Popular Piety and Art In The Late Middle Ages

Download or read book Popular Piety and Art In The Late Middle Ages written by Kathleen Kamerick and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-06-29 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval churchmen typically defended religious art as a form of "book" to teach the unlettered laity their faith, but in late medieval England, Lollard accusations of idolatry stimulated renewed debate over image worship. Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages places this dispute within the context of the religious beliefs and devotional practices of lay people, showing how they used and responded to holy images in their parish churches, at shrines, and in prayer books. Far more than substitutes for texts, holy images presented a junction of the material and spiritual, offering an increasingly literate laity access to the supernatural through the visual power of "beholding."