Imagining the miraculous

About this book

"This is not a book about miraculous images of the Virgin Mary, but rather about their representations in French illuminated manuscripts from ca. 1250 to ca. 1450. Illustrations such as these point to the ubiquity of local miraculous Marian images in devotional practices from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century in French-speaking regions. This book examines in systematic fashion a large quantity of images, mostly unpublished, from the various types of texts devoted to Marian miracles. It then analyzes the depiction of their materiality and the animated miracles they perform, and traces their evolution from the earliest narratives of Marian miracles written in Old French through to the Burgundian court of the late Middle Ages."-- This is not a book about miraculous images of the Virgin Mary (be they icons, sculptures, altarpieces, or reliquaries) but about their representations in French illuminated manuscripts from ca. 1250 to ca. 1450. Most of these depictions of the Virgin Mary cannot be identified even tangentially with particular surviving images (such as the Virgins of Rocamadour, Soissons, Chartres, and Laon). Rather, these illustrations point to the ubiquity of local miraculous Marian images in devotional practices from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century in French-speaking regions. This book analyzes depictions of material images and the animated miracles they perform, and traces their evolution from the earliest narratives of Marian miracles written in Old French to texts and images produced at the Burgundian court of the late Middle Ages.