What do you think?
Rate this book
Dissimilar Similitudes: Devotional Objects in Late Medieval Europe
From an acclaimed historian, a mesmerizing account of how medieval European Christians envisioned the paradoxical nature of holy objects
Between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries, European Christians used a plethora of objects in worship, not only prayer books, statues, and paintings but also pieces of natural materials, such as stones and earth, considered to carry holiness, dolls representing Jesus and Mary, and even bits of consecrated bread and wine thought to be miraculously preserved flesh and blood. Theologians and ordinary worshippers alike explained, utilized, justified, and warned against some of these objects, which could carry with them both anti-Semitic charges and the glorious promise of heaven. Their proliferation and the reaction against them form a crucial background to the European-wide movements we know today as “reformations” (both Protestant and Catholic).
In a set of independent but interrelated essays, Caroline Bynum considers some examples of such holy things, among them beds for the baby Jesus, the headdresses of medieval nuns, and the footprints of Christ carried home from the Holy Land by pilgrims in patterns cut to their shape or their measurement in lengths of string. Building on and going beyond her well-received work on the history of materiality, Bynum makes two arguments, one substantive, the other methodological. First, she demonstrates that the objects themselves communicate a paradox of dissimilar similitude―that is, that in their very details they both image the glory of heaven and make clear that that heaven is beyond any representation in earthly things. Second, she uses the theme of likeness and unlikeness to interrogate current practices of comparative history. Suggesting that contemporary students of religion, art, and culture should avoid comparing things that merely “look alike,” she proposes that humanists turn instead to comparing across cultures the disparate and perhaps visually dissimilar objects in which worshippers as well as theorists locate the “other” that gives religion enduring power.
Between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries, European Christians used a plethora of objects in worship, not only prayer books, statues, and paintings but also pieces of natural materials, such as stones and earth, considered to carry holiness, dolls representing Jesus and Mary, and even bits of consecrated bread and wine thought to be miraculously preserved flesh and blood. Theologians and ordinary worshippers alike explained, utilized, justified, and warned against some of these objects, which could carry with them both anti-Semitic charges and the glorious promise of heaven. Their proliferation and the reaction against them form a crucial background to the European-wide movements we know today as “reformations” (both Protestant and Catholic).
In a set of independent but interrelated essays, Caroline Bynum considers some examples of such holy things, among them beds for the baby Jesus, the headdresses of medieval nuns, and the footprints of Christ carried home from the Holy Land by pilgrims in patterns cut to their shape or their measurement in lengths of string. Building on and going beyond her well-received work on the history of materiality, Bynum makes two arguments, one substantive, the other methodological. First, she demonstrates that the objects themselves communicate a paradox of dissimilar similitude―that is, that in their very details they both image the glory of heaven and make clear that that heaven is beyond any representation in earthly things. Second, she uses the theme of likeness and unlikeness to interrogate current practices of comparative history. Suggesting that contemporary students of religion, art, and culture should avoid comparing things that merely “look alike,” she proposes that humanists turn instead to comparing across cultures the disparate and perhaps visually dissimilar objects in which worshippers as well as theorists locate the “other” that gives religion enduring power.
352 pages, Hardcover
Published September 29, 2020
About the author
Caroline Walker Bynum
20 books83 followersCaroline Walker Bynum is an American medieval scholar and University Professor emerita at Columbia University, as well as Professor emerita of Western Medieval History at the Institute for Advanced Study. She was the first woman appointed University Professor at Columbia, served as Dean of the School of General Studies, and led both the American Historical Association and the Medieval Academy of America. Her research focuses on how medieval people, particularly women, understood the human body and physicality within spiritual and theological contexts, highlighting female piety and the role of women in late-medieval Europe. She has received numerous honors and taught at Harvard, Washington, Columbia, and Princeton.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 20, 2026
Dissimilar Similitudes: Devotional Objects in Late Medieval Europe by Caroline Walker Bynum is a richly layered and intellectually captivating study that explores how medieval Christians understood, experienced, and contested the sacred through material objects.
