Christocentric Vs Albigenianism

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As they were two influential beliefs around the same centuries in the medieval era, both Christocentric/affective spirituality and Albigensianism can find common ground and as well as polar opposition between each other. If there was one thing both views encouraged, it was the practice of asceticism. Both beliefs practiced rigorous discipline, but the practices were often self-harming and unsafe. For Albigensians, practices included starvation and abstinence (Weber) and the encouragement and carrying out of suicide (CP1 16), while those who followed Christocentric/affective spirituality would "[join] with the crucifix through physical suffering both involuntary and voluntary -- that is, through illness and through self-mortification," through …show more content…

Similarly, those who were in line with Christocentric/affective spirituality did it to move closer in relation to God, that by their own sufferings they could "grow closer to Jesus, who suffered with them on the cross" (CP1 …show more content…

The humanity of the world, and especially the humanity of Jesus Christ and his Passion and death, was the entire focus of the development of and the point of devotion in Christocentric and affective spirituality. Imagining scenes from Jesus' life on Earth and his human feelings in order to move oneself to compassion was a large part of the affective spirituality. Women of the medieval era used their femaleness as a sign of closeness to Christ, and that for Christ as "divinity is to humanity, [for women, it was] as male is to female" and the Incarnation of Christ was the "ultimate identification" (12). Women with the mentality of affective spirituality expresse\ confidence in the Incarnation in their devotion to the Eucharist, and revered "Christ's physicality, his corporality, his being-in-the-bodyness; Christ's humanity" as above all, that his humanity was his "body and blood"

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