Medieval and Early Modern Devotional Objects in Global Perspective Translations of the Sacred

by Robertson, Elizabeth; Jahner, Jennifer

• ISBN13: 9780230616042
• ISBN10: 0230616046
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-10-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

These fourteen essays create an interdisciplinary conversation about the nature and function of sacred and devotional objects across the globe during the medieval and Early Modern period. Topics treated include the veneration of relics of the Buddha, the cult of the saints in medieval and early modern Ireland, medieval surveys of pagan and Christian Rome, and textile relics in colonial Mexico.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Robertson is Professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  Jennifer Jahner is a doctoral candidate in Medieval English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Introduction—Elizabeth Robertson and Jennifer Jahner * Relics and Life Story of the Buddha—John S. Strong * Word as Relic in Medieval Daoism—Stephen R. Bokenkamp * The Book as a Sacred Object in Private Homes in Early or Medieval India—Gregory Schopen * Gone To Ground: Relics and Holy Wells in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland—Catherine McKenna * “Cunningly hidden”: Invisible and Forgotten Relics in the Romanesque Work of Art—Kirk Ambrose * Julian of Norwich’s Unmediated Vision—Elizabeth Robertson * The Past, Present, and Future in Medieval Surveys of Roman Relics—C. David Benson * The Reformation of the Relic: Lydgate’s and Milton’s Saint Edmund—Katarzyna  Rutkowski * “The Tragedy of the Handkerchief”: Objects Sacred and Profane in Shakespeare’s Othello—Richard C. McCoy * Moriscos and the Desacralization of Stories in Early Modern Spain—Mary Elizabeth Perry * Sacred Cloth and Veiled Body: Guadalupe’s Tilma and Other Relic Textiles—Jeannette Favrot Peterson * From the Devil's Herb to Saint Thomas’s Gift: The Christianization of Guaraní Sacred Plants in the Jesuit Reductions in Paraguay—Andrés I. Prieto * The Sacred, the Secret, and the Ethics of Historical Interpretation: What I Learned From the Santos of New Mexico—Claire Farago * Afterword: Persons and Things—Peter Stallybrass