 |
 |
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture On Monday, September 15, 2008, at 8:38 am, Chara Armon wrote: > Recently I noticed John Ruusbroec's recommendations of the work of > bees and > ants as a model for human spirituality (in his Spiritual Espousals), > and I'm > wondering whether anyone has thoughts on any past history of this > concept > or on other writers who expressed it. Ancient Greek and Latin writers were accustomed to using social insects as comparanda for human activity. Both bees and ants often figure in similes evoking numbers of people in motion. Ants are also famous as paragons of industry and thrift (cf. the Aesopic fable of the ant and the cicada [later, the ant and the grasshopper]). Detailed accounts of bees in a hive occur repeatedly as illustrations of human social and political organization. On top of that, there is a tradition in Greek and Roman antiquity of representing souls as bees and of using bees as images specifically of _just_ souls (for the latter point, cf. the discussion in Maurizio Bettini, _Anthropology and Roman Culture: Kinship, Time, Images of the Soul_ [Johns Hopkins U. P., 1991]). So it comes as no surprise to find rhetorically well educated Christian writers of late antiquity adapting these cultural commonplaces to Christian contexts. Cf., for example, the translated matter here from Origen on ants and bees: http://tinyurl.com/6mltu5 or John Chrysostom's valuation, in the matter translated here, of the bee as one who labors in behalf others (set your browser to find 'bee'): http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf109.xix.xiv.html Good hunting! Best, John Dillon ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html