Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Age

Addressing the late medieval debate over image worship and the use of religious art to teach unlettered laity their faith, this volume shows how lay people responded to and used holy images in their parish churches, at shrines and in prayer books.

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Medieval churchmen typically defended religious art as "books" to teach 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".