Abstract

The impact of the Meditations on the Life of Christ, a treatise originally written for the spiritual instruction of Clares in the Tuscan town of S. Gimignano, on the course of later medieval Western Christianity can hardly be overestimated. Originally written either in Latin or Italian, as I prefer to believe, once it had appeared the treatise spread like wildfire through Europe, translated into many languages and evolving into different versions of varying length and content. In surveying how the search regarding its origin has fared in recent years it is evident that there exists a sharp difference in opinion on the part of art historians on the one hand and contemporary scholars who deal with medieval...