The Ordeals of Substance: Material Economies of Passion and Probation in the Middle Ages

With Aden Kumler, Art History, University of Chicago. In the life of certain privileged medieval things, processes of purification, refinement, testing and destruction play a suggestive part. Focused on how these formative ordeals were implicated in the production of presence and meaning in the Middle Ages, Kumler’s lecture will explore the interaction of metaphor and materiality in relation to three auratic object types: coins, seals, and Eucharistic wafers.