The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland circa 1300 (Yale Publications in the History of Art)

The "Rothschild Canticles" is one of the most unusual illuminated manuscripts to have survived from the Middle Ages. Produced for a nun at the turn of the 14th century, it served as an aid to mystical devotions in which images played as central a role as the written word. Visionary depictions of Paradise, the Song of Songs, the Virgin Mary, the Trinity, and hundreds of other subjects based on texts ranging from the Bible to the "Lives of the Desert Fathers" together form a devotional program that transports the reader toward contemplative union with God. Combining iconographic and contextual analysis, the author examines the interaction of image and text in the devotional experience of the religious women who formed the primary audience for didactic and mystical literature in Flanders and the Rhineland. Finally, he discusses the role of female spirituality in transforming the use of both verbal and visual imagery in late medieval devotional practice.