TY - BOOK AU - Saltzman,Benjamin A. TI - Bonds of Secrecy: Law, Spirituality, and the Literature of Concealment in Early Medieval England T2 - The Middle Ages Series SN - 9780812296846 AV - BJ1429.5 U1 - 303.3/7 23/eng PY - 2019///] CY - Philadelphia PB - University of Pennsylvania Press KW - Christian hagiography KW - History KW - To 1500 KW - Concealment (Criminal law) KW - England KW - God (Christianity) KW - Omniscience KW - History of doctrines KW - Middle Ages, 600-1500 KW - Latin poetry, Medieval and modern KW - History and criticism KW - Monastic and religious life KW - Riddles, English (Old) KW - Secrecy KW - Law and legislation KW - Religious aspects KW - Christianity KW - Spirituality KW - History-Medieval 500 to 1500 KW - Literature (Scholarly) KW - Religion/Religious Studies KW - LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Medieval KW - bisacsh KW - Cultural Studies KW - Literature KW - Medieval and Renaissance Studies KW - Religion KW - Religious Studies N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; A Note on References and Translations --; Abbreviations --; Introduction --; PART I. Law --; Chapter 1. Political Epistemology and Crimes of Concealment in Anglo-Saxon Law --; Chapter 2. The Secret Seized: Theft, Death, and Testimony --; PART II. Spirituality --; Chapter 3. Monastic Life and the Regulation of Secrecy --; Chapter 4. Making Space for Spiritual Secrecy --; Chapter 5. Seeing in Secret: Saints, Hagiography, and the Ethics of Concealment and Discovery --; PART III. LITERATURE --; Chapter 6. Binding Secrets, Solving Riddles --; Chapter 7. Worldly Concealment, Divine Knowledge, and the Hermeneutics of Faith --; Chapter 8. Reading Hidden Meaning: Between Interpretive Pride and Eschatological Humility --; Afterword --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Index --; Acknowledgments; restricted access N2 - What did it mean to keep a secret in early medieval England? It was a period during which the experience of secrecy was intensely bound to the belief that God knew all human secrets, yet the secrets of God remained unknowable to human beings. In Bonds of Secrecy, Benjamin A. Saltzman argues that this double-edged conception of secrecy and divinity profoundly affected the way believers acted and thought as subjects under the law, as the devout within monasteries, and as readers before books. One crucial way it did so was by forming an ethical relationship between the self and the world that was fundamentally different from its modern reflex. Whereas today the bearers of secrets might be judged for the consequences of their reticence or disclosure, Saltzman observes, in the early Middle Ages a person attempting to conceal a secret was judged for believing he or she could conceal it from God. In other words, to attempt to hide from God was to become ensnared in a serious sin, but to hide from the world while deliberately and humbly submitting to God's constant observation was often a hallmark of spiritual virtue.Looking to law codes and religious architecture, hagiographies and riddles, Bonds of Secrecy shows how legal and monastic institutions harnessed the pervasive and complex belief in God's omniscience to produce an intense culture of scrutiny and a radical ethics of secrecy founded on the individual's belief that nothing could be hidden from God. According to Saltzman, this ethics of secrecy not only informed early medieval notions of mental activity and ideas about the mind but also profoundly shaped the practices of literary interpretation in ways that can inform our own contemporary approaches to reading texts from the past UR - https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812296846 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780812296846 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780812296846/original ER -