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The Augustinian Heart: Late Medieval Images of Augustine as a Monastic Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2015

ANIK LAFERRIÈRE*
Affiliation:
Keble College, Oxford E-mail: anik.laferriere@keble.ox.ac.uk

Abstract

This study focuses on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century images, commissioned by the Ordo Eremitarum Sancti Augustini, of Augustine in rapture at the Trinity, revealing a wounded heart. This imagery begins an iconographical trend within the order that portrays Augustine as the Doctor of Love and departs from the image initiated by Possidius of Augustine as the rational thinker and bishop. A comparison with contemporaneous images of Francis receiving the stigmata reveals a new understanding of the relationship of the body to fourteenth- and fifteenth-century mendicant piety, and the importance of the iconisation of the body in the Hermits' understanding of Augustine.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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