in its insight. Barbara Newman has discovered something that has been "hidden in plain sight" throughout the last few centuries of Christianity: how goddesses could co-exist with the one God and of the presence of many varied forms of the "divine feminine" in medieval Catholicism. These include the virtues who were daughters of God, Mary, often seen as his bride, the divine Lady Love, or Frau Karitas, which is identified with both Christ himself and the love that is in the Christian soul. Most fascinating of all is the treatment of Sapientia, Sophia, or Wisdom, a very important figure in both the Old and New Testaments. The very first Christology identified the Second Person of the Trinity with Sophia-Wisdom. While many of the attributes of Wisdom passed over to the Virgin Mary when Christ became definitively identified with the masculine Logos, the memory of Christ as Sapientia was passed down to the Middle Ages and embodied in a number of forms, including the Jesus as maternal wisdom in Julian of Norwich, and Christ-wisdom as the bride of the monk's soul in the Horologium Sapientiae of the fourteenth-century Dominican Henry Suso. The allegorical poems and the many fascinating examples of art that are included in the book show how thoroughly and with what depth these female figures informed medieval "imaginative" theology. I wish that all the Dan-Brown loving neo-pagan goddessess worshipers who write such unscholarly mush about Sophia (without actually knowing any ancient or medieval texts), and who believe that the "divine feminine" has no embodiment in Christianity could read this book. In fact, everyone should read this book if they want to be informed about this fascinating subject.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written, richly illustrated, astonishingly insightful, December 1, 2009

By 

Steve Rozenski (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (The Middle Ages Series) (Paperback)

Barbara Newman's "God and the Goddesses" is a gold standard for what top-notch scholarship about medieval religion should be. She combines deeply learned accounts of standard and lesser-known texts with provocative insights, never sacrificing rigor for trendiness nor textual evidence for ideological goals. She lets the texts speak, and the story they tell is riveting. Although I find it very confusing that so many people are not medievalists, I suspect this book will help tilt the balance in our favor.