Gothic Tombs of Kinship is a study of one monumental tomb type in Northern Europe, traced from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries. This is the first extensive treatment that recognizes the kinship tomb for what it is, rather than compounding it with its celebrated counterpart, the ceremonial tomb, where the final rites or funeral procession of the deceased are represented. The unique characteristic of a tomb of kinship is that it includes a figurative representation of a family tree. This book establishes the kinship tomb as an important Northern European iconographical type, equal in interest to the ceremonial tomb as a manifestation of the mentality of the late Middle Ages. It traces the development of the type from its inception in France and diffusion in the Low Countries and England until its vulgarization in prefabricated tombstones and alabaster tombs in the fifteenth century. The study demonstrates that after being imported into England in the late thirteenth century, the kinship tomb became a vehicle for Edward III's assertion of his claim to the French throne and, inspired by the king and court, the preferred type of the fourteenth-century English baron. Limited to the princes and knights and their ladies in the thirteenth century, the tomb was adopted by the minor gentry and the middle class by the late fourteenth century, with a corresponding change from an extended family program to one confined to the nuclear family. Gothic Tombs of Kinship identifies a representative number of kinship tombs from the period and the territories that marked their apogee, deciphers their programs, and places them in their cultural context.

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This volume offers unparalleled coverage of all aspects of art and architecture from medieval Western Europe, from the 6th century to the early 16th century. Drawing upon the expansive scholarship in the celebrated 'Grove Dictionary of Art' and adding hundreds of new entries, it offers students, researchers and the general public a reliable, up-to-date, and convenient resource covering this field of major importance in the development of Western history and international art and architecture.

Combining historical, historiographical, museological, and touristic analysis, this study investigates how late medieval and early modern women of the Low Countries expressed themselves through texts, art, architecture and material objects, how they were represented by contemporaries, and how they have been interpreted in modern academic and popular contexts. Broomhall and Spinks analyse late medieval and early modern women's opportunities to narrate their experiences and ideas, as well as the processes that have shaped their representation in the heritage and cultural tourism of the Netherlands and Belgium today. The authors study female-authored objects such as familial and political letters, dolls' houses, account books; visual sources, funeral monuments, and buildings commissioned by female patrons; and further artworks as well as heritage sites, streetscapes, souvenirs and clothing with gendered historical resonances. Employing an innovative range of materials from written sources to artworks, material objects, heritage sites and urban precincts, the authors argue that interpretations of late medieval and early modern women's experiences by historians and art scholars interact with presentations by cultural and heritage tourism providers in significant ways that deserve closer interrogation by feminist researchers.

"Re-examines the sculpture on the transept porches of Chartres Cathedral and revises their chronology, based on information from the previously unstudied tomb of the count of Joigny. Documents the production of the monument within the context of French High Gothic sculpture"--Provided by publisher.

In the Early Modern period - as both reformed and Catholic churches strove to articulate orthodox belief and conduct through texts, sermons, rituals, and images - communities grappled frequently with the connection between sacred space and behavior. The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early Modern World explores individual and community involvement in the approbation, reconfiguration and regulation of sacred spaces and the behavior (both animal and human) within them. The individual’s understanding of sacred space, and consequently the behavior appropriate within it, depended on local need, group dynamics, and the dissemination of normative expectations. While these expectations were defined in a growing body of confessionalizing literature, locally and internationally traditional clerical authorities found their decisions contested, circumvented, or elaborated in order to make room for other stakeholders’ activities and needs. To clearly reveal the efforts of early modern groups to negotiate authority and the transformation of behavior with sacred space, this collection presents examples that allow the deconstruction of these tensions and the exploration of the resulting campaigns within sacred space. Based on new archival research the eleven chapters in this collection examine diverse aspects of the campaigns to transform Christian behavior within a variety of types of sacred space and through a spectrum of media. These essays give voice to the arguments, exhortations, and accusations that surrounded the activities taking place in early modern sacred space and reveal much about how people made sense of these transformations.

In popular imagination few phenomena are as strongly associated with medieval society as knighthood and chivalry. At the same time, and due to a long tradition of differing national perspectives and ideological assumptions, few phenomena have continued to be the object of so much academic debate. In this volume leading scholars explore various aspects of knightly identity, taking into account both commonalities and particularities across Western Europe. Knighthood and Society in the High Middle Ages addresses how, between the eleventh and the early thirteenth centuries, knighthood evolved from a set of skills and a lifestyle that was typical of an emerging elite habitus, into the basis of a consciously expressed and idealised chivalric code of conduct. Chivalry, then, appears in this volume as the result of a process of noble identity formation, in which some five key factors are distinguished: knightly practices, lineage, crusading memories, gender roles, and chivalric didactics.