‘The Devout Belief of the Imagination’: The Paris ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi’ and Female Franciscan Spirituality in Trecento Italy

This volume examines the late medieval devotional text Meditationes Vitae Christi through an analysis of its most important manuscript, known by its present location and catalogue number as Paris Bibliotheque Nationale Ms. ital. 115. As Flora argues, Ms. ital. 115, the oldest and most extensively illustrated copy of the Meditationes, was originally made in or near Pisa circa 1350 and tailored very specifically for a group of Franciscan nuns. Flora proposes the manuscript’s probable uses in practices of performative devotion and affective response, and the relationship between its imagery and other works of art made for religious women, shedding new light on the history of female monasticism in medieval Italy.