Objects of belief: Material culture and religious writings in late medieval England

Objects in late medieval Europe were a means for lay people and clergy to negotiate their access to powers beyond the everyday, in folk practice as well as religious observance. As has been noted by scholars, this period is marked by a profusion of objects granted special importance, imaginary as well as material. These objects prompt reconsideration of cultural and intellectual frameworks, for example of superstition, reform, and heresy, that never quite successfully contain them. Essays i...