Chris Nygren teaches history of art and architecture and serves as the Director of Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Nygren joins us to discuss miracle-making images, specifically those associated with healing from plague. Dr. Nygren examines what these icons meant to people in the past and how they continue to matter to believers today. We end our discussion by talking about the images of Pope Francis giving his Urbi et Orbi in an empty St. Peter’s Square.

Scroll down for the images that accompany this episode.

• Miraculous images

• Boccaccio’s Decameron

• Rituals of remembrance and the contingency of society

• Making sense of survival

• The intersection of Catholic devotion and public health

• Icons as plague protection

• Pope Francis’s Urbi et Orbi

• Corporeal power in images

• Contemporary meaning-making

Links:
The Decameron by Boccaccio
Boris TV series
The Historian’s Craft by Marc Bloch