Rev. proceedings of a colloquium held in Apr. 2009 at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material / K. A. E. Enenkel and W. Melion -- Introduction: Types And Functions Of Meditation In The Transition From Late Medieval To Early Modern Intellectual Culture / Karl Enenkel and Walter S. Melion -- Meditative Frames As Reader’s Guidance In Neo-Latin Texts / Karl A.E. Enenkel -- Petrarch’s \'Inner Eye\' In The Familiarium Libri XXIV / Jan Papy -- The Discovery Of The Dialogue In Dutch Medieval Literature: A Discourse For Meditation And Disputation / Geert Warnar -- From Meditation To Reverie: Montaigne And Rousseau / Paul J. Smith -- Exscribo Ergo Sum. Self-Reflexion And Meditation In Early Modern German Family Books / Wolfgang Neuber -- Accomplishing One’s Essence: The Role Of Meditation In The Theology Of Gabriel Biel / Diana Stanciu -- Twelfth And Sixteenth Century Renaissance Discourses On Meditation And Contemplation. Lefevre D’Etaples’ Commentaries On Richard Of Saint Victor’s Trinity / Jacob Vance -- Die Meditation im Spirituellen Reformprogramm der Devotio Moderna / Nikolaus Staubach -- Love Tricks And Flea-Bitings: Meditation, Imagination And The Pain Of Christ In Joseph Hall And Richard Crashaw / Jan Frans Van Dijkhuizen -- Invisible Contemplation: A Paradox In The Spiritual Exercises / Wietse De Boer -- Meditation In The Service Of Catholic Orthodoxy: Peter Canisius’ Notae Evangelicae / Hilmar M. Pabel -- Dark Images, Clear Words. Pieter Paet’s Illustrated Devotional Literature From The Missio Hollandica / Feike Dietz -- He Must Increase, But I Must Decrease. On The Spiritual And Pictorial Intertwining Between The Johannesschüssel And The Vera Icon (1200-1500) / Barbara Baert -- Cultivating Piety. Religious Art And Artists After The Council Of Trent / Jan L. De Jong -- Exegetical Duality As A Meditative Crux In Maarten Van Heemskerck’s Balaam And The Angel In A Panoramic Landscape Of 1554 / Walter S. Melion -- Index Nominum / K. A. E. Enenkel and W. Melion.

Available to subscribing member institutions only.

The late medieval and early modern period is a particularly interesting chapter in the development of meditation and self-reflection. Meditation may best be described as a self-imposed disciplinary regime, consisting of mental and physical exercises that allowed the practitioner to engender and evaluate his self-image, and thence to emend and refashion it. The volume aims at examining the forms and functions, ways and means of meditation from c. 1300 to c. 1600. It tries to analyze the internal exercises that mobilized the sensitive faculties of motion, emotion, and sense (both external and internal) and the intellective faculties of reason, memory, and will, with a view to reforming the soul, and the techniques of visualization that were frequently utilized to engage the soul’s mediating function as vinculum mundi , its pivotal position in the great chain of being between heaven and earth, temporal and spiritual experience. Contributors include Barbara Baert, Wietse de Boer, Feike Dietz, Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen, Karl Enenkel, Jan de Jong, Walter Melion, Wolfgang Neuber, Hilmar Pabel, Jan Papy, Paul Smith, Diana Stanciu, Nikolaus Staubach, Jacob Vance, and Geert Warnar.