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The articles points out the historiographical partitionings which have led scholars to deal with spirituality and liturgy of the military orders without even suspecting the rich visual background of the commanderies. On their side, most of Art historians have studied the paintings of the conventual chapels without considering their historical background and, above all, the deep originality of military monasticism. It is possible then to offer an assessment, necessarily temporary, on the iconographic corpus preserved for the Templars and the Hospitallers in current France. The inventory of the painted images which have been preserved is not only provisory; it is not entirely significant as it is mostly reflecting the state of researches and as new findings can always enlarge the known material. From a chronological perspective, some scattered traces of ornamental decorations are remaining from the second half of the twelfth century, but most of the figurative images can be assigned to the last decades of the thirteenth century. Are these lieux d'images (using a french concept) revealing specificities which could be linked to the peculiar regular life which was followed in the commanderies? In other words, was the visual culture or the figurative thought of the military orders somehow distinctive? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces to the iconography of Thesenblätter - posters advertising the theses of academic disputations, characteristic feature of an academic disputation in Catholic universities since the 16th until the 17th century - as a proper and important genre of Catholic European visual culture of the Baroque and Rococo. Next it introduces the Thesenblatt "Die Weltmission der Gesellschaft Jesu" (The World Mission of the Society of Jesus) engraved in 1664 by Bartholomäus Kilian to a design by Johann Christoph Storer. The article shows the wide and at the same time varied use of the religio cordis as imagetic language in this German Thesenblatt and points out how it characterizes the Jesuit world mission in particular and the Jesuit theology in general. The pictorial language of the religion of the heart establishes the idea of continuity between Jesuit theology, the Mass of Gregory, great mystics of medieval times and the Catholic reform and sets up an interface with the Renaissance world, to reinforce and promote the triple way of medieval mysticism as an ideal and orthodox spirituality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]