| Summary: | The thesis investigates the ways in which Catholics in late medieval Italy (c. 1200-1600) conceptualised their interactions with God. Drawing on a wide range of primary evidence and informed by contemporary anthropological theory, it argues that objects were used within religious settings to instantiate the divine. Within these contexts, religious artefacts such as Madonna statues, crucifixes and comforting tavolette were important because they enabled people to directly interact with the sacred while on earth. The assumption that material artefacts could make immanent the divine is apparent in the interactions of Christians with votive sculptures and images; pilgrims journeyed far to pray directly to miracle-working images in the hope that a ’face-to-face' meeting might hasten a divine response. Key to the investigation is the corporeal Franciscan theology which underpinned the religious activities undertaken by the confraternities, as well as accusations of 'idolatry' by reformers. The thesis concludes with an assessment of post-Tridentine conceptions of Catholic piety with reference to a range of religious and secular image-making practices.
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