Date of Award

2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Carrasco, Malena

Keywords

Religion, MS Edgerton 1821, Blood, Devotional Imagery, Art History, Manuscript

Area of Concentration

Art History

Abstract

British Library MS Egerton 1821 is a rare example of late medieval devotion. It opens with three black folios, each dotted with large globules of red paint. Eight later folios are colored carmine and covered in small, relief-like bleeding wounds. Four woodcuts, depicting the Madonna lactans, the arma Christi, the Man of Sorrows, and the Five Holy Wounds, have been affixed to the manuscript’s vellum folios. For this thesis, I explore Egerton 1821’s bleeding pages and integrated woodcuts, using them to open a discussion of the devotion to Christ’s abstracted, disembodied side wound. I interpret this isolated wound as baptismal and eucharistical fountain, as body, as mouth, and as passageway.

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