Marian Devotion In The Late Middle Ages

By the late Middle Ages, manifestations of Marian devotion had become multifaceted and covered all aspects of religious, private and personal life. Mary becomes a universal presence that accompanies the faithful on pilgrimage, in dreams, as holy visions, and as pictorial representations in church space and domestic interiors. The first part of the volume traces the development of Marian iconography in sculpture, panel paintings, and objects, such as seals, with particular emphasis on Italy, Slovenia and the Hungarian Kingdom. The second section traces the use of Marian devotion in relation to space, be that a country or territory, a monastery or church or personal space, and explores the use of space in shaping new liturgical practices, new Marian feasts and performances, and the bodily performance of ritual objects.

First book-length study of hagiographical legends of the Virgin Mary in medieval England, with particular reference to her relationship with Jews, books, and the law. Legendary accounts of the Virgin Mary's intercession were widely circulated throughout the middle ages, borrowing heavily, as in hagiography generally, from folktale and other motifs; she is represented in a number of different, often surprising, ways, rarely as the meek and mild mother of Christ, but as bookish, fierce, and capricious, amongst other attributes. This is the first full-length study of their place in specifically English medieval literary and cultural history. While the English circulation of vernacular Miracles of the Virgin is markedly different from continental examples, this book shows how difference and miscellaneity can reveal important developments withinan unwieldy genre. The author argues that English miracles in particular were influenced by medieval England's troubled history with its Jewish population and the rapid thirteenth-century codification of English law, so that Maryfrequently becomes a figure with special dominion over Jews, text, and legal problems. The shifting codicological and historical contexts of these texts make it clear that the paradoxical sign"Mary" could signify in both surprisingly different and surprisingly consistent ways, rendering Mary both mediatrix and legislatrix. ADRIENNE WILLIAMS BOYARIN is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Victoria (British Columbia).

This book was first published in 2011. The Virgin Mary was one of the most powerful images of the Middle Ages, central to people's experience of Christianity. During the Reformation, however, many images of the Virgin were destroyed, as Protestantism rejected the way the medieval Church over-valued and sexualized Mary. Although increasingly marginalized in Protestant thought and practice, her traces and surprising transformations continued to haunt early modern England. Combining historical analysis and contemporary theory, including issues raised by psychoanalysis and feminist theology, Gary Waller examines the literature, theology and popular culture associated with Mary in the transition between late medieval and early modern England. He contrasts a variety of pre-Reformation texts and events, including popular mariology, poetry, tales, drama, pilgrimage and the emerging 'New Learning', with later sixteenth-century ruins, songs, ballads, Petrarchan poetry, the works of Shakespeare and other texts where the Virgin's presence or influence, sometimes surprisingly, can be found.

In his book Mary and the Fathers of the Church, Fr. Luigi Gambero presented a comprehensive survey of Marian doctrine and devotion during the first eight Christian centuries. Mary in the Middle Ages continues this journey up to the end of the fifteenth century, surveying the growth of Marian doctrine and devotion during one of the most important eras of Christian history: the Middle Ages. Fr. Gambero presents the thoughts, words, and prayers of great theologians, bishops, monks, and mystics who witnessed to and promoted the dedication of the Christian people to the Mother of God. Each chapter concludes with readings from the works of these important authors. Many of these texts have never before been translated into English. More than thirty great figures each receive an entire chapter, including such giants as the St. Anselm, St. Bernard, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Bonaventure, St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Brigid of Sweden, and Raymond Lull. "A fascinating picture of one of the foundational elements of modern Catholic theology, namely, devotion. All in all, a worthwhile and informative study of devotion to the Blessed Virgin." -Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R. "This book is indispensable for current students of Mariology." -Kenneth Baker, S.J.

This volume offers a sample of the many ways that medieval Franciscans wrote, represented in art, and preached about the ‘model of models’ of the medieval religious experience, the Virgin Mary. This is an extremely valuable collection of essays that highlight the significant role the Franciscans played in developing Mariology in the Middle Ages. Beginning with Francis, Clare, and Anthony, a number of significant theologians, spiritual writers, preachers, and artists are presented in their attempt to capture the significance and meaning of the Virgin Mary in the context of the late Middle Ages within the Franciscan movement. Contributors are Luciano Bertazzo, Michael W. Blastic, Rachel Fulton Brown, Leah Marie Buturain, Marzia Ceschia, Holly Flora, Alessia Francone, J. Isaac Goff, Darrelyn Gunzburg, Mary Beth Ingham, Christiaan Kappes, Steven J. McMichael, Pacelli Millane, Kimberly Rivers, Filippo Sedda, and Christopher J. Shorrock.

In Emotion and Devotion Miri Rubin explores the craft of the historian through a series of studies of medieval religious cultures. In three original chapters she approaches the medieval figure of the Virgin Mary with the aim of unravelling meaning and experience. Hymns and miracle tales, altarpieces and sermons – a wide range of sources from many European regions – are made to reveal the creativity and richness which they elicited in medieval people, women and men, clergy and laity, people of status and riches as well as those of modest means. The first chapter, "The Global 'Middle Ages'," considers the current historiographical frame for the study of religious cultures and suggests ways in which the Middle Ages can be made more global. Next, "Mary, and Others" examines the polemical situations around Mary, and the location of Muslims and Jews within them. The third chapter, "Emotions and Selves," tracks the sentimental education experienced by Europeans in the late Middle Ages through devotional encounters with the figure of the Virgin Mary in word, image and sound. Each year one scholar of world fame is invited to present lectures in the framework of the Natalie Zemon Davis Annual Lecture Series at the Central European University, Budapest. This is the second volume in the series of published lectures.

In spite of their widely disparate uses, Marian prayers and courtly love songs from the Middle Ages and Renaissance often show a stylistic similarity. This book examines the convergence of these two styles in polyphonic music and its broader poetic, artistic, and devotional context from c.1200-c.1500.

This is a study of the intellectual history and religious culture of German-speaking Europe in the late Middle Ages. Its focus is the bilingual oeuvre of the Franciscan friar Marquard von Lindau (d. 1392), arguably the most widely-read author in the German language before the Reformation. His most successful works were those in which he considered pragmatic issues of Christian life, aimed at a broad reading public that stretched from monks and nuns living the contemplative life in enclosed convents; to his confreres, novices and students in the mendicant orders; and the literate citizens of the burgeoning mercantile centres. It is three of these pragmatic issues, central to late medieval religious life, around which this book is structured: the Passion of Christ, the sacrament of the Eucharist, and the devotion to the Virgin Mary. The dominant approaches taken towards each of these in the fourteenth-century church represented problematic challenges to Marquard; challenges which he met in a distinctive and influential manner, by no means in accordance with the affectively-charged devotional practices encouraged by many within and without his order, and so often considered normative for late medieval religious culture. The original voice with which Marquard spoke is made clear through the location of his oeuvre within the pan-European context of the debates in which his works participate. The ethos his works projected redetermined the trajectory of intellectual life in Germany into the fifteenth century and beyond.