The "Rothschild Canticles" is one of the most unusual illuminated manuscripts to have survived from the Middle Ages. Produced for a nun at the turn of the 14th century, it served as an aid to mystical devotions in which images played as central a role as the written word. Visionary depictions of Paradise, the Song of Songs, the Virgin Mary, the Trinity, and hundreds of other subjects based on texts ranging from the Bible to the "Lives of the Desert Fathers" together form a devotional program that transports the reader toward contemplative union with God. Combining iconographic and contextual analysis, the author examines the interaction of image and text in the devotional experience of the religious women who formed the primary audience for didactic and mystical literature in Flanders and the Rhineland. Finally, he discusses the role of female spirituality in transforming the use of both verbal and visual imagery in late medieval devotional practice.
- ISBN10 0300043082
- ISBN13 9780300043082
- Publish Date 23 January 1991
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 11 September 1997
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Yale University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 348
- Language English