'The Devout Belief of the Imagination'

This volume examines the late medieval devotional text Meditationes Vitae Christi through an analysis of its most important manuscript, known by its present location and catalogue number as Paris Bibliothèque Nationale Ms. ital. 115. As Flora argues, Ms. ital. 115, the oldest and most extensively illustrated copy of the Meditationes, was originally made in or near Pisa c. 1350 and tailored very specifically for a group of Franciscan nuns. Flora suggests the manuscript’s probable uses in practices of performative devotion and affective response, and the relationship between its imagery and other works of art made for religious women, shedding new light on the history of female monasticism in medieval Italy.

Holly Flora is Assistant Professor of Art History at Tulane University, and is the author of Cimabue and Early Italian Devotional Painting (The Frick Collection, 2006) as well as studies on illustrated manuscripts and devotional art in late medieval Italy.