Union between the body and the soul Anabela Katreničová, PhD Department of Classical Languages Pavol Jozef Šafárik University Košice, Slovakia DIALOGO CONFERENCES & JOURNAL journal homepage: http://dialogo-conf.com This paper was presented in the The 4th Virtual International Conference on the Dialogue between Science and Theology. (DIALOGO-CONF 2017) held online, on the Journal’s website, from November 3 - 10, 2017 eISSN: 2393-1744, cdISSN: 2392-9928 printISSN: 2457-9297, ISSN-L 2392-9928 ISBN 978-80-554-1408-9 Session 1. Art and Literature & Religion ABSTRACT The theme of the five senses in the medieval literature is very specific. We recognize the three variations of this subject in the literature of medieval Austria and Slovakia written by three theologians Thomas Ebendorfer de Haselbach, Nicolaus de Dinkelsbuhel and Johannes Roznawiensis Jambor. In their teaching they represent the five senses as the instruments of the soul to know the external world, but also as the gates by which the sins and death enter into the soul. In addition, they divide the senses on the interior and exterior senses to express their function in the body of man. These three men influenced the philosophical and theological ideas of their epoch and created the fascinating system to understand the union between the body and the soul. ARTICLE INFO Article history: Received 1 September 2017 Received in revised form 30 September Accepted 2 October 2017 Available online 15 December 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.4.1.1 Keywords: Middle – Ages; latin; philosophy; theology; Thomas Ebendorfer; Nicolaus de Dinkelsbuhel; Johannes Roznawiensis Jambor; DIALOGO JOURNAL 4 : 1 (2017) 19 - 26 - 19 - Medieval theology concerning the five senses I. INTRODUCTION The study of the five interior and exterior senses was developed at the University of Vienna in 15 th century. Three men, theologians and philosophers stood at the beginning of this philosophic system: Nicolaus de Dinkelsbuhel, Thomas Ebendorfer de Haselbach and finally Johannes Roznawiensis Jambor with their treatises dedicated to the problem of the five senses. The point of departure of their way of thinking is represented by platonic dualistic idea that the man possesses the senses of the body, which are united to the senses of the soul. In this paper we try to present, hence, the medieval comprehension of the five senses in the light of the thinking that has been spread in the region of the medieval Austria and Slovakia. We focus on the treatises written by Dinkelsbuhel, Ebendorfer and Jambor who were the only ones to describe and also to resolve the difficulties attached to the understanding of the five senses. CC BY-NC-SA