Sensing and believing: exploring worlds of difference in pre-modern England: a contribution to the debate opened by Kate Giles

Abstract

This paper comes in response to ‘Seeing and believing: visuality and space in pre-modern England’, Giles (2007). It welcomes the call Giles makes for debate on the complexity of the relationships between historical concepts of vision, visuality and spatiality in pre-modern contexts in England, and argues that the discussion can be taken further. This is explored via a case study based on Cistercian spirituality, and the possibilities of an archaeology of religious contexts as sensory environments. It also questions the traditional understanding of wall-paintings in medieval parish churches as the ‘poor man's Bible’.