Objects of Devotion

Religion and Its Instruments in Early Modern Europe

Edited by Ethan Matt Kavaler Edited by Anne-Laure Van Bruaene

Book cover: Objects of Devotion

Extent: 228 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Art & Art History, Religious Studies

Series: Early Modern Cultural Studies

Series volume number: 5

Language: English

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.

  • Edited by Ethan Matt Kavaler
  • Edited by Anne-Laure Van Bruaene