In a recent issue of The Medieval Review, Michael Randall discusses Caroline Walker Bynum’s Dissimilar Similitudes: Devotional Objects in Late Medieval Europe, out in paperback this coming spring. Click here to learn more about the book. Click here to read the full review. An excerpt appears below:

“Dissimilar Similitudes is a fascinating study of devotional objects in the late European Middle Ages by a remarkable historian at the top of her game. The theoretical breadth of the study is brilliantly backed up with myriad examples that the author lines up almost like a prosecutor might in a court case to prove to a jury the guilt or innocence of a person accused of a crime. In this instance, Bynum does a very good job of prosecuting the case that objects of devotion from the late Middle Ages need to be understood in all their singular beauty. The prime suspects in the case that Bynum brings are those scholars who have lost sight of the thingness of the devotional objects.”