The Materiality of Devotion in Late Medieval Northern Europe

The Materiality of Devotion in Late Medieval Northern Europe PDF Author: Henning Laugerud
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781846825033
Category : Christian art and symbolism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This volume explores aspects of the devotional world of late medieval northern Europe, with a special emphasis on how people interacted with texts, images, artifacts, and other instruments of piety at the level of the senses. The book focuses on the materiality of medieval religion and the manner in which Christians were encouraged to engage their senses in their devotional practices: gazing, hearing, touching, tasting, and committing to memory. In so doing, it brings together the ideals of medieval mystical writing and the increasingly tangible and material practice of piety, which would become characteristic of the period. [Subject: History, Medieval Studies, European Studies, Religious Studies]

The Materiality of Devotion in Late Medieval Northern Europe

The Materiality of Devotion in Late Medieval Northern Europe PDF Author: Henning Laugerud
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781846825033
Category : Christian art and symbolism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume explores aspects of the devotional world of late medieval northern Europe, with a special emphasis on how people interacted with texts, images, artifacts, and other instruments of piety at the level of the senses. The book focuses on the materiality of medieval religion and the manner in which Christians were encouraged to engage their senses in their devotional practices: gazing, hearing, touching, tasting, and committing to memory. In so doing, it brings together the ideals of medieval mystical writing and the increasingly tangible and material practice of piety, which would become characteristic of the period. [Subject: History, Medieval Studies, European Studies, Religious Studies]

From the Material to the Mystical in Late Medieval Piety

From the Material to the Mystical in Late Medieval Piety PDF Author: Racha Kirakosian
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108841236
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Examining correlations between the material and the mystical, this books investigates collective writing and devotional culture in late medieval piety.

Christian Materiality

Christian Materiality PDF Author: Caroline Walker Bynum
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781935408116
Category : Church history
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Late Medieval Christianity's encounter with miraculous materials viewed in the context of changing conceptions of matter itself. In the period between 1150 and 1550, an increasing number of Christians in western Europe made pilgrimage to places where material objects--among them paintings, statues, relics, pieces of wood, earth, stones, and Eucharistic wafers--allegedly erupted into life through such activities as bleeding, weeping, and walking about. Challenging Christians both to seek ever more frequent encounters with miraculous matter and to turn to an inward piety that rejected material objects of devotion, such phenomena were by the fifteenth century at the heart of religious practice and polemic. In Christian Materiality, Caroline Walker Bynum describes the miracles themselves, discusses the problems they presented for both church authorities and the ordinary faithful, and probes the basic scientific and religious assumptions about matter that lay behind them. She also analyzes the proliferation of religious art in the later Middle Ages and argues that it called attention to its materiality in sophisticated ways that explain both the animation of images and the hostility to them on the part of iconoclasts. Seeing the Christian culture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as a paradoxical affirmation of the glory and the threat of the natural world, Bynum's study suggests a new understanding of the background to the sixteenth-century reformations, both Protestant and Catholic. Moving beyond the cultural study of "the body"--a field she helped to establish--Bynum argues that Western attitudes toward body and person must be placed in the context of changing conceptions of matter itself. Her study has broad theoretical implications, suggesting a new approach to the study of material culture and religious practice.

The Viewer and the Printed Image in Late Medieval Europe

The Viewer and the Printed Image in Late Medieval Europe PDF Author: DavidS. Areford
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351539671
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 622

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Book Description
Structured around in-depth and interconnected case studies and driven by a methodology of material, contextual, and iconographic analysis, this book argues that early European single-sheet prints, in both the north and south, are best understood as highly accessible objects shaped and framed by individual viewers. Author David Areford offers a synthetic historical narrative of early prints that stresses their unusual material nature, as well as their accessibility to a variety of viewers, both lay and monastic. This volume represents a shift in the study of the early printed image, one that mirrors the widespread movement in art history away from issues of production, style, and the artist toward issues of reception, function, and the viewer. Areford's approach is intensely grounded in the object, especially the unacknowledged material complexity of the print as a portable, malleable, and accessible image that depended on a response that was not only visual but often physical, emotional, and psychological. Recognizing that early prints were not primarily designed for aesthetic appreciation, the author analyzes how their meanings stemmed from specific functions involving private devotion, protection, indulgences, the cult of saints, pilgrimage, exorcism, the art of memory, and anti-Semitic propaganda. Although the medium's first century was clearly transitional and experimental, Areford explores how its potential to impact viewers in new ways?both positive and negative?was quickly realized.

Domestic Devotions in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Domestic Devotions in Medieval and Early Modern Europe PDF Author: Salvador Ryan
Publisher: MDPI
ISBN: 3039289136
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Domestic devotion has become an increasingly important area of research in recent years, with the publication of a number of significant studies on the early modern period in particular. This Special Issue aims to build on these works and to expand their range, both geographically and chronologically. This collection focuses on lived religion and the devotional practices found in the domestic settings of late medieval and early modern Europe. More particularly, it investigates the degree to which the experience of personal or familial religious practice in the domestic realm intersected with the more public expression of faith in liturgical or communal settings. Its broad geographical range (spanning northern, southern, central and eastern Europe) includes practices related to Christianity, Judaism and Islam. This Special Issue will be of interest to historians, art historians, medievalists, early modernists, historians of religion, anthropologists and theologians, as well as those interested in the history of material religious culture. It also offers important insights into research areas such as gender studies, histories of the emotions and histories of the senses.

