If a reader of Chaucer suspects that an echo of a biblical verse may somehow depend for its meaning on traditional commentary on that verse, how does he or she go about finding the relevant commentaries? If one finds the word ‘fire’ in a context that suggests resonances beyond the literal, how does that reader go about learning what the traditional figurative meanings of fire were?
It was to the solution of such difficulties that R.E. Kaske addressed himself in this volume setting out and analyzing the major repositories of traditional material: biblical exegesis, the liturgy, hymns and sequences, sermons and homilies, the pictorial arts, mythography, commentaries on individual authors, and a number of miscellaneous themes. An appendix deals with medieval encyclopedias.
Kaske created a tool that will revolutionize research in its designated field: the discovery and interpretation of the traditional meanings reflected in medieval Christian imagery.