Optics, ethics, and art in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: looking into Peter of Limoges's Moral treatise on the eye

Abstract

"This volume examines afresh the various ways in which the introduction of ancient and Arabic optical theories transformed thirteenth-century thinking about vision, how scientific learning came to be reconciled with theological speculation, and the effect these new developments had on those who learned about them through preaching. At the core of this collection lies Peter of Limoges's 'Tractatus moralis de oculo', a compilation remarkable for subsuming science into the edifice of theology and glossing the physiology of the eye and theories of perception in terms of Christian ethics and moralization, making esoteric learning accessible to the public (including artists) through preaching. Transgressing traditional boundaries between art history, science, literature, and the history of religion, the nine essays in this volume complicate the generally accepted understanding of the impact science had on thirteenth-century visual culture."--

Contents

Introduction / Herbert L. Kessler and Richard G. Newhauser -- Morals, science, and the edification of the senses / Richard G. Newhauser -- "Can't take my eyes off of you" : mutual gazing between the divine and humanity in late medieval preaching / Carolyn Muessig -- Preaching amidst pictures : visual contexts for sermons in late medieval Tuscany / Donal Cooper -- Seeing the worldly with a moral eye : illuminated observation as introspection / Aden Kumler -- Eyes in the back of the head : exempla and vision in the Moral treatise on the eye by Peter of Limoges / Jacques Berlioz -- Is the exemplum a mirror? / Larry Scanlon -- Skating on thin eyes : Hans Belting on the optics of Arabic and Western art / A. Mark Smith -- "To see clearly": the place of relief in medieval visual culture / Christopher R. Lakey -- Fenestra obliqua: art and Peter of Limoges's modes of seeing / Herbert L. Kessler.