ABSTRACT
There have been studies of olfactory theology that touch on late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, but religious thinking about smell in the period after about 900 has not been examined in detail. Therefore, this chapter provides an overview of some major categories of the sense of smell in religious thinking up to c. 1200, when scholastic thinking began to alter traditional olfactory theology. Like physical smelling, the spiritual sense of smell involved the sense organ and odors. Medieval theology recognized two main types of odors, the sweet odor of sanctity and the foul stench of sin, each of which could be subdivided. The odor of sanctity had several subtypes, but the most common were the aroma of martyrdom, the fragrance of virtue, the perfume of good works, and the scent of a good reputation. Sinful stench was less commonly subdivided, but the stenches of heresy and lust are the most common types. The spiritual sense organ, which has been neglected by modern scholars, was the nose of discretion that judged between good and evil just as the physical nose judged good and bad odors.
