This volume explores aspects of the devotional world of late medieval northern Europe, with a special emphasis on how people interacted with texts, images, artifacts, and other instruments of piety at the level of the senses. The book focuses on the materiality of medieval religion and the manner in which Christians were encouraged to engage their senses in their devotional practices: gazing, hearing, touching, tasting, and committing to memory. In so doing, it brings together the ideals of medieval mystical writing and the increasingly tangible and material practice of piety, which would become characteristic of the period. [Subject: History, Medieval Studies, European Studies, Religious Studies]

Redigeret af Henning Laugerud og Laura Katrine Skinnebach.Sekulariseringen af den vestlige kultur er om ikke en myte, sa betydeligt overvurderet. I dagens aktuelle debatter om religiositet, anerkender langt de fleste kristendommens indflydelse pa Europas historie, filosofi og kultur.Instruments of Devotion er en tvAerfaglig antologi skrevet af internationalt anerkendte forskere fra The European Network on the Instruments of Devotion, ENID, og i 11 artikler fokuseres specifikt pa de instrumentielle aspekter af andagt og fromhedspraksis i perioden fra det 14. arhundrede og frem til i dag. Artiklerne diskuterer relationen mellem den materielle kultur og det religiose liv; hvordan musik, bonneboger, litteratur og billeder har udtrykt og intensiveret fromhed og pietet i den kristne kultur i et historisk perspektiv.Antologiens mange forskelligartede indgangsvinkler spAender fra middelalderens visuelle teorier til postmodernismens perspektiver pa katolicismen og illustrerer saledes det komplekse monster af Aendringer, kontinuitet og sammenhAenge i den europAeiske kultur- og pietetshistorie.

The volume explores the hitherto uncharted late medieval religious landscape of Northern Germany. Through discussion of a rich, varied selection of mystical and devotional texts, also translated into English, a fascinating regional "mystical culture" with a far-reaching impact is revealed.

Examining correlations between the material and the mystical, this books investigates collective writing and devotional culture in late medieval piety.

Recent scholarship on the Middle Ages has highlighted the importance of individualistic tendencies in devotion in both the lay world and religious communities. This interaction between individualization and religious agency has been scrutinized in numerous studies, focusing on the beginnings during the so-called 'Twelfth-Century Renaissance', and further development in the later medieval and early modern periods. However, there has hitherto been relatively little scholarship on the phenomenon in the Devotio Moderna: the flourishing of more personalized forms of devotion in north-western Europe during the later Middle Ages. The essays in this volume redress this gap by exploring the processes of inwardness and the emergent individualization of religious practices in the late medieval Low Countries. The essays explore issues including the early impact of the printing press on devotion; meditational aids such as identification with Christ, prayer cycles, practices of remembrance, and devout songs; and the tension between inner devotion and the ideal of communal piety in male and female religious communities. They also discuss some leading individuals of the Devotio movement. By addressing the Devotio Moderna and its contexts - the emergence of inwardness, individualization, and religious agency in the late medieval Low Countries and surrounding areas - the essays in this volume help to enhance and expand our knowledge of devotion in the late Middle Ages, both in lay circles and in religious communities, and they show the distinct contribution of the Low Countries to the European phenomenon of more personalized forms of devotion.

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

This collection of essays focuses on how the climactic episode of Christian scripture and apocrypha, the life of Christ, was repeatedly adapted for a variety of audiences and devotional uses in the Middle Ages. The collection represents an important milestone in terms of mapping the meditative modes of piety that characterize a number of Christological traditions, including the 'Meditationes vitae Christi' and the numerous versions it spawned in both Latin and the vernacular.