The Lacerated Body of the Book: Bloody Animation of the Passion in a 15th Century Devotional Book

Laura Katrine Skinnebach

doi:10.3390/rel13111102

The Lacerated Body of the Book: Bloody Animation of the Passion in a 15th Century Devotional Book

School of Communication and Culture - Art History

Research output: Contribution to journal/Conference contribution in journal/Contribution to newspaper › Journal article › Research › peer-review

Abstract

The body and blood of Christ are essential to Christian liturgy and passion devotion. In medieval devotional books, this came to the fore in an overtly material way. The skin of the pages, the red ink, the words, and the images constituted more than a symbolic representation of the body of Christ. The corpus of the book was experienced as the Corpus Christi, the living Savior. This is particularly evident in one specific manuscript from the British Library, BL MS Egerton 1821, in which the skin of several folios was covered with red ink almost as if the pages have seeped in the blood from Christ’s wounds. The article investigates the material, fluid, hyperreal, and mechanical strategies that animated the body of Christ in the hands of the owner, focusing in particular on blood and milk as the substances of life.

Original language	English
Article number	1102
Journal	Religions
Volume	13
Issue	11
Number of pages	19
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13111102
Publication status	Published - Nov 2022

Keywords

animation
blood
devotion
milk
passion

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10.3390/rel13111102Licence: CC BY

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The Lacerated Body of the Book: Bloody Animation of the Passion in a 15th Century Devotional Book

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