Wednesday 13 July 2011

Georgia Frank - Gazing upon the Feet: The Ascension of Jesus in Fourth- and Fifth-Century Preaching and Pilgrimage


This paper examines the role of the senses in ancient Christian retellings of Jesus’ ascension to heaven (Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:9-10). The episode prompted later interpreters to focus on the apostles’ sensory perceptions, who were the last to see Jesus with the “eyes of the body,” and those of the angels, who first saw Jesus in heaven. As this paper shall argue, both preachers and pilgrims puzzled over what value--if any-- the physical senses might still hold for lay Christians in a post-Ascension world.  This paper shall focus on sermons from the Feast of the Ascension by John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and Proclus of Constantinople, as well as the writings about the rituals at the holy site, as described by Eusebius, Egeria, Cyril of Jerusalem and Paulinus of Nola). 

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