Caroline Walker Bynum

Caroline Walker Bynum, Professor Emerita in the School of Historical Studies, joined the Institute Faculty in 2003. Her work has created the paradigm for the study of women’s piety that dominates the field of medieval Christianity today and helped propel the history of the body into a major area of premodern European studies. Her recent work is a radical reinterpretation of the nature of Christianity on the eve of the reformations of the sixteenth century. She is currently working on medieval devotional objects in comparative perspective.

Historical Studies

Dissimilar Similitudes: Devotional Objects in Late Medieval Europe

A book by Caroline Walker Bynum

Dissimilar Similitudes: Devotional Objects in Late Medieval Europe by Caroline Bynum, Professor Emerita in the School of Historical Studies, has been published by Princeton University Press on September 29, 2020:

"Between the twelfth and the...

Historical Studies

Relics and Related Devotional Objects

Caroline Walker Bynum

The Institute Letter Fall 2010

Material objects play a role in all religions. Jewish women light candles for the Sabbath; Christians sprinkle or douse bodies with water to baptize; Hindus offer coconuts and clarified butter to images of the gods and goddesses; the ancient Incas...

Historical Studies

Piety, Practice, and Theology

Caroline Walker Bynum

The hundred and fifty years before the Protestant Reformation used to be seen as a period of religious decadence. More recently, they have been understood as an era of rather anxious piety, in which the faithful purchased indulgences, went on...