If the medieval seems alien to us, Hartnell notes we share essentially the same bodies not even fundamentally different in height. But medieval doctors and scholars were immersed in centuries of misunderstandings of the body, some inherited from Greek philosophers. Hearts and heads became powerful metaphors that still shape our societies today. The book is not simply a study of art but it explains how paintings and reliquaries that celebrated the martyrdoms of saints bound the sacred and spiritual to the physical and familiar. It discusses secular love (ardent troubadours) and religious love (cult of the sacred heart), deciding the medieval heart was 'a deeply intelligent organ''. The chapter on the heart discusses biological theories, mentioning that this organ was seen as a 'glowing internal sun''. It shows it is a mistake for people today to characterise medieval times as just an age of darkness, squalor and misery, ravaged by plague, famine and war. Subtitled Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages, it is a fascinating study, copiously illustrated. He triumphed with the decision to investigate the medieval world using a skeleton model of the human body, 10 chapters labelled from 'Head'' down to 'Feet''.

Lecturer in art history at England's University of East Anglia, Jack Hartnell took on a daunting task in his brave effort to define what the world was like for humans 1000 years ago in Europe and the Middle East. Geoff Adams reviews Jack Hartnell's Medieval Bodies, published by Profile Books.

Medieval bodies by jack hartnell