Varieties of Devotion in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (ARIZONA STUDIES IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE)

In the modern world, interest in religious devotion is as great as ever. This volume brings together the research of ten scholars into the diverse ways that Europeans expressed their quest for God over more than a millennium, from the formative centuries of Christianity up to the seventeenth century. Topics include women transvestite saints, Monophysite wall-paintings, Anglo-Saxon sainthood and painful martyrdom, Carmelite self-redefinition, the confident authorship of Gautier de Coinci and Matfre Ermengaud, competition between the bishop and a wandering preacher for popular favour in Le Mans, the contemplative philanthropies of the Poor Clares, Chester Nativity-cycle actors' masculinity, Jean Gerson's warm relations with his siblings, and George' Herbert's eucharistic feeling. The authors' profound familiarity with primary sources as well as the influence of current theory makes these essays vibrant and timely. The volume comprises the following articles: Leslie S.B. MacCoull, 'A dwelling place of Christ, a healing place of knowledge': the Non-Chalcedonian Eucharist in Late Antique Egypt and its setting'; Laila Abdalla, 'Theology and culture: masculinizing the woman'; Peter Dendle,' Pain and saint-making in Andreas, Bede, and the Old English Lives of St. Margaret'; Andreas Rher, 'From hermits to mendicant friars: continuity and change in the Carmelite order'; Holly Flora, 'A book for poverty's daughters: gender and devotion in Paris Bibliotheque Nationale Ital. 115'; John Ott, 'Auhtority, heresy, and popular devotion: Le Mans (1116) reconsidered'; Michelle Bolduc, 'The poetics of authorship and vernacular religious devotion'; Christina M. Fitzgerald, 'Of magi and men: Christ's nativity and masculine community in Chester's drama cycle'; Brian Patrick McGuire, 'Patterns of male affectivity in the late Middle Ages: the case of Jean Gerson'; and Ryan Netzley, '"Take and taste": sacramental physiology, eucharistic experience and George Herbert's The Temple'.