Medieval Manuscripts Series
Bloody Mary: Gendered Devotion to the Virgin in Spain, c. 1500
Tuesday, October 7, 2025
Helmerich Browsing Room | OSU Library
4:00-5:00pm
Reception following
Manuscript Speaker Series: Dr. Jes Boon
Please join us for our second annual lecture focused on medieval manuscripts, in celebration
of the OSU Library’s new collecting area!
In this lecture, Dr. Boon engages with gender history, art history, and history of
emotion to explore devotion to the Virgin Mary during the early Spanish empire. In
an age of inter-religious conflict, Mary was the model and ideal for queenship, for
conquest, and even for the crucifixion.
About Jes Boon
Jes Boon is associate professor and director of graduate studies in the department of Religious
Studies and is interim director of the Program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies
at University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. Boon specializes in spirituality and
mysticism in late medieval and Renaissance Spain in light of theories of embodiment,
including gender and sexuality studies as well as history of medicine and emotions,
and is the author of The Mystical Science of the Soul: Medieval Cognition in Bernardino de Laredo’s Recollection
Method (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012). For more information see: https://religion.unc.edu/_people/full-time-faculty/boon/
This event has been funded by a 2025 Centennial Grant from the Medieval Academy of America. It is co-sponsored by the OSU Center for the
Humanities and the OSU Library. For more information on OSU’s Manuscripts selection:
