Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe

Format: Paperback Language: English ISBN: 1935408119 ISBN13: 9781935408116 Release Date: February 2015 Publisher: Zone Books Length: 416 Pages Weight: 1.67 lbs. Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.0" x 9.0" Age Range: 18 years and up Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher 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 Ch