Image and the Office of the Dead in Late Medieval Europe

Regular, Repellant, and Redemptive Death
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-94-6372-211-7
Verlag: Amsterdam University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 50, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 170 mm x 240 mm

Reihe: Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700

Image and the Office of the Dead in Late Medieval Europe explores the Office of the Dead as a site of interaction between text, image, and experience in the culture of commemoration that thrived in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Office of the Dead was a familiar liturgical ritual, and its perceived importance and utility are evident in its regular inclusion in devotional compilations, which crossed the boundaries between lay and religious readers. The Office was present in all medieval deaths: as a focus for private contemplation, a site of public performance, a reassuring ritual, and a voice for the bereaved. Examining the images at the Office of the Dead and related written, visual, and material evidence, this book explores the relationship of these images to the text in which they are embedded and to the broader experiences of and aspirations for death.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schell, Sarah

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Künstlerische Stoffe, Motive, Themen Künstlerische Stoffe, Motive, Themen: Religiöse Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte Kunstgeschichte: Renaissance, Manierismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Figures

Introduction

The Office of the Dead in Christian Liturgy

The Office of the Dead in Devotional Books

Regular Death: Reading the Funeral and Imaginative Practice

Seeing into the Office: Imagining

Reader as Body

Hearing Community: Image and Liturgy

Repellent Death: Time, Rot and the Death of the Body

Death-tide: Time and decay of the body

‘Nothing more base and abominable’: The Corpse

Disruption: The Lively Corpse

Dry Bones: Death in Life

The Redemptive Death: Job, Lazarus and Death Undone

Living Death: Job as the Social Body

The Undead: Lazarus and the Promise of Resurrection

Conclusions

Bibliography

Bibliography: Manuscripts

Über Autor(innen)

Schell, Sarah
Sarah Schell is Lecturer in Art History at American University of Beirut. She received her PhD in Art History at the University of St Andrews (Scotland), and has held research and teaching positions in Canada, the UAE, Lebanon, and the United States.