Word, Image, and the Spiritual Life of the Poor Clares by Renana Bartal

Word, Image, and the Spiritual Life of the Poor Clares by Renana Bartal

The Meditations on the Life of Christ was a devotional manual composed for the Order of the Poor Clares in early fourteenth-century Italy. In this book, Renana Bartal offers a comprehensive study of the only known fully illuminated manuscript of this text, now housed in Corpus Christi College at Oxford University. An interdisciplinary analysis combining the methods of art history, textual studies, and gender studies, her book sheds light on the devotional practices of medieval religious women and enriches current understanding of gendered reception and use of books in the later Middle Ages. Through close analysis of text and images, Bartal reveals how the nuns who read the manuscript used visual and verbal strategies to deepen theological reflection and guide meditative practice. She challenges the view that the Meditations primarily encouraged emotional identification, exploring how it fostered intellectual engagement and exegetical devotion. Bartal's study also demonstrates how images, texts, and female religious experience intersected in shaping devotional culture.

Renana Bartal is Associate Professor and Head of the Art History Department at Tel Aviv University. She specializes in medieval visual culture, manuscript illumination, and devotional practices. She is the author of Gender, Piety, and Production in Fourteenth-Century English Apocalypse Manuscripts (2016) and has published widely in leading journals and edited volumes.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781009756600
ISBN 10	1009756605
Title	Word, Image, and the Spiritual Life of the Poor Clares
Author	Renana Bartal
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Year published	2026-07-31
Number of pages	350
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.