"La pomme d'Eve et le corps d'Adam" (original) (raw)

2012, Adam, le premier homme, textes réunis par Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, Florence, SISMEL/Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2012, p. 135-158.

" Eve's apple and Adam's body " The body of the first man, whose creation is told in the book of Genesis, was affected by the Fall, which had consequences on the microcosm as on the macrocosm: by accepting the fruit of Eve, Adam exposed his body, and this theme was the object of an important reflection in different fields of the knowledge, in particular between XIth and XIIth centuries. The physical, even hyperphysical qualities of Adam's body before the sin are a dominating theme in the XIIth century, and elements and Adam's body stand out as a new and important motive, counterpart of the reflection on Eve's body, which did not change in its constitution after the Fall. For those reasons, the article starts with the creation of the body of the man, but also of the woman, of whom it is hardly separable according to the biblical narrative. The consequences of the sin on Adam's body are then approached, and eventually the new and naturalistic glance that many authors of the XIth and XIIth centuries cast over the prelapsarian body and his change. Not all the thinkers considered this loss as irreversible, and we find a trace of an optimistic motive, that is to say Adam as physician. The XIIIth century is not totally kept apart, but this study stays deliberately in this side of scholastical questiones and controversies on the original sin, as well of the reception of the thought of Aristotle.