Meditations on the Life of Christ - (William and Katherine Devers Dante and Medieval Italian Literature) by Sarah McNamer (Hardcover)

About the Book

McNamer offers a critical edition of The Meditations on the Life of Christ, the most popular and influential devotional work of the later Middle Ages, including a new English translation, commentary, and previously unpublished Italian text.

Book Synopsis

The Meditations on the Life of Christ was the most popular and influential devotional work of the later Middle Ages. With its lively dialogue and narrative realism, its poignant and moving depictions of the Nativity and Passion, and its direct appeals to the reader to feel love and compassion, the Meditations had a major impact on devotional practices, religious art, meditative literature, vernacular drama, and the cultivation of affective experience.

This volume is a critical edition, with English translation and commentary, of a hitherto-unpublished Italian text that McNamer argues is likely to be the original version of this influential masterpiece. Livelier and far more compact than the Latin text, the Italian "short text" possesses a stylistic and textual integrity that appears to testify to its primacy among early versions of the Meditations. The evidence also suggests that it was composed by a woman, a Poor Clare from Pisa--an author whose work McNamer contends was obscured by the anonymous Franciscan friar who subsequently altered and expanded the text. In bringing to light this unique Italian version and building a case for its origins and importance, this book will encourage a fresh look at the Meditations and serve as a foundation for further scholarship and debate concerning some of the most compelling subjects in Italian and European literary and cultural history, including the role of women in the invention of new genres and spiritual practices, the early development of Italian prose narrative, the rise of vernacular theology, and the history of emotion.

McNamer's volume will be of significant interest to medievalists, especially those who study medieval women, devotional literature, manuscript studies, and textual criticism. The linguistic analysis expands that audience to include those of a philological bent.

Review Quotes

"McNamer's compelling arguments have already changed our understanding of the MVC and its reception." --The Catholic Historical Review

"McNamer's work truly marks an important contribution to the knowledge of the Italian Renaissance, as it brings to the attention of the reader and scholar a work that profoundly marks the piety, the practice of reading, the religiosity of Italians in a crucial period of modern history." --Italian Culture

"Sarah McNamer's volume shows how this multifaceted work has not yet finished speaking to us"--Archivum Franciscanum Historicum

"But if McNamer's claims are sustained by further research, she will have restored a classic to early fourteenth-century devotional literature. Her work is a groundbreaking contribution to vernacular devotional writing in Italian, and will both stir and shape debate on the MVC for years to come." --Renaissance Quarterly

"This is a publication that in addition to providing a much-needed edition of a significant text of central Italian medieval devotional literature, will soon become a model for studies in vernacular theology, women's literature, and Franciscanism." --Sixteenth Century Journal

"By arguing for the authorship of the earliest form of the Meditationes by a Poor Clare, McNamer situates a woman as being the most influential devotional writer of the late Middle Ages. McNamer suggests that this volume will be of interest to anyone researching the study of early Franciscan women, the early interorder circulation of devotional texts among religious women's communities, the role of women in the textual community of Pisa, the artistic and cultural history of the Trecento, vernacular theology, and the history of emotion." --Medieval Femininst Forum

"In this ground-breaking edition and study Sarah McNamer makes a very persuasive argument for the primacy of this short Italian text of the Meditations on the Life of Christ among the many longer and later versions, both Italian and Latin. She situates the narrative within the highly affective religious, literary, and artistic traditions of the Trecento, and her careful examination of the evidence--especially the compassionate way the author shapes the narrative in the Infancy and Passion chapters--strongly suggests that its author was a nun of the Clarissan Order in Pisa. The extensive introductory material is replete with sound critical, artistic, historical, and linguistic insights, and McNamer's excellent edition and translation reflect her meticulous attention both to detail and to the larger literary, historical, and artistic context of the work. This is a major contribution to our greater understanding of the 'minor' literature of the fourteenth century." --Christopher Kleinhenz, Carol Mason Kirk Professor Emeritus of Italian, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"McNamer . . . offers the first critical edition of the Italian text of the Meditations on the Life of Christ, one of the most widespread devotional books of the late Middle Ages, along with a beautifully rendered English translation. . . . This volume will be of great value to those interested in the history of women, early vernacular literature, or textual criticism as well as students of Franciscan history and late-medieval devotion." -- Choice

"McNamer's work is an exciting contribution, not only to medieval scholarship but to the academy many of us would like to build." --Speculum

"Through this labor of love and painstaking editorial scholarship, Sarah McNamer provides us with a first opportunity to read a beautiful and succinct Italian life of Christ. She further invites us to consider this text as the earliest, and female-authored, version of the Meditations on the Life of Christ, a text read everywhere in Europe from the Prague of the Emperor Charles IV to the Lynn of Margery Kempe. Highly recommended." --David Wallace, Judith Rodin Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania

"In addition to the critical edition, the volume includes a translation into English, contextual annotations to the text, a linguistic analysis of the manuscript by Pär Larson of the Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, and an extensive introduction. This is a substantial and noteworthy contribution to the scholarship on the Meditations on the Life of Christ and on medieval devotional literature." -- Zygmunt G. Barański, University of Notre Dame

"Sarah McNamer has done scholars a great service. . . . Not only has she made a significant contribution to understanding medieval women's contributions to Christian spirituality, she continues to grow out scholarship on medieval devotional practices and the spread of spiritual literature, clearing up some misunderstandings." --Magistra

"This long-awaited publication is at once a monograph, arguing passionately. . . for the primacy of a 'short' Italian text. . . . This edition provides an essential point of reference for that debate." --Medium Aevum

About the Author

Sarah McNamer is professor of English and medieval studies at Georgetown University. She is the author of Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (2010).