Please join Labyrinth Books, the Classics Department and Humanities Council at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study for an evening of conversation between historians Caroline Walker Bynum and Brooke Holmes on the subject of late medieval devotional objects.
Caroline Bynum will consider some examples of late medieval devotional objects from her recent work Dissimilar Similitudes: Devotional Objects in Late Medieval England : beds for the baby Jesus, the headdresses of medieval nuns, and the footprints of Christ carried home by pilgrims from the Holy Land in patterns cut to their shape or their measurement in lengths of string. Bynum demonstrates how these objects themselves communicate a paradox of dissimilar similitude—that is, that in their very details they both image the glory of heaven and make clear that that heaven is beyond any representation in earthly things.
Caroline Bynum’s work has been instrumental in introducing the concept of gender into the study of medieval Christianity. Her early, path-breaking books are Holy Feast and Holy Fast and The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christendom. She is Professor emerita in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study. Brooke Holmes is Professor of Classics at Princeton University. She is the author of The Symptom and the Subject: The Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece and Gender: Antiquity and Its Legacy.
This event is cosponsored by the Classics Department and Humanities Council at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. Please click the link below to register.