Following a long trajectory from late antiquity to the high Middle Ages, Dyan Elliott offers a provocative analysis of the changing religious, emotional, and sexual meanings of the metaphor of the sponsa Christi and of the increasing anxiety surrounding the somatization of female spirituality.

Introduction
Chapter 1. A Match Made in Heaven: The Bride in the Early Church
Chapter 2. The Church Fathers and the Embodied Bride
Chapter 3. The Barbarian Queen
Chapter 4. An Age of Affect, 1050-1200 (1): Consensuality and Vocation
Chapter 5. An Age of Affect, 1050-1200 (2): The Conjugal Reflex
Chapter 6. The Eroticized Bride of Hagiography
Chapter 7. Descent into Hell
Conclusion
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments