The pope's body
Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Author), David Spencer Peterson (Translator)
"In contrast to the role traditionally fulfilled by secular rulers, the pope has been perceived as an individual person existing in a body subject to decay and death, yet at the same time a corporeal representation of Christ and the Church, eternity and salvation. Using an array of evidence - testaments, chronicles, liturgical rites, and scientific treatises - from the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries, Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani addresses the paradox. He studies the rituals, metaphors and images of the pope's body as they developed over time and shows how they resulted in the expectation that the pope's body be simultaneously physical and metaphorical."--BOOK JACKET
Print Book, English, 2000
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2000