What makes the book especially compelling is its ability to illuminate the paradoxical role devotional objects played within medieval religious life. Rather than treating these objects merely as symbolic representations, Bynum demonstrates how they operated within a complex theological and emotional framework in which material things could simultaneously reveal and conceal divine presence.
I was particularly struck by the concept of “dissimilar similitude” the idea that holy objects both gesture toward heavenly reality and emphasize the impossibility of fully representing it through earthly forms. That tension gives the book remarkable philosophical and theological depth while also grounding it in the sensory realities of medieval worship.
The range of devotional objects discussed is also fascinating. From prayer books and relics to dolls of Jesus and Mary, pilgrim souvenirs, stones, earth, and consecrated bread believed to embody flesh and blood, the book reveals how deeply materiality shaped religious imagination during the late medieval period.
Another major strength of the work is the way it situates these devotional practices within the broader cultural and historical tensions that contributed to both Protestant and Catholic reformations. Bynum carefully explores how reverence for sacred objects could inspire devotion while also provoking anxiety, criticism, and theological conflict.
Methodologically, the book is equally important. By challenging simplistic forms of comparative history based solely on visual resemblance, Bynum proposes a more nuanced way of understanding how cultures locate transcendence within materially different objects and practices.
At 352 pages, Dissimilar Similitudes offers a profound contribution to medieval studies, religious history, theology, art history, and the study of material culture.
Overall, this is a masterful and deeply thought-provoking work that reshapes how we understand the relationship between matter, representation, and the sacred in medieval Europe.
What makes the book especially compelling is its ability to illuminate the paradoxical role devotional objects played within medieval religious life. Rather than treating these objects merely as symbolic representations, Bynum demonstrates how they operated within a complex theological and emotional framework in which material things could simultaneously reveal and conceal divine presence.
I was particularly struck by the concept of “dissimilar similitude” the idea that holy objects both gesture toward heavenly reality and emphasize the impossibility of fully representing it through earthly forms. That tension gives the book remarkable philosophical and theological depth while also grounding it in the sensory realities of medieval worship.
The range of devotional objects discussed is also fascinating. From prayer books and relics to dolls of Jesus and Mary, pilgrim souvenirs, stones, earth, and consecrated bread believed to embody flesh and blood, the book reveals how deeply materiality shaped religious imagination during the late medieval period.
Another major strength of the work is the way it situates these devotional practices within the broader cultural and historical tensions that contributed to both Protestant and Catholic reformations. Bynum carefully explores how reverence for sacred objects could inspire devotion while also provoking anxiety, criticism, and theological conflict.
Methodologically, the book is equally important. By challenging simplistic forms of comparative history based solely on visual resemblance, Bynum proposes a more nuanced way of understanding how cultures locate transcendence within materially different objects and practices.
At 352 pages, Dissimilar Similitudes offers a profound contribution to medieval studies, religious history, theology, art history, and the study of material culture.
Overall, this is a masterful and deeply thought-provoking work that reshapes how we understand the relationship between matter, representation, and the sacred in medieval Europe.
June 19, 2024
“Hence the medieval footprint in its many guises and permutations can perhaps serve as a metaphor for what all scholars pursue- with phobia as well as philia. The other we seek to know, whether text or object, is paradoxical- on the one hand, a conjuring up of an absent something that has left only a trace, yet on the other hand, a thing powerful in and of itself. After all, there would be no other to pursue if something strange- whether wonderful or fearsome- did not hover beyond, forever just out of our reach, whole although we encounter only a part. But we would have no access to that other if something, by it’s very absence, had not left behind a specific, powerful in itself, and very much present part- a vestige, or trace, or footprint.”
Read
May 10, 2025Very relevant for research and research methods, but I wasn’t a huge fan of some of the more comparative stuff.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews