'An excellent collection! ... With its impressive, forward-thinking scholarship, these essays will find a broad readership of scholars and students from a variety of disciplines.' -- Josie Campbell, Department of English, University of Rhode Island

The cult of the Christ Child flourished in late medieval Europe across lay and religious, as well as geographic and cultural boundaries. Depictions of Christ's boyhood are found throughout popular culture, visual art, and literature. The Christ Child in Medieval Culture is the first interdisciplinary investigation of how representations of the Christ Child were conceptualized and employed in this period.

The contributors to this unique volume analyse depictions of the Christ Child through a variety of frameworks, including the interplay of mortality and divinity, the medieval conceit of a suffering Christ Child, and the interrelationships between Christ and other figures, including saints and ordinary children. The Christ Child in Medieval Culture synthesizes various approaches to interpreting the cultural meaning of medieval religious imagery and illuminates the significance of its most central figure.

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‘The abiding impression of this collection – and every essay repays reading and re-reading – is of the extraordinary richness and poetry of medieval devotions and its remarkable freedom from sentimental fripperies.’

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‘A lively collection of essays.’

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‘A fascinating volume that makes highly entertaining reading, and should be of widespread scholarly interest.’

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‘Meticulously documented and edited, this book provides an impressively rich display of the intersections of medieval theology with the visual arts, literary expression, and popular devotion… We will certainly keep this “source-book” to explore further the ever-endearing and engaging figure of God as baby and little boy.’

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‘The book is highly relevant for those interested in the Middle Ages, the history of Christianity, as well as religion and the arts; it can be an interesting point of departure for future studies on the construction of childhood in the West.’