The limits of embodiment: The implication of written and artistic portrayals of Mary at the foot of the cross for late medieval affective spirituality

In this dissertation, I identify the range and scope of depictions of internal and external manifestations of Mary's grief at the foot of the cross in two fourteenth century texts composed in the tradition of the popular Meditationes, namely the Horologium Sapientiae by Henry Suso (d. 1366) and Exercitia super vita et passione Jesu Christi , formerly attributed to John Tauler (d. 1361), a German Dominican closely associated with Suso, and in the artistic renderings of late medieval artists in Northern Europe analogous to those produced in the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden (d. 1464). Paying close attention to composite images that evidence a concern with decorum and the conflation of various theological, social and devotional programs, I ask how the conceptual frameworks within which the grieving Mary is figured reflect the socio-somatic world of the late Middle Ages. Following a cognitive-metaphorical and visual analysis of the figure of Mary in these writings and paintings, I explore how these depictions functioned in an implied liminal space between interiority and exteriority, and in turn, how this liminal space functioned in relationship to mimesis and exemplarity for people whose devotion was becoming increasingly affective in nature and outwardly manifest in form. I argue that in their depictions of the Virgin Mary's grief over Christ's Passion, late medieval writers and artists grounded in the pictorial tradition of the Meditationes Vitae Christi relied upon conceptual structures that imply a liminal space between interiority and exteriority. By embodying and amplifying the limits inherent to that space, this interpretive strategy made those limits available for meditation and possible transgression by late medieval devotees in their devotional practices. The final chapter revisits foundational definitional and methodological concerns within the academic discipline of Christian spirituality and offers a new definition of spirituality, "the cognitive category that embodies the echoic impression(s) of source, subject and beholder," as a stepping stone that challenges scholars to widen their inquiries to include the experience of those who identify as Christians for reasons that may be less than decorous within a predominantly Christian society or within the mainstream academy.