In ciu. 22.12, Augustine affirms that Christ rose with the marks of the wounds on his body. He later writes that although in the resurrection all deformity will be removed, “we feel such extraordinary affection (afficimur amore) for the blessed martyrs that in the kingdom of God we want to see on their bodies the scars of the wounds which they suffered for Christ’s name; and see them perhaps we shall. For in those wounds there will be no deformity, but only dignity, and the beauty of their valour will shine out, a beauty in the body and yet not of the body.” (ciu. 22.19)
Love seems to change the significance of the martyrs’ wounds. Like Christ’s and unlike ordinary human wounds, “in those wounds there will be no deformity.” This seems to reflect both the love of the martyrs’ for Christ and believers’ love for the martyrs. Love’s acts on earth may alter the resurrected bodily form, which Augustine otherwise anticipates following a certain order of restoration. I examine this re-signification of wounds and how the re-ordering by love of the “restoration order” in the case of the martyrs inflects the ordering of love in the earthly life – the mode in which Augustine undertakes this reflection (“we want to see…”). What should we make of the desire to see the martyrs’ wounds and the kind of imagination shaped by wounds in which there will be no deformity but “a beauty in the body and yet not of the body”?
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