Om forfatteren
David N. Bell is professor emeritus of religious studies at Memorial University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He retired as head of the department of religious studies at the end of 2011. He has published some two dozen books, more than a hundred articles, and a great number of book vis mere reviews. His most recent book, published in 2017, is A Saint in the Sun: Praising Saint Bernard in the France of Louis XIV (Cistercian Publications). vis mindre
Værker af David N. Bell
Many Mansions: An Introduction to the Development & Diversity of Medieval Theology (Cistercian Studies Series) (1989) 55 eksemplarer
A Cloud of Witnesses: An Introductory History of the Development of Christian Doctrine (1989) 30 eksemplarer
A Cloud of Witnesses: An Introductory History of the Development of Christian Doctrine to 500 AD, New Revised Edition (2007) 26 eksemplarer
What Nuns Read: Books and Libraries in Medieval English Nunneries (Cistercian Studies Series) (1995) 13 eksemplarer
Understanding Rance: The Spirituality Of The Abbot Of La Trappe In Context (Cistercian Studies Series) (2005) 5 eksemplarer
A Saint in the Sun: Praising Saint Bernard in the France of Louis XIV (Cistercian Studies) (2017) 5 eksemplarer
An Index of Cistercian Authors and Works in Medieval Library Catalogues in Great Britain (Cistercian Studies Series) (1994) 2 eksemplarer
Associated Works
The life of Isaac of Alexandria ; & The martyrdom of Saint Macrobius (1988) — Oversætter, nogle udgaver — 16 eksemplarer
Studies in Plato and the Platonic Tradition: Essays Presented to John Whittaker (1997) — Bidragyder — 8 eksemplarer
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Shenoute's animal moment? He rebukes a camel for rejecting her foal and nurtures it himself. In this, at least, Shenoute models a non-anthropocentric stance towards the right, the law, and life, in which what matters is not species but proper behavior. Most of the other animals in Bell's anthology, however, are treated as animals, which is to say, as fundamentally of less value than humans. They are thus often servants, recalling--as David Salter stresses--the animal obedience in Eden or the peaceful kingdom promised in Isaiah's eschatology; or apt targets of charity, whose natural degradation before humans all the better sets off the saint's great love (we have, then, yet another reminder that charity impedes a structural critique of resource allocation and what Zizek terms "objective violence"); or thieves, having to suppress their appetites before human agriculture, criminal for eating fruit, grain, sheep, piglets, or animal skins (that is, parchment) territorially marked by humans; or, finally, pets, singularly loved in an act of what Cary Wolfe calls "exquisite bad faith." Animals hunted and sheltered, dragons rescued from Arthur's heroism, cows resurrected when stolen for a lord's table: these are resources in political boundary disputes, which is, as Dominic Alexander argues, how most stories of animals and saints should be understood.
But neither the human production of itself as human by degrading animal being, nor the animal as a chit in political struggles, nor the animal as a symbol in some political struggle are all that these animal stories offer us. Shenoute's story is sufficient evidence of that. As Bell remarks, a wicked animal or an animal that could be excommunicated is an animal with responsibility and choice, or indeed an animal belonging in some way to the community of believers.
And what of the animal characteristics, their merely bodily existence and their irrationality? A great many stories describe animals as behaving "as if" (presumably sicut in the Latin originals) they had human reason, which recalls the "aussi com" of the Wild Herdsman's suppliant, battered oxen, Barring animals from language by confining them to bodies capable only of inauthentically imitating reason is the paradigmatic act of carnophallogocentrism. Yet Bartholomew of Farne rescues a duckling whose mother begged help in her specifically anatine manner; Benedict of Nursia and a cawing, circling raven struggle to communicate with each other; and a thieving raven hopes for Cuthbert's forgiveness: By speaking with and through their bodies, these animals rebuke the carnophallogocentric (or indeed the outmoded AI) conceit that authentic language and community require disembodiment. This, far more than the charitable resurrection of animals--that, at any rate, will eventually die again, abandoned as immortal humans ascend to paradise or descend to hell--and far more than the frequent condemnation of carnivores for eating what they must, challenges the disembodiment sought after by Western metaphysics and the regime of the human this quest sustains. In an anthology assembled by a scholar himself so emotionally and bodily present to us (he complains, for example, of being unable to excommunicate pests from his garden), this may be the proper, best lesson.… (mere)