Featuring illuminated manuscripts from nineteen Boston-area institutions, Beyond Words provides a sweeping overview of the history of the book in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, as well as a guide to its production, illumination, functions, and readership. With over 150 manuscripts on display, Manuscripts for Pleasure & Piety at the McMullen Museum focuses on lay readership and the place of books in medieval society. The High Middle Ages witnessed an affirmation of the visual and, with it, empirical experience. There was an explosion of illumination. Various types of images, whether in prayer or professional books, attest to the newfound importance of visual demonstration in matters of faith and science alike."--

Modules: The Victorian Age; Early Twentieth Century and Modernism; The Contemporary Age.

Stories of the torture and execution of beautiful Christian women first appeared in late antiquity and proliferated during the early Middle Ages. A thousand years later, virgin martyrs were still the most popular female saints. Their legends, in countless retellings through the centuries, preserved a standard plot—the heroine resists a pagan suitor, endures cruelties inflicted by her rejected lover or outraged family, works miracles, and dies for Christ. That sequence was embellished by incidents emblematic of the specific saint: Juliana's battle with the devil, Barbara's immurement in the tower, Katherine's encounter with spiked wheels. Karen A. Winstead examines this seemingly static story form and discovers subtle shifts in the representation of the virgin martyrs, as their legends were adapted for changing audiences in late medieval England.

A fascinating collection of essays by renowned and emerging scholars exploring how everyday matters from farting to friendship reveal extraordinary aspects of early modern life, while seemingly exceptional acts and beliefs – such as those of ghosts, prophecies, and cannibalism – illuminate something of the routine experience of ordinary people.

This exhibition at Boston College's McMullen Museum of Art (February-May 1999) takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying the style, subject matter, and functions of religious art in Italy between 1580-1680. The conceptual centerpiece of the exhibition is Caravaggio's recently rediscovered The Taking of Christ. The catalogue reproduces in color all of the paintings in the exhibition and includes a collection of essays that analyze how some of the period's most important artistic, religious, and social concerns are encapsulated within the various images. Contributors include Franco Mormando (Exhibition Organizer and Catalogue Editor), Gauvin Bailey, Noel Barber, Sergio Benedetti, Pamela Jones, John W. O'Malley, John Varriano, Josephine von Henneberg, and Thomas Worcester.