BOOK REVIEW

The Meditationes Vitae Christi is one of the best known and most widely distributed devotional texts to emerge from the later Middle Ages. In her book, Holly Flora revisits one of the very few manuscripts to illustrate the text that have survived from the fourteenth century, Paris, BnF, Ms Ital. 115. Flora has published widely on the Meditationes and in her 2009 monograph she focused on Ital. 115’s singular combination of text and images and the way it catered to the needs of its reader—a group of Poor Clare nuns. In the present book she offers a fresh reading of this well-known and still intriguing manuscript.

Following art historians’ recent interest in the way medieval works of art engaged not only with sight but with all five senses, Flora focuses on the somatic aspects offered by the manuscript’s text and illuminations. She notes that the Meditationes invites a vicarious, sensual, participation in Christ’s life, often appealing to the five bodily senses—taste, smell, touch, sight, and sound. The invocation of the senses, she argues, was part of the Franciscan broader understanding of the mechanisms of contemplation. The Franciscans played a key role in the revival of Aristotelian notions of perception, contending that all knowledge begins with sensory experience. In his famous treatise on contemplation, Itinerarium mentis in deum, Bonaventure perceived the bodily senses as a pathway toward experiential knowledge of God, following Saint Francis’ stigmatization as the ultimate, if unreachable, model.

Offering a close reading of the manuscript’s text and images, Flora explores in five chapters the way in which Ital. 115 evokes, or refers to, sensory experience. The first chapter, “Perception and Emulation,” considers sight—specifically, how the reader is encouraged to watch Mary’s actions and emulate her behaviour. The chapter also considers contemporary definitions of reading and the way the combination of text and images elicits an immersive involvement of the sense of sight. Chapter 2, “Feeling Franciscan,” examines how the images in Ital. 115 promote the values of the Franciscan Order through identification with the bodily sense of physical suffering. The Meditationes presents Mary, Joseph, and the Christ Child as paragons of voluntary poverty, prefiguring the commitment of Saint Francis and Saint Clare. These unique images would have aided the Poor Clare nun’s vicarious participation when reading about the physical hardships endured by the Holy Family as a result of their poverty, and its appropriation in Franciscan practices.

Chapter 3, “Ritual and the Senses,” demonstrates how the imagery of Ital. 115 invokes the senses to teach the reader how to experience the liturgy. The sensorially-driven texts and images were designed to help the readers to understand—or to feel—how their liturgies intersected with biblical history. Flora describes how this appeal to the senses could have also allowed the Poor Clare nuns to participate imaginitively in those church rituals that were denied them due to their prescribed rules of enclosure.

Chapter 4, “Sacred Topography and Collective Memory,” focuses on the section of the manuscript devoted to the Flight into Egypt. Flora argues that the somatic cues within this section were designed to be particularly relevant to a Poor Clare reader dwelling in Tuscany, amplifying her virtual participation in the Holy Family’s journey and underscoring her identity as a Franciscan nun.

The final chapter, “Feasts for the Senses,” focuses on three narrative sequences involving feasts, and explores how the sense of taste becomes a means for the Poor Clare reader to enact compassion through her meditations. This is perhaps the most intriguing of the book’s chapters, providing a stimulating discussion on the parallel between the physical hardship that attends fasting and the empathetic contemplation of Christ’s suffering. By creating visual meditations on meals, the designer of the manuscript once again prompts the reader to use her body in meditating on the Life of Christ and his incarnate experience.

Flora’s expertise in Franciscan spirituality and manuscript illumination is reflected in this well-written and handsomely illustrated book. The study demonstrates how new theoretical approaches can enrich our understanding of late medieval books, by considering the interwoven sensual and intellectual aspects of contemplation and the embodiment of meditative reading. It is therefore a welcome addition to the literature on the Meditationes, to its illustrated copies, and to the broader reception of late medieval illuminated manuscripts.

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¹ Tel Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel. Mail: renanabartal@tauex.tau.ac.il