Objects of Devotion
Religion and Its Instruments in Early Modern Europe
Hardback (Forthcoming)
(October 2026)
ISBN: 9782503584379
Price: $144.00
Historians of the late medieval and early modern period have created an antithesis between spiritual (inward) and physical (outward) devotion, branding the latter as superficial, ritualistic and mechanistic. More generally, from the first Protestant historians to Max Weber and his followers, the Reformation has come to be represented as the classic watershed between material, magical devotion and spiritual, rational belief. In a similar vein, art historians have opposed the notion of the medieval cult image, material and functional, to the early modern work of art, subject to aesthetic regard. Yet, does it make sense to distinguish between late medieval and early modern religious culture, given the fact that the definitions and boundaries of these periods are notoriously problematic and considerably overlap? This volume shows how in early modern Europe religious ideas and practice were realized through interaction with objects that were both functional and aesthetic and how the presence of sculptures, paintings, books, and church furniture—their visibility, tactility, and materiality—helped form attitudes toward devotion, sacred history, and salvation.
Historians of the late medieval and early modern period have created an antithesis between spiritual (inward) and physical (outward) devotion, branding the latter as superficial, ritualistic and mechanistic. More generally, from the first Protestant historians to Max Weber and his followers, the Reformation has come to be represented as the classic watershed between material, magical devotion and spiritual, rational belief. In a similar vein, art historians have opposed the notion of the medieval cult image, material and functional, to the early modern work of art, subject to aesthetic regard. Yet, does it make sense to distinguish between late medieval and early modern religious culture, given the fact that the definitions and boundaries of these periods are notoriously problematic and considerably overlap? This volume shows how in early modern Europe religious ideas and practice were realized through interaction with objects that were both functional and aesthetic and how the presence of sculptures, paintings, books, and church furniture—their visibility, tactility, and materiality—helped form attitudes toward devotion, sacred history, and salvation.
Other Titles in this Series
Rulers on Display
Tombs and Epitaphs of Princes and the Well-Born in Northern Europe 1470–1670
Volume 2
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