Stephen Kelly and Ryan Perry, eds., Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe: Diverse Imaginations of Christ’s Life. (Medieval Church Studies 31.) Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. Pp. xvii, 660; 40 black-and-white figures and 9 tables. €135. ISBN: 978-2-503-54935-4.Table of contents available online at http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503549354-1 (accessed 15 March 2016)

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Previous articleNext article FreeReviewsStephen Kelly and Ryan Perry, eds., Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe: Diverse Imaginations of Christ’s Life. (Medieval Church Studies 31.) Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. Pp. xvii, 660; 40 black-and-white figures and 9 tables. €135. ISBN: 978-2-503-54935-4.Table of contents available online at http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503549354-1 (accessed 15 March 2016)Heather BlurtonHeather BlurtonUniversity of California, Santa Barbara Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreEditors Stephen Kelly and Ryan Perry open this interesting and provocative collection by proposing that the volume hopes to “assert the cultural vitality and often overlooked historical significance of a range of texts, images, artefacts, and performances traditionally perceived as theologically ‘orthodox’” (1). They further note that the essays collected here demonstrate “the diversity of orthodox religious cultural practices. They also eschew typical models of periodization. They measure the heterogeneity and vitality of orthodox religious culture by focusing broadly on narratives of Christ’s family, his childhood and his Passion which became a mark of later medieval piety in all media—and not just in England” (5). This is a broad and ambitious remit, but one that ends up being remarkably tight in execution, and one that succeeds admirably. The twenty essays presented here, along with a substantial introduction by the editors and a postscript by Michael G. Sargent, are collected from a conference that itself was part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project: Geographies of Orthodoxy: Mapping Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ, 1350–1550 (http://www.qub.ac.uk/geographies-of-orthodoxy/discuss/).The editors situate this volume alongside another similar collection—After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, edited by Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Ghosh (Turnhout, 2011)—as part of a continuing engagement with Nicholas Watson’s seminal article “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409,” Speculum 70 (1995): 822–64, which postulated, on the one hand, the neutering of literary expression in the fifteenth century by the increased imposition of orthodoxy and, on the other, the literature of dissent as a locus of innovation and imagination. Here, the editors insist on “orthodoxy” as always a work in progress: “[O]rthodoxy is always on the verge of articulation, and it is articulated differently across Christendom, regardless of doctrinal diktat” (4). Although the volume self-consciously situates itself as rehabilitating the literary imagination of orthodoxy, terms such as orthodoxy and Lollardy or even vernacular theology are not at all the dominant ones here (although they do appear). Instead, the keywords are devotion, meditation, Lives, and above all the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes vitae Christi and its influential English translation/adaptation, Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ—these two texts are mentioned in almost every essay in this collection and so provide its cohesion.The collection opens with a long, revisionist essay on the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes vitae Christi by Peter Tóth and Dávid Falvay, which discovers citations from the Meditationes in two sermons attributed to Michael de Massa. Both sermons attribute their quotations to a “Liber de vita Christi” by one “Jacobus.” Tóth and Falvay identify Michael de Massa as the author of these sermons, and the source of the quotations as the Meditationes vitae Christi, which, as they note, is attributed in three manuscripts to “Jacobus” and which is sometimes referred to as liber vita Christi. From these leads, they propose a new author for the text, Jacob da San Gimignano, a Franciscan Free Spiritual brother. The theme of the rich textual tradition of meditating on the life of Christ continues from here. Valerie Allen and Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis contribute compelling pieces on Nicholas Love’s Mirror. Maureen Boulton considers “The Life of Christ in Meditative Texts in Late Medieval France,” including those written by Jean Gerson and Christine de Pizan; Middle English translations and adaptations, such as the The Prickynge of Love, the Hours of the Cross, “Meditation on Christ’s Passion,” the Life of the Virgin Mary and Christ, and Oon of Foure are discussed by Sarah Macmillan, Eleanor McCullough, Mayumi Taguchi, Barbara Zimbalist, and Sarah James, respectively; and Heather Reid considers The Storie of Asneth, the bride of the patriarch Joseph, who imaginatively prefigures Christ.A group of essays near the beginning of the volume deals with the visual and performative aspects of textual meditation. Essays by Marlene Villalobos Hennessy, Rachel Canty and David Griffith, Sheila Sweetinburgh, and Sarah Macmillan together prompt thinking not only about the relationship between image and text in devotional culture, but also about how the image and the text organize bodies in space and produce embodied, affective responses. Pamela M. King’s essay on “Medieval English Religious Plays as Early Fifteenth-Century Vernacular Theology: the Case Against” complements these essays, arguing that the development of civic drama emerges less from an oppositional vernacular theological impulse than has previously been assumed. Other contributions develop further aspects of the landscape of late-medieval devotion. Mary Dzon offers an important study on the medieval legends that provide a back story for the “good thief” crucified alongside Christ by imagining an encounter between him and Christ as children during the Holy Family’s travels to Egypt. Dzon argues that “legends about the good thief do not simply expand the Gospel narrative to satisfy pious curiosity and provide some biblically based entertainment; the legends’ theological undercurrents suggest that they were intended, as well, to address important concerns about the sacraments and salvation” (149). Denise Despres’ “Adolescence and Interiority in Aelred’s Lives of Christ” considers the ways in which Aelred of Rievaulx’s twelfth-century treatises Jesus at the Age of Twelve and A Rule of Life for a Recluse “anticipate the numerous affective and meditative Lives of Christ so influential in late medieval lay devotionalism” (108). Daniel McCann demonstrates the ways in which meditations on the life of Christ “contain a subtle medicinal frame situating the reading of Passion narratives within a therapeutic context derived from Augustine” (336). Paul J. Patterson discusses the Speculum devotorum, a vernacular Gospel Harmony, and the politics of translation. Elizabeth Scarborough and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton recuperate the voices of Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, with Scarborough arguing for a tension between Margery’s understanding of her visionary experiences and that of her clerical handlers, and Kerby-Fulton making the case for the innovative nature of Julian’s theology.Although the volume announces itself as interested in devotional culture in England and Europe, most of its essays focus on England. This focus may well be due to the ways in which Watson’s “Censorship and Cultural Change” has shaped the field of the study of fifteenth-century devotional culture and “vernacular theology.” Those essays that are attentive to other national traditions, however, provide useful and interesting counterpoints. Overall, if the question that this volume poses is about the value of orthodox literary culture in the fifteenth century, the answer it provides is the rich and varied culture of meditating on the life of Christ—in Latin, in the vernacular, and in the visual arts. Indeed, this collection echoes the tradition it studies in its richness and variety, and it is impossible to do justice to these essays here. This volume is an important contribution to the conversation about late-medieval devotional culture, and it promises to galvanize new conversations as well. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 92, Number 1January 2017 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/689894 Copyright 2017 by the Medieval Academy of America. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.