Winner of the Haskins Medal

The Haskins Medal for 2011 goes to Caroline Walker Bynum for her book Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond, published in 2007 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. In a disturbing, intriguing, and masterly study of Christ's blood, the author describes the (to us) strange yet logical, emotional yet analytic approaches of theology and devotion. From the late fourteenth century until the early sixteenth century, northern Europe experienced a kind of "blood frenzy," as Bynum calls it. The material reality and sacrificial effect of the blood shed by Christ's torment and execution provoked intense religious emotion as well as harsh criticism of popular practices. Discussion about the nature and implications of Christ's blood reflected unease over what could be taken as unique remains of Christ's body. Because the blood was an effusion, it was a physical symbol of Christ's suffering that remained on earth after the Resurrection, yet it also could be regarded as corruptible matter.

The book moves from the particular to the theological and from a set of problems posed by blood to a profound understanding of medieval notions of sacrifice and redemption. Starting from the shrine of Wilsnack in Brandenburg, once a center of pilgrimage busier than any except Rome and Santiago de Compostela, Bynum lays out in a complicated, yet compelling, manner the central problem of the distance and connection between humanity and God. As in all her work, Bynum is concerned with holiness and materiality, the ways in which matter and the human body are not simply transcended and made irrelevant by a higher spiritual yearning but are rather sites of struggle and pain. Blood here is taken for itself, not just a symbol or a collection of textual or artistic meanings.

Ultimately this monumental book is about the desire for God and the experience of physical suffering, an intense devotion characteristic of the late Middle Ages. The originality, density, clarity, and complexity of Bynum's argument have broad implications for the study of late-medieval theology, religiosity, Christian-Jewish relations, and art.

Respectfully submitted,
JEFFREY HAMBURGER
JENNIFER SUMMIT
PAUL FREEDMAN, Chair