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The Visual and the Visionary adds a new dimension to the study of femalespirituality, with its nuanced account of the changing roles of images in medievalmonasticism from the twelfth century to the Reformation. In nine essays embracingthe histories of art, religion, and literature, Jeffrey Hamburger explores theinterrelationships between the visual arts and female spirituality in the context ofthe cura monialium, the pastoral care of nuns. Used as instruments of instructionand inspiration, images occupied a central place in debates over devotionalpractice, monastic reform, and mystical expression. Far from supplementing a historyof art from which they have been excluded, the images made by and for women shapedthat history decisively by defining novel modes of religious expression, above all, the relationship between sight and subjectivity. With this book, the study of femalepiety and artistic patronage becomes an integral part of the general history ofmedieval art and spirituality.