Re-reading the Relationship between Devotional Images, Visions, and the Body: Clare of Montefalco and Margaret of Città di Castello

Abstract

The visualization and imitation of Christ were central to thirteenth- and fourteenth-century spirituality. Saints and holy people increasingly focused their spirituality through the bodily reenactment or representation of Christ’s Passion. Images, and thus the sense of sight, were central in religious practice. Visual stimuli, real or imagined, provoked physical reactions. This article explores the tensions inherent in the use, and perceived use, of images by two Italian thirteenth-century holy women—Clare of Montefalco (d. 1308) and Margaret of Citta di Castello (d. 1320). A careful reading of surviving documentation for the canonization process (1318–1319) of Clare of Montefalco, and of the fourteenth-century vitae of Clare and Margaret, allows a problematization of the ways in which images were understood to have been used by women and to have affected women.