Miri Rubin’s Emotion and Devotion: The Meaning of Mary in Medieval Religious Cultures is one of my most recent bunch of northern European mediæval art / history that are somewhat of a continuation from my reading of the works of Caroline Walker Bynum — who also has a work in this bunch. Rubin was one of several historians on a list given to me by an actual mediæval historian. I was looking for fresh reading of the calibre of Bynum (which for any of you who’ve been reading supernaut for a while know I’m mad fond of her brilliance) and popped the question to him. He passed it on, and the contact replied, “CWB is quite wonderful, so it’s not easy to find another like her in any discipline. […] The best women writing in medieval art right now are probably Jacqueline Jung, Aden Kumler, and Beate Fricke. Miri Rubin and Barbara Newman are also great; not art historians but both women are widely read by art historians and end up discussing art in useful ways.”
So I’m reading Miri Rubin. I’m also reading Beate Fricke. Jacqueline Jung translated Aloïs Riegl’s Historical Grammar of the Visual Arts which I eventually had to say “No!” to, there’s only so much 19th century Euro-nationalist bollocks I can stomach. The primary difficulty I have with all these writers is many if not most of their published works cost in the mid- to high- double figures, and some even hurtle into triple-figure territory. I know I have a reputation to uphold of profligate book aquiring but there are limits.
Rubin then, I’ve just started reading. It’s a small work, a collection of her lectures presented “in the framework of the Natalie Zemon Davis Annual Lecture Series at the Central European University, Budapest.” So far it’s very nice, particularly when she talks about the global nature of the development of Mary and Christianity, its interconnection with the Near- and Middle East, North Africa, Judaism, and while the part I’m reading is pre-Islam, nonetheless also pre-Islamic religions of the region. As with Bynum, I suspect Rubin’s name is going to appear here in the near future.
