Ep 45: Dr. Rabia Gregory on Medieval Christianity and Monastic Worlds

Professor Rabia Gregory’s primary research interest is the history of Christianity in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. She approaches the study of religion through book history, material culture, and theories of gender. Her first book, Marrying Jesus in Medieval and Early Modern Northern Europe: Popular Culture and Religious Reform, published by Ashgate, uses previously unpublished cultural artifacts to revise long-standing assumptions about religion, gender, and popular culture. In the book, she demonstrates that by the fourteenth century, worldly, sexually active brides of Christ, both male and female, were no longer aberrations and provide a history of the dispersion of theology about the bride of Christ in the period between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries and explains how this metaphor, initially devised for a religious elite, became integral to the laity’s pursuit of salvation.

Follow her on Twitter @RabiaGregory