Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This book sets new questions and offers innovative models for exploring the economic and artistic formations and reformations of the cult of saints in Medieval Europe together with its underlying social and political dynamic. The author examines a spectrum of cultural practices through more than thirty illustrated cycles of saints' lives in a range of media, published together for the first time: painted manuscripts; silver, gold, and ivory reliquaries; bronze doors; and stained glass. These are set against the history of one monastery, Saint-Amand d'Elnone, where three distinct illustrated versions of its saint's life survive from a hundred-year period, each adapted to a phase within the changing political and economic fortunes of the abbey.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Frequently cited manuscripts
• Abbreviations
• General introduction
• Part I Historical Formations of the Cult of Saints
• 1 Formations and transformations of the cult of saints: fourth through twelfth centuries
• 2 The historical character of pictorial hagiographies
• Part II A Case Study: St. Amand d'Elnone 1066-1180
• 3 The formation of a pictorial hagiography: manuscript 502
• 4 St. Amand and its cult between 1066 and 1107: manuscript 502
• 5 St. Amand and its cult between 1107 and 1180: manuscript 501 and 500
• General conclusions
• Part III Appendices
• 1 Cult development for saints whose lives were illustrated, with graphic chart
• 2 Map of major sites
• 3 Chronology and synopses of pictorial hagiographies
• 4 Chart showing distribution of subjects of illustrated saints' lives
• 5 Contents and analytic comparisons of the illustrated lives of Saint Armand: manuscripts 502, 501, 500
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Illustrations
• Index