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The Night Nativity by Geertgen tot Sint Jans depicts the birth of Christ in a manner that emphasizes the role of the Virgin as mother and Christ as the enlightener of the world. In this paper, I will argue that the Night Nativity was directed primarily toward meeting the devotional needs and interests of the nuns of the Convent of Our Lady of the Visitation near Haarlem. This convent is of particular interest because it is associated with the Windesheim Congregation of the Modern Devotion, which was a religious movement that privileged certain forms of lay spirituality. In particular, the adherents of the Modern Devotion seemed to have preferred various forms of affective devotion often associated with “women’s spirituality.” Geertgen’s image, I believe, appealed to the women in the convent because it focuses on the role of the Virgin and, in doing so, activated well-known tropes of female spirituality.

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In reformation London, the shift of the governed religion enabled laymen to recognize individuality in their faith, to read scripture in the vernacular, and to exercise their faith outside of mass. Therefore, the overall perception of personal piety took a turn from being exercised communally to becoming something reflective of the individual. Analyzing gender dynamics, language, religious orders, and theology reveal this transition and help gain a holistic understanding of transitioning perceptions of piety. This thesis contributes to the rich historiographical conversation in understanding Reformation studies. By adopting elements from top-down and bottom-up approaches, this thesis further develops on the understanding of perceptions of religious piety in reformation London.

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This study examines the illustrations that appear at the Office of the Dead in English Books of Hours, and seeks to understand how text and image work together in this thriving culture of commemoration to say something about how the English understood and thought about death in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Office of the Dead would have been one of the most familiar liturgical rituals in the medieval period, and was recited almost without ceasing at family funerals, gild commemorations, yearly minds, and chantry chapel services. The Placebo and Dirige were texts that many people knew through this constant exposure, and would have been more widely known than other 'death' texts such as the Ars Moriendi. The images that are found in these books reflect wider trends in the piety and devotional practice of the time. The first half of the study discusses the images that appear in these horae, and the relationship between the text and image is explored. The funeral or vigil scene, as the most commonly occurring, is discussed with reference to contemporary funeral practices, and ways of reading a Book of Hours. Other iconographic themes that appear in the Office of the Dead, such as the Roman de Renart, the Pety Job, the Legend of the Three Living and the Three Dead, the story of Lazarus, and the life of Job, are also discussed. The second part of the thesis investigates the musical elaborations of the Office of the Dead as found in English prayer books. The Office of the Dead had a close relationship with music, which is demonstrated through an examination of the popularity of musical funerals and obits, as well as in the occurrence of musical notation for the Office in a book often used by the musically illiterate. The development of the Office of the Dead in conjunction with the development of the Books of Hours is also considered, and places the traditions and ideas that were part of the funeral process in medieval England in a larger historical context.