Touching, Devotional Practices, and Visionary Experience in the Late Middle Ages

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxxii

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2. A Clash of Theories: Discussing Late Medieval Devotional Perception

   • Pablo Acosta-García

   Pages 1-17

3. Unbinding the Body

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

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   2. Touching the Page and Touching the Heart: Manuscript Culture and Affective Devotion in Late Medieval Flemish Communities

      • Barbara Zimbalist

      Pages 21-42

   3. Drama, Performance and Touch in the Medieval Convent and Beyond

      • Olivia Robinson, Elisabeth Dutton

      Pages 43-68Open Access

4. Wounding the Spiritual Self

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 69-69

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   2. Sacralising Perception: Rosary-Devotion and Tactile Experience of the Divine in Late Medieval Denmark

      • Mads Vedel Heilskov

      Pages 71-93

   3. Haptic Prayer, Devotional Books and Practices of Perception

      • Laura Katrine Skinnebach

      Pages 95-122

   4. Skin Christ. On the Animation, Imitation, and Mediation of Living Skin and Touch in Late Medieval Contact Imagery

      • Hans Henrik Lohfert Jørgensen

      Pages 123-148

5. Seizing Nothingness

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 149-149

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   2. The Making of Queer Visionary Discourses

      • David Carrillo-Rangel

      Pages 151-201

   3. Queer Touch Between Holy Women: Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Birgitta of Sweden, and the Visitation

      • Laura Saetveit Miles

      Pages 203-235

   4. ConTact. Tactile Experiences of the Sacred and the Divinity in the Middle Ages

      • Victoria Cirlot, Blanca Garí

      Pages 237-265

6. Back Matter

   Pages 267-276

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This book addresses the history of the senses in relation to affective piety and its role in devotional practices in the late Middle Ages, focusing on the sense of touch. It argues that only by deeply analysing this specific context of perception can the full significance of sensory religious experience in the Late Middle Ages be understood. Considering the centrality of the body to medieval society and Christianity, this collection explores a range of devotional practices, mainly relating to the Passion of Christ, and features manuscripts, works of devotional literature, art, woodcuts and judicial records. It brings together a multidisciplinary group of scholars to offer a variety of methodological approaches, in order to understand how touch was encoded, evoked and purposefully used. The book further considers how touch was related to the medieval theory of perception, examining its relation to the inner and outer senses through the eyes of visionaries, mystics, theologians and confessors, not only as praxis but from different theoretical points of view. While considered the most basic of spiritual experience, the chapters in this book highlight the all-pervasive presence of touch and the significance of ‘affective piety’ to Late Medieval Christians.

Chapter 3: Drama, Performance and Touch in the Medieval Convent and Beyond is Open Access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com 

• Affective piety
• Passion of Christ
• Christianity
• Body
• Visionaries
• Mystics
• Theologians
• Touch
• History of the senses
• Medieval
• Martyrdom
• Spiritual experience

“The authors of Touching, Devotional Practices, and Visionary Experiences have come together to produce a very impressive piece of work that advances the study of embodiment in medieval Christianity while also offering scholars of material religion in any historical period and place a critically-minded resource. This is a deeply learned, enormously suggestive book that merits wide attention.” (David Morgan, Duke University, USA)

“This collection, which is refreshingly coherent in both its aims and structure, employs new critical perspectives that recognise the intrinsic importance of the sense of touch in its medieval devotional context. Considering how touch brings bodies into contact with other bodies, material objects and the world in physical and conceptual terms, the present contributions bring the importance of embodied practice to the forefront of a dynamic field of inquiry.” (Sarah Jane Brazil, University of Geneva, Switzerland)

“Touching, Devotional Practices, and Visionary Experiences in the Late Middle Ages is a long-awaited book that draws upon both theoretical premise and the evidence of concrete materiality in order to progress and contemporise traditional studies of medieval affect and its often-overlooked tactility in the context of popular forms of devotion and visionary experience. In particular, the array of what constitutes at times dazzling contributions, by both seasoned scholars and those relatively new to the field, serves to deepen our understanding of the covert, and often queer, operations of the haptic within medieval devotional affective practice, whilst casting it in an innovative dialogic frame that allows it to reach out achronically to touch the now.” (Liz Herbert McAvoy, Swansea University, UK)

• Universitetet i Bergen, Bergen, Norway

  David Carrillo-Rangel

• Institute for Research on Medieval Cultures, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

  Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel

• Heinrich-Heine-Universität-Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

  Pablo Acosta-García

David Carrillo-Rangel is a PhD Fellow at the University of Bergen, Norway. He co-edited the volume Sensual and Sensory Experiences in the Middle Ages (2017).

Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel is an Associate Researcher at the Institute for Research on Medieval Cultures (IRCVM) at the University of Barcelona, Spain.

Pablo Acosta-García is a Marie Curie Fellow at Heinrich-Heine-Düsseldorf-University, Germany, with the project Late Medieval Visionary Women’s Impact in Early Modern Castilian Spiritual Tradition (WIMPACT).

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