Gary:
These are good questions, and ones which I myself am very interested in.
My interest, especially in the term "spirituality", stemmed similarly from
the fact that it tends to get conflated with other terms, such as piety
and devotion, but also "interiority" and worst of all, "popular religion"
(maybe Karen Jolly will chime in here; we've discussed this before). As
far as spirituality goes, I doubt medieval dicionaries will be of help.
The terms is not a medieval, but a modern one, coined in the 19thC by
French scholars. Attempts have been made to tie the term to the Pauline
"pneuma" and its adjective "pneumatikos": spirituality here means
something like life under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. On this usage
see William Principie's article "Toward Defining Spirituality", _Sciences
Religieuses_ 12:2 (1983): 127-41. I myself am skeptical of this usage, as
it requires accepting a sharp Pauline distinction whose applicabilty may
not be as wide as we think. The defintion that seems to be current today
is the wider, more anthropological one that spirituality has to do with
how religion impacts culture and vice versa (On this see C. Bynum, _Jesus
as Mother_). The problem here is that such a defintion is too wide, and
doesn't sufficiently differentiate spirituality from other terms, as you
point out. But that is how the term is being currently used.
As for piety and devotion, hopefully others will tackle these.
--Scott DeGregorio
Univ. of Toronto
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