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Document Details :

Title: Tekens aan de wand
Subtitle: Het ophangen, lezen en verwijderen van gebeden en gedichten in katholieke religieuze ruimtes (15de-16de eeuw)
Author(s): MAREEL, Samuel
Journal: Spiegel der Letteren
Volume: 59    Issue: 2-3   Date: 2017   
Pages: 231-259
DOI: 10.2143/SDL.59.2.3285105

Abstract :
This article investigates the posting of verse texts in late medieval religious spaces and the reception of this practice by the Reformation. It starts from a short passage from a chronicle by Marcus van Vaernewyck about the disappearance of posted texts in a monastery in Ghent after the iconoclasts had passed through it in the summer of 1566. By confronting this passage with a diverse corpus of sources (verse texts, chronicles, paintings and prints). I look at three aspects of the practice under investigation: (1) the use of walls as a medium for the diffusion of religious texts; (2) the interaction of these texts with the religious spaces in which they were posted, and in particular with other works of art and with rituals; and (3) the possible motives of the iconoclasts to remove and destroy these textual objects.

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