This is one of those rare books that can make one look at the world in a new way... An extraordinary, moving and thought-provoking evocation of late medieval devotion in all its contradictions, paradoxes and multiplicities. -Helen Castor, Times Higher Education Over the past 30 years, Bynum has published an initially contentious series of books that have ... Read moreilluminated many aspects of the oddness of the medieval world... This time she focuses on Christians' intense devotion to objects that they believed both signaled and embodied God's essence and glory. -Chronicle of Higher Education Bynum is America's foremost scholar of medieval religion.... [This book] will delight, challenge, and energize her fellow historians. It will also inform, fascinate, and on occasion curdle the blood of the intelligent general reader. And books that achieve that enviable double objective are as rare and precious as the relics of the saints. -New York Review of Books Show Less