According to a longstanding interpretation, book religions are agents of textuality and logocentrism. This volume inverts the traditional perspective: its focus is on the strong dependency between scripture and aesthetics, holy books and material artworks, sacred texts and ritual performances. The contributions, written by a group of international specialists in Western, Byzantine, Islamic and Jewish Art, are committed to a comparative and transcultural approach. The authors reflect upon the different strategies of »clothing« sacred texts with precious materials and elaborate forms. They show how the pretypographic cultures of the Middle Ages used book ornaments as media for building a close relation between the divine words and their human audience. By exploring how art shapes the religious practice of books, and how the religious use of books shapes the evolution of artistic practices this book contributes to a new understanding of the deep nexus between sacred scripture and art.

This book interprets Jesus Christ as a complicated, disunified literary character in Middle English literature, where he appears variously as king, traitor, victorious conqueror, sacrificial lamb, heroic knight, lover, and spouse--often as several contradictory figures in a single work. These tropes derive from Scripture, doctrines about Christ's two natures, and theories of redemption. This book examines the full range of representations in Southern Passion, Northern Passion, Pepysian Gospel Harmony, Stanzaic Life of Christ, Cursor Mundi, Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, Sir John Mandeville’s Book, the York Play, and Julian of Norwich's Revelation of Love. Although Christ's two natures are well represented in existing scholarship, many traditions have been overlooked, including commonplace treatments of Christ as both a traitor and king, conqueror and sacrificial lamb, hero and lover. As writers call upon audiences to feel compassion for Jesus's suffering, they almost universally express antipathy toward his Jewish torturers, complicating our ideas about affective piety. In these works, the Virgin Mary is less exemplary for her compassion than for her understanding of doctrine. In short, this book offers new perspectives on vernacular Christology between about 1275 and 1475. Theresa Tinkle is a Professor within the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, USA, as well as Director of the Gayle Morris Sweetland Center for Writing. Previous publications include Medieval Venuses and Cupids: Sexuality and Hermeneutics in English Poetry (1996) and Gender and Power in Medieval Exegesis (Palgrave, 2010). Theresa’s academic training and publications include the study of medieval English and Latin literature, the medieval reception of the Bible, gender and sexuality studies, paleography and manuscript studies, composition and pedagogy, and disability studies.

In World History as the History of Foundations, 3000 BCE to 1500 CE, Michael Borgolte investigates the origins and development of foundations from Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. In his survey foundations emerge not as mere legal institutions, but rather as “total social phenomena” which touch upon manifold aspects, including politics, the economy, art and religion of the cultures in which they emerged. Cross-cultural in its approach and the result of decades of research, this work represents by far the most comprehensive account of the history of foundations that has hitherto been published.

Vol. 4 covers the late Roman period to the rise of Islam. Focuses especially on the growth and development of rabbinic Judaism and of the major classical rabbinic sources such as the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and various Midrashic collections.

Medieval manuscripts resisted obsolescence. Made by highly specialised craftspeople (scribes, illuminators, book binders) with labour-intensive processes using exclusive and sometimes exotic materials (parchment made from dozens or hundreds of skins, inks and paints made from prized minerals, animals and plants), books were expensive and built to last. They usually outlived their owners. Rather than discard them when they were superseded, book owners found ways to update, amend and upcycle books or book parts. These activities accelerated in the fifteenth century. Most manuscripts made before 1390 were bespoke and made for a particular client, but those made after 1390 (especially books of hours) were increasingly made for an open market, in which the producer was not in direct contact with the buyer. Increased efficiency led to more generic products, which owners were motivated to personalise. It also led to more blank parchment in the book, for example, the backs of inserted miniatures and the blanks ends of textual components. Book buyers of the late fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth century still held onto the old connotations of manuscripts—that they were custom-made luxury items—even when the production had become impersonal. Owners consequently purchased books made for an open market and then personalised them, filling in the blank spaces, and even adding more components later. This would give them an affordable product, but one that still smacked of luxury and met their individual needs. They kept older books in circulation by amending them, attached items to generic books to make them more relevant and valuable, and added new prayers with escalating indulgences as the culture of salvation shifted. Rudy considers ways in which book owners adjusted the contents of their books from the simplest (add a marginal note, sew in a curtain) to the most complex (take the book apart, embellish the components with painted decoration, add more quires of parchment). By making sometimes extreme adjustments, book owners kept their books fashionable and emotionally relevant. This study explores the intersection of codicology and human desire. Rudy shows how increased modularisation of book making led to more standardisation but also to more opportunities for personalisation. She asks: What properties did parchment manuscripts have that printed books lacked? What are the interrelationships among technology, efficiency, skill loss and standardisation?