| Summary: | This thesis analyses images of the suffering Christ between circa 1450 and circa 1550 from across Western Europe, including Western-ruled territories in the Christian East (Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus). Objects from various media have been examined. At the heart of this study is a database of 500 images, from which key points have been drawn. Using this data, and supplementing it with the themes expounded on by contemporary devotional texts and images, this thesis posits that the image of the suffering Christ was ubiquitously at the heart of late medieval piety. It thus argues against historiographical trends which overemphasise the place of the Virgin Mary and the saints in pre-Reformation Catholicism. It also takes issue with the claims of Caroline Walker Bynum that blood was the focus of late medieval devotion. The multiple iconographies which define Christological piety suggest that we cannot take a single depiction or part of Christ in isolation of the rest. Indeed, the thesis argues that many of these iconographies were fractals through which Christ and His Passion could be communicated to the devotee. Through these iconographies, as well as material exchanges and material culture, Christus patiens was a – if not the most –prominent feature in the late medieval pious landscape. The image was also a dynamic one. Community was structured around it, and the otherness of confessional misfits reinforced. Its pairing with texts also elevated devotion by combining the visual and meditational; there is evidence of people facilitating this process by colouring images and sewing or pasting them into texts. The suffering Christ was also the focus of intense and highly visual meditation during the Mass. Finally, this study examines how this image fared with the onset of reform, arguing that Christ’s suffering body was of enduring importance as a key battleground of the Reformation.
|
|---|