Church, Laity, and Authority in Late Medieval Alabaster Sculptures of John the Baptist's Head

This project addresses the motives behind and interpretative outcomes of Christological sculptures of St. John the Baptist’s severed head in fifteenth-century England. These sculptures depart from the iconography of John’s death in Scripture and instead align with an English eucharistic lesson on the saint’s head. I theorize that tensions between two groups of viewers—the authorities of the Church who were likely responsible for the initial promotion of John’s head sculptures and the laypeople who purchased them on the open market—contributed to the degree to which the sculptures served to visually advance the idea of eucharistic consecration. Drawing on English Catholic and early reformist teachings on the Eucharist, as well as lay devotional art produced in reaction to these challenges, I propose that John’s head sculptures mediated between lay desire to behold the body of Christ while reaffirming the Catholic Church as the sole custodian of the Eucharist.