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Aromatherapy: I'm not sure when the word was coined, but it came into vogue in the last decade. From Harris Teeter to the Body Shop, groceries and specialty shops do a brisk trade in scented candles, lotions, and bath gels. At the end of a day spent squinting at your computer, you can rest your tired eyes under a clove-scented eye mask. I confess to spritzing a little lavender sheet spray on my pillow before turning off my lamp at night.
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These scented goods promise not only olfactory pleasure but spiritual and personal transformation. "2 New Aromatherapy Blends" from Bath and Body Works will "Give your mood a makeover." "Because scent is at the center of a calm mind" you should purchase Lavish Aromas Aromatherapy Pillows. According to aromatherapy expert Francoise Rapp, the combination of rose, patchouli and orange can "Awaken … Your Sense of Self." Comfycountrycreations.com hawks scented neck pillows, which will not only "give relief to sore, aching muscles" but also "soothe … the soul."
It's not just New Agers who are interested in scent. Bob and Karen Tosterud have created a line of Christian candles called His Essence. The Resurrection candle is based on Nicodemus' myrrh and aloe (see John 19:39-40); the servanthood candle was inspired by the nard Mary poured on Jesus' feet in John 12:3. These candles are billed as "creations to comfort the soul," and the Tosteruds hope the candles will help those who light them "Sense Him in a new way."
The spirituality of smell may be trendy, but it is not new. Scenting Salvation, Susan Harvey's fascinating and engrossing study of the place of smell in the early church, makes clear that scent and smelling have long been understood as crucial pieces of the Christian spiritual life.
Scenting Salvation creatively and insightfully reframes important debates. Just how world-renouncing was asceticism? How did early church figures, from Augustine to Chrysostom, think about the body? What is the relationship between the development of Christian piety and Christianity's imperial location?
And implicit in Scenting Salvation is also a word to contemporary Christians. When New Age aromatherapists direct our attention to the sense of smell, they may be on to something. Yet the aims of aromatherapy are not identical with the theories of smell articulated in the early church. Modern-day aromatherapy promises to help us relax, find inner peace, and get in a good mood. None of those is a bad goal, of course. But the Christian tradition suggests sensory engagement has fruits beyond relaxation. Rather than sniffing to retreat into a pool of calm, we smell in order to engage creation, and, finally, to know God.
Harvey's entry point into Christian smelling is the well-documented embrace of incense in Christian worship. Until the late 4th century, Christian writers denounced incense. This suspicion of sensory practices was, says Harvey, part of a broader "austerity" in early church practice, one mark of marginal Christians' "general alienation from worldly (non-Christian) order." Yet by the 5th century, smell came to play a prominent role in Christian piety. Worship services became "drenched in the fragrance of incense" and perfumed holy oil took an increasingly prominent place in liturgy.
Philosophical and aesthetic theories of scent accompanied this rise of olfactory piety. Animating Christians' discussions about smell were questions about the senses and epistemology: How could Christians know one another, and how could they know the Lord? For Christians in late antiquity, smells "reveal[ed] identity." Smell was a tool of discernment, which helped Christians dissect a person's moral condition, determine whether God was present or absent, and perceive the presence of demons. Holy people, for example, gave off a winsome fragrance even in situations where they should have smelled wretched. Consider St. Irene, the abbess of Chrysobalanton. One day, while she was praying, her clothing caught fire. A fellow sister beat out the flames. Then, as the sisters pulled the still hot cloth from Irene's burned flesh, "a strange fragrance … incomparably more fragrant than any perfume" wafted out of Irene's wounds, wounds that ought to have smelled vile.
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