Prof. Mitch Merback's Book Now in Paperback
August 14, 2001
August 14, 2001, Greencastle, Ind. - The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe by Mitchell B. Merback, assistant professor of art history and chair of the department of art at DePauw University, is now available in paperback. London-based Reaktion Books has released a softbound edition of the book first published in 1999 by the University of Chicago Press.
As Merback offered in this posting at Amazon.com, “Throughout the book I ask the question: what kind of sight did the spectacle of each antithetical character's death constitute for medieval viewers? Was this all just gratuitous violence, used only to attract the curiosity of people with a penchant for violence? Or did it serve another purpose, one commensurate with the larger purposes of religious imagery and indoctrination at this time?”
You can read more about the book, and its author's thoughts, here.
Dr. Merback also organized a speaker's session at the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds on July 10, 2001, entitled "Blind Hatreds: Legends of Jewish Iconoclasm in Medieval Visual Culture." In the same session he delivered a paper entitled, "Cleansing the Temple: Synagogue Converison and Pilgrimages to 'Wounded Cult Images' in Upper Bavaria."
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