Preaching, Art, and Piety in the High Middle Ages (1150-1350)

FAIN: FT-51589-03

Sara Lipton
SUNY Research Foundation, Stony Brook (Stony Brook, NY 11794-0001)

My project explores the intersection of two important new forms of Christian instruction in the High Middle Ages: popular preaching and Gothic art. I shall analyze references to or invocations of art in four distinct groups of sermons from 1150-1350. These clusters provide evidence with which to assess and contrast the ways in which clerical elites, lay elites, and lay masses viewed works of art, and allow such "ways of seeing" to be situated within the context of contemporary thought and society. This project will contribute to the current re-thinking of religious experience and response, and illuminate how new modes of communication and expression influenced the nature of high medieval Christianity.