Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T18:15:41.190Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Wo/men only? Marian devotion in medieval Perth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2013

Steve Boardman
Affiliation:
Reader in History, University of Edinburgh
Eila Williamson
Affiliation:
Gained her PhD from the University of Glasgow.
Get access

Summary

A recent study of Marian iconography in relation to The Lord of the Rings pithily notes that Mary, ‘in many respects is the central figure of the Middle Ages’. There is a vast body of surviving texts, statues, pictures, rosaries, misericords, icons, etc., relating to Mary, and even in their vastness they are but a small portion of what existed during the middle ages. This fact underpins this exploration of Marian devotion, which aims to see what sense can be made of the varied but fragmentary evidence for that practice in medieval Perth. It assesses how that evidence fits the broad pattern of such devotion in medieval Europe and whether we can see any kind of gender dimension to that devotional practice. Mary is a figure both human and quasi-divine, both a virgin and a mother, the Church's feminine ideal. As Marina Warner observed, women are equal in God's eyes but not in men's, and ‘Whether we regard the Virgin Mary as the most sublime and beautiful image in man's struggle towards the good and the pure or the most pitiable production of ignorance and superstition, she represents a central theme in the history of western attitudes to women.’

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×