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tree_and_leafI was looking for information on Lukardis of Oberweimar - thirteenth century nun, visionary, and (partially self-inflicted) stigmatic, and discovered that she's discussed in Aviad Kleinberg's Prophets in Their Own Country, which is sadly only available in Freiburg in libraries without power sockets and no loans, but that's by the way. It's a solid academic text, very heavily in the 'sainthood is a social construct negotiated between an individual and the wider community' camp, but against the heavily typological method of classifying saints (' lives), because it's the eccentric little differences between them that is often the most informative.†
My eye was then caught by Amazon US' new tagging system, which is an interesting idea, but I suspect will not, in practice, prove all that useful:
Tags Customers Associate with Similar Products:
cult (394)
fraud (367)
junk science (311)
avoid at all costs (293)
evil (293)
insane (287)
crazy (276)
religion (268)
† In which he's right, although from a theological standpoint I should point out that there are two senses in which someone may be a saint. The first - and theologically the more relevant - is in salvation, regeneration, closeness to God, in which sense Paul could write letters to the saints at Ephesus and else where, or, narrowing the category a little, you can use it of all blessed souls in heaven. That doesn't fit Kleinberg's sense. But when one uses it of the everyday sense of 'the saints', that is those individuals who the church celebrates liturgically, then he's right, although one should of course add that cults or commemorations can and do develop around people who would, in life, have raised their eyebrows at the idea, or, indeed, people who never actually existed or have been confused with someone else.
My eye was then caught by Amazon US' new tagging system, which is an interesting idea, but I suspect will not, in practice, prove all that useful:
Tags Customers Associate with Similar Products:
cult (394)
fraud (367)
junk science (311)
avoid at all costs (293)
evil (293)
insane (287)
crazy (276)
religion (268)
† In which he's right, although from a theological standpoint I should point out that there are two senses in which someone may be a saint. The first - and theologically the more relevant - is in salvation, regeneration, closeness to God, in which sense Paul could write letters to the saints at Ephesus and else where, or, narrowing the category a little, you can use it of all blessed souls in heaven. That doesn't fit Kleinberg's sense. But when one uses it of the everyday sense of 'the saints', that is those individuals who the church celebrates liturgically, then he's right, although one should of course add that cults or commemorations can and do develop around people who would, in life, have raised their eyebrows at the idea, or, indeed, people who never actually existed or have been confused with someone else.
