Focusing on The Book of Margery Kempe, this article argues that devotional objects such as the crucifix and the pietà functioned as a model for the performance of religious identity. Reading devotional objects as devotional “events,” using material culture and performance theory, the article will demonstrate that pastoral care texts and religious lyrics created an expectation that an encounter with a devotional object could be a powerful opportunity for religious self-fashioning. This was an opportunity that was available to Lollard as well as orthodox devotees and which, I will argue, was especially efficacious for laywomen. A detailed examination of Margery Kempe's encounter with the pietà and her experience in the house of a poor woman in Rome additionally reveals that such performances established female communities that operated outside of ecclesiastical control and renegotiated the contours of sacred space.
The church as sacred space places the reader at the heart of medieval religious life, standing inside the church with the medieval laity in order to ask what the church meant to them and why. It examines the church as a building, idea, and community, and explores the ways in which the sanctity of the church was crucial to its place at the centre of lay devotion and parish life. At a time when the parish church was facing competition for lay attention, and dissenting movements such as Lollardy were challenging the relevance of the material church, the book examines what was at stake in discussions of sanctity and its manifestations. Exploring a range of Middle English literature alongside liturgy, architecture, and material culture, the book explores the ways in which the sanctity of the church was constructed and maintained for the edification of the laity. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary theoretical approaches, the book offers a reading of the church as continually produced and negotiated by the rituals, performances, and practices of its lay communities, who were constantly being asked to attend to its material form, visual decorations, and significance. The meaning of the church was a dominant question in late-medieval religious culture and this book provides an invaluable context for students and academics working on lay religious experience and canonical Middle English texts.
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