Word, Image and Experience

Giselle de Nie is an independent scholar; until her retirement, she was in the Department of Medieval History, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands

• Contents: Introduction: Visions of the heart; Self-Perception: a permeable vessel: Is a woman a human being? Precept, prejudice and practice in 6th-century Gaul; The body, fluidity and personal identity in the world view of Gregory of Tours; Contagium and images of self in late 6th-century Gaul; Images of invisible dynamics: self and non-self in 6th-century saints' lives; Symbolic action: Miracle - or magic?: Caesarius of Arles and Gregory of Tours: two 6th-century Gallic bishops and 'Christian magic'; Iconic alchemy: the dynamic of images: A broken lamp or the effluence of holy power? Common sense and belief-reality in Gregory of Tours' own experience; Seeing and believing in the early Middle Ages: a preliminary investigation; Gregory of Tours' smile: spiritual reality, imagination and earthly events in the 'Histories'; History and miracle: Gregory's use of metaphor; The poet as visionary: Venantius Fortunatus' 'new mantle' for St Martin; Iconic alchemy: imaging miracles in late 6th-century Gaul; Word, image and experience in the early medieval miracle story; Fatherly and motherly curing in 6th-century Gaul: St Radegund's mysterium; Poetics of wonder: dream-consciousness and transformational dynamics in 6th-century miracle stories; The miracle in language: The 'power' of what is said in the book: word, script and sign in Gregory of Tours; Text, symbol and 'oral culture' in the 6th-century church: the miracle story; The language in miracle - the miracle in language: words and the Word according to Gregory of Tours; Index.

'The great value of de Nie's work lies [...] in probing the very areas that many historians seek to avoid - namely the imagination, the actual nature of miracles and a spiritual rather than a sensory reality...' Early Medieval Europe