Crucial to an understanding of life in the past is an appreciation of how individuals perceived their world. This book captures the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings of the late medieval period to recreate and explain the kinds of lives lived by medieval men and women. Based on a wide range of sources, from saints' lives, collections of miracles and literary works, to domestic financial records and the remains of buildings, the book reveals a physical experience very different from our own. Popular beliefs about the senses were closely intertwined with intellectual ideas about their...