Medieval Avatars

This Element explores how medieval devotional and disciplinary practices acted as 'immersive technologies' for producing presence and configuring emotions. Through the comparative analysis of Aelred of Rievaulx's De Institutione Inclusarum and the Ordo ad Faciendum Disciplinam of the lay confraternity of Santo Stefano in Assisi, it investigates how the devout subject projected themselves into an imaginal, affective space, where memory, posture, and sensory experience converged to enable a participatory encounter with the divine. Drawing on the concept of the 'avatar' as a psychosomatic projection of the self within visionary and ritual practices, the Element traces how the 'theatre of the mind' redefined the relationship between interior vision, exterior action, and affective identity. By examining the dramaturgies of presence articulated within these memorial plays, this Element sheds light on the role of sensory discipline and emotional posture in shaping embodied devotional experience in the Latin Middle Ages.