![]() Thus, vellum held its own power, activated by the reader’s touch, and lent to any image on its surface. Vellum was viewed as having residual energy from the life lived by the animal, and, just like all things, as containing divine essence. ![]() But undertaking this unpleasant process demonstrated how the transformation of skin became essential to medieval haptic perception. What type of connection was forged between reader and text via the act of touching? How did haptic desire and practice influence the procedures of piety a reader performed? It also assisted me in contextualizing the relationship between image(s) and physical text and between image(s) and individual reader. The seminar helped me clarify this creative process, and consider scribal intentionality as a deliberate strategy to stage materiality of the manuscript, directing the ways in which readers engaged with the text. But, contemporary readers handled them constantly, and, if reading aloud, engaged all the senses in a whole-body experience. Before my NEH seminar, I rarely considered how medieval people touched manuscripts. In each instance, senses are engaged, especially touch.ĭevotional literature often encouraged the faithful to taste, touch, suck, kiss, and enter into Christ’s side wound. Womb-like, it also suggested a place of rebirth. The Side Wound more specifically became a nuptial bedchamber and a refuge, offering protection, nourishment, and cleansing. (Medieval artistic depictions usually have the opening on the right side of Christ’s body, although anatomically it should be on the left, because the right side traditionally houses goodness.) Christ’s heart became the focus of mystic union. Early devotions located the wound in Christ’s side only from the 12 th century forward was it understood that Christ’s heart was pierced. Nonetheless, both remained popular throughout the Middle Ages. ![]() The cult of the Side Wound was widespread throughout the early church, but was superseded by late medieval devotion to the Sacred Heart. I will consider here readers touching medieval manuscript representations of Christ’s Side Wound. My newly-informed appreciation for the physical process of creation has inspired me to rethink the relationships between these texts and the medieval devotional experience, and the centrality of hapacity to devotional literature in particular. While experimenting with techniques for making parchment, scraping quills, preparing ink, crafting paper, and assembling a sample book, I experienced hapacity in new ways (see images below). As seminar participants, we experienced first-hand the laborious and delicate work required of medieval scribes to produce the written word. In summer 2015, I was a participant in a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar on Manuscript Materiality. ![]()
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