by Tine Van Osselaer I do not need to read the messages to know that what I am looking at is a pile of hope, despair, loss, but above all … trust. The small pieces of paper on the tomb of Anna Katharina Emmerick are the material testimony of faith in the intercessory power ofContinue reading “A pile of hope”
Category Archives: body
Weighing the body
by Kristof Smeyers The time has come now, at last, to talk truth. Our research on stigmata doesn’t directly engage with the possibility of the wounds’ divine or supernatural nature. As cultural historians (albeit from different angles) our interest is in the stigmata’s meaning to people in the past rather than in trying to prove or disprove,Continue reading “Weighing the body”
Transformations
by Kristof Smeyers The beast and the frog In 1916, as the First World War came to a standstill in the trenches of the western front, a great beast went hunting in the forests of New Hampshire, USA. The beast, an odd and disturbing creature by all accounts, stalked a frog. In The myth of disenchantment (pp. 159-160),Continue reading “Transformations”