Vision, Devotion, and Self-Representation in Late Medieval Art

Vision, Devotion, and Self-Representation in Late Medieval Art PDF Author: Alexa Sand
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107032229
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
Focuses on one of the most attractive features of late medieval manuscript illumination: the portrait of the book owner at prayer within the pages of her prayer-book.

Byzantine Materiality

Byzantine Materiality PDF Author: Evan Freeman
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110980738
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This volume explores the power of matter and materials in the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantium. Recent attention to matter as dynamic and meaningful constitutes an emerging, interdisciplinary field of inquiry known as materiality, new materialism, or the material turn. Materials can be symbolic, but matter can also act on human subjects. This volume builds on these insights to consider the role of matter, materials, form, and embodied experiences in Byzantium. In many respects, Byzantine materiality represents a continuation of its Greco-Roman inheritance, which was also shared by neighboring peoples such as the Umayyads and Abbasids. But the Byzantines also developed their own, unique perspectives on matter and form, as with their parsing of the sacred materialities of icons, the Eucharist, and relics. Chapters in this volume consider the cultural meanings and functions of materials such as gold and ivory, the materiality of icons and relics, experiences of objects, as well as Byzantine philosophies of matter and form. Materiality takes center stage in Byzantine constructions of power, luxury, belief, and identity, which will be of interest to scholars and students of Byzantium and the wider medieval world.

Remembering the Reformation

Remembering the Reformation PDF Author: Declan Marmion
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506423280
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
The dramatic unfolding of events after Martin Luther’s revolutionary act led to the ultimate, and seemingly irreparable, fissure with Roman Catholicism: excommunication and schism. From the point of that rupture, up to and including most of the 20th century, the history of theological and ecclesial readings of Luther has been controlled largely by a rubric assuming the inevitability of fracture and the portrayal of Luther as a veritable bête noire of Catholic history and theology. Remembering the Reformation enters into this contested history and pursues a more nuanced and considered reading of Luther’s relationship with the Catholic tradition, from his Augustinian roots and medieval training to his reading of scripture and investigations of ecclesiology, as well as his continued relevance and challenge to Catholic theology today. An international consortium of scholars, Catholic and Protestant, contribute to this volume and provide a thoughtful, textured reimagining of Luther for an ecumenical future. Marking the 500th anniversary of the inauguration of Luther’s movement for reform, this volume aims to bring Catholics, Protestants, and Evangelicals into conversation in a shared, but distinct, theological space.

Materiality and Religious Practice in Medieval Denmark

Materiality and Religious Practice in Medieval Denmark PDF Author: Sarah Croix
Publisher:
ISBN: 9782503594163
Category : Denmark
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Materiality and Religious Practice in Medieval Denmark' stresses the significance of the sensory, dramatic enactment that moved the soul, body, heart and mind of the medieval faithful and proposes to revisit and pave the way ahead for research in religious material culture in medieval Denmark.00From bread and wine to holy water, and from oils and incense to the relics of saints, the material objects of religion stood at the heart of medieval Christian practice, bridging the gap between the profane and the divine. While theoretical debates around the importance of physicality and materiality have animated scholarship in recent years, however, little attention has been paid to finding solid, empirical evidence upon which to base such discussions.00Taking medieval Denmark as its case study, this volume draws on a wide range of different fields to explore and investigate material objects, spaces, and bodies that were employed to make the sacred tangible in the religious experience and practice of medieval people. The contributions gathered here explore subjects as diverse as saints? relics, sculptures, liturgical vessels and implements, items used for personal devotion, gospel books, and the materiality of Christian burials to explore the significance of objects that moved the souls, bodies, hearts, and minds of the faithful. In doing so, they also open new insights into religion and belief in medieval Denmark.

The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology

The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology PDF Author: Edward Howells
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019103407X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 725

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology provides a guide to the mystical element of Christianity as a theological phenomenon. It differs not only from psychological and anthropological studies of mysticism, but from other theological studies, such as more practical or pastorally-oriented works that examine the patterns of spiritual progress and offer counsel for deeper understanding and spiritual development. It also differs from more explicitly historical studies tracing the theological and philosophical contexts and ideas of various key figures and schools, as well as from literary studies of the linguistic tropes and expressive forms in mystical texts. None of these perspectives is absent, but the method here is more deliberately theological, working from within the fundamental interests of Christian mystical writers to the articulation of those interests in distinctively theological forms, in order, finally, to permit a critical theological engagement with them for today. Divided into four parts, the first section introduces the approach to mystical theology and offers a historical overview. Part two attends to the concrete context of sources and practices of mystical theology. Part three moves to the fundamental conceptualities of mystical thought. The final section ends with the central contributions of mystical teaching to theology and metaphysics. Students and scholars with a variety of interests will find different pathways through the Handbook.