This edited volume brings together renowned specialists from History, Medieval Studies, Religious Studies, Archaeology and Art History to critically examine the topic of religious experience and so-called “lived religion” from Late Antiquity to the Central Middle Ages. With papers on Judaism, Christianity and Islam in this period, the volume is the first of its kind to consider this question in the early medieval era from a comparative perspective, drawing from a wide variety of theoretical literatures and multiple approaches, including performance theory, history of emotions, eco-criticism, queer phenomenology, history of experience and new materialism culture, to name just a few.

Recovering a historical community's religious experiences is a delicate, oftentimes difficult task. This is particularly true of religious experiences from Late Antiquity to the Central Middle Ages (c. 300–1100 C.E.), where the number and quality of sources for religious communities increase (compared to classical antiquity) yet have not reached the fevered pitch of the so-called High Middle Ages.

Lauren Mancia is Associate Professor of History at Brooklyn College (CUNY), USA. She is a specialist in 11th- and 12th-century medieval European Christianity and the author of Struggling Toward God: Meditation and Prayer in the Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Monastery (2023) and Emotional Monasticism: Affective Devotion at the Eleventh-Century Monastery of John of Fécamp (2019).

Brian P. Sowers is Associate Professor of Classics at Brooklyn College (CUNY), USA. He is a specialist in early Christianity, late antique literature and gender and reception studies. He is co-editor of The Body Unbound: Literary Approaches to the Classical Corpus (2021) and author of In Her Own Words: The Life and Poetry of Aelia Eudocia (2020).