Visual translation, visible theology

Aden Welles Kumler

The emergence of the vernacular languages alongside Latin, the traditional language of sacred revelation, learning, and ecclesiastical administration, is one of the defining developments of the high and later Middle Ages. Following the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), which legislated a broad pastoral mission to the laity, vernacular literature of spiritual instruction played a decisive role in the spiritual and moral formation of Christians throughout Europe. Images also played an important, if sometimes controversial, role in this ambitious attempt to refashion Ecclesia after the idealizing vision of the pastoral reform movement. The late medieval pastoral project and the spiritual ambitions of its participants--both clerical and lay--made tremendous demands on the resources of the visual and literary arts. Examining a series of exemplary thirteenth- and fourteenth-century French and...