Who Do You Say That He Is?

That painting is one of many featured in Grace Hamman’s Jesus Through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, Mystics, and Theologians of the Middle Ages. Weaving together a wide variety of authors and images, the book is beautiful, instructive, and moving. It includes numerous black-and-white and color reproductions of art from the period. The chapters are divided thematically, with each one taking up a particular way of encountering Jesus—as judge or knight, for example. The chapters end with nicely designed suggestions for concrete meditations or practices that might aid the reader in realizing the virtues espoused in the chapter. The book thus quite effectively reproduces for modern readers something like the experience that medieval persons would have had in relation to the texts or artwork.  Read Full Article »