Beholding Violence: A Conference on Medieval and Early Modern Culture

The Hours of Mary of Burgundy (c.1470) includes among its lavish illustrations two interrelated full-page illuminations. The first, and more well-known, illumination shows a woman in prayer before a window that opens to reveal an expansive Gothic church interior with the Virgin and Child seated before the altar in the center of the nave. Censing angels flank the figures and a group of women kneel in adoration of the holy mother and child. The image appears to show that the devotions of the woman in the foreground, probably the book’s original owner, have projected her via her imagination into the church interior and facilitated her personal encounter with Christ and Mary.

A second illumination in the text includes a window frame, but in this instance the accoutrements of private devotion seem to be abandoned. A book of hours sits on the window ledge opened to an iconic illumination of the crucifixion, but this image is a pale shadow when contrasted with the dynamic and colorful scene visible through the window. Here we see a grand spectacle with Christ at its center where he is nailed to the cross as the Virgin cries out in anguish and gestures helplessly toward her son. A cast of thousands populates the background and in the foreground we find a group of women who appear to be contemporary women dressed in orientalizing costumes. Two of the women turn to look at the viewer, they invite us into their vivid yet presumably fictive space where we may join them as virtual witnesses of the horrific event depicted there.

These illuminations were intended to work together to impart an important message to the book’s owner. Through her devout and pious prayer she could move beyond both text and image and to enter a highly desirable state in which access to the divine is immediate. In this place of imagination the sublime and the horrible are dynamically engaged facilitating tangible emotional responses. This paper will investigate imaginative encounters, in particular those centered on violent depictions of the Passion of Christ, and discuss how such devotions were promoted and controlled by the clergy and interpreted by the laity in the late middle ages.



	Laura D. Gelfand (Associate Professor, Art History, University of Akron) “The Next Best Thing to Being There: Imaginative devotions and virtual presence” The Hours of Mary of Burgundy (c.1470) includes among its lavish illustrations two interrelated full-page illuminations. The first, and more well-known, illumination shows a woman in prayer before a window that opens to reveal an expansive Gothic church interior with the Virgin and Child seated before the altar in the center of the nave. Censing angels flank the figures and a group of women kneel in adoration of the holy mother and child. The image appears to show that the devotions of the woman in the foreground, probably the book’s original owner, have projected her via her imagination into the church interior and facilitated her personal encounter with Christ and Mary. A second illumination in the text includes a window frame, but in this instance the accoutrements of private devotion seem to be abandoned. A book of hours sits on the window ledge opened to an iconic illumination of the crucifixion, but this image is a pale shadow when contrasted with the dynamic and colorful scene visible through the window. Here we see a grand spectacle with Christ at its center where he is nailed to the cross as the Virgin cries out in anguish and gestures helplessly toward her son. A cast of thousands populates the background and in the foreground we find a group of women who appear to be contemporary women dressed in orientalizing costumes. Two of the women turn to look at the viewer, they invite us into their vivid yet presumably fictive space where we may join them as virtual witnesses of the horrific event depicted there. These illuminations were intended to work together to impart an important message to the book’s owner. Through her devout and pious prayer she could move beyond both text and image and to enter a highly desirable state in which access to the divine is immediate. In this place of imagination the sublime and the horrible are dynamically engaged facilitating tangible emotional responses. This paper will investigate imaginative encounters, in particular those centered on violent depictions of the Passion of Christ, and discuss how such devotions were promoted and controlled by the clergy and interpreted by the laity in the late middle ages.