Meditations on the Life of Christ

The Short Italian Text

A critical edition of a never-before-published Italian text likely to be the original version of the influential masterpiece, The Meditations on the Life of Christ.

Meditations on the Life of Christ was the most popular and influential devotional work of the later Middle Ages. With its lively dialogue and narrative realism, its poignant and moving depictions of the Nativity and Passion, and its direct appeals to the reader to feel love and compassion, the Meditations had a major impact on devotional practices, religious art, meditative literature, vernacular drama, and the cultivation of affective experience.

This volume is a critical edition, with English translation and commentary, of the Italian text that McNamer argues is likely to be the original version of this influential masterpiece. Livelier and far more compact than the Latin text, the Italian “short