Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England

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Interesting, intelligent, readable and well illustrated - Rated
An absorbing, scholarly and readable account of pre-reformation practice in the English Church in the matter of statutues and other devotional images of saints. Each chapter takes a different English parish church or other place of worship as an example, and material from church accounts, wills, and other sources is intelligently used to explain how medieval men and women worshipped their favoured saints through the use of images, candles, special church services, special architectural features (such as niches, rood screens, corbels) and the like. There are numerous illustrations which are well linked to the text, although most of them are in black and white. The typeface is a bit small, but this may be because the book has turned out longer (according to the acknowledgements) than originally expected: it is certainly a rich and thorough piece of work. Although a work of scholarship, it leaves the general reader with a vivid picture of the religious experience of English people in the later middle ages which, as well as having its own interest, also contributes to our understanding of religion, history, art and society. The author is plainly very sympathetic to the religious beliefs of this period, but this does not obtrude into the text until the very end, which makes no attempt to hide a degree of regret for the passing of what we would now see as Catholic (or, at least, pre-Protestant) England.