Affective piety  Affective piety is most commonly described as a style of highly emotional devotion to the humanity of Jesus, particularly in his infancy and his death, and to the joys and sorrows of the Virgin Mary. It was a major influence on many varieties of devotional literature in late-medieval Europe, both in Latin and in the vernaculars. This practice of prayer, reading, and meditation was often cultivated through visualization and concentration on vivid images of scenes from the Bible, Saints' Lives, Virgin Mary, Christ and religious symbols, feeling from the result. These images could be either conjured up in people's minds when they read or heard poetry and other pieces of religious literature, or they could gaze on manuscript illuminations and other pieces of art as they prayed and meditated on the scenes depicted. In either case, this style of affective meditation asked the "viewer" to engage with the scene as if she or he were physically present and to stir up feelings of love, fear, grief, and/or repentance for sin. While the texts and art of affective piety could focus on a variety of subjects, they are particularly noted for their gory and violent depictions of the Passion and Crucifixion, as in Richard Rolle's "Meditation on the Passion": Margery Kempe is often used to demonstrate the practice of late-medieval affective piety. In the autobiographical book she dictated to two different scribes, Margery describes her imaginative and emotional reaction during Palm Sunday services: The Isenheim Altarpiece provides a good, late instance of a piece of art meant to engage the emotions. Images for more intimate, private use can be found in Books of Hours and other manuscripts. Affective piety can be described as a type of highly emotional devotion, focused on the humanity of Jesus, which developed during the High Middle Ages. Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Francis of Assisi each played a key role in the development of this approach to spirituality. Traces of an affective sensitivity can be found in Late Antiquity, when clergymen preached sermons with vivid descriptions of the Passion. One example of this is an Eastertide sermon by St. Augustine:  In the chapter on high medieval spirituality in his book "The Making of the Middle Ages", the medievalist Richard W. Southern was building on the work of scholars such as André Wilmart and Étienne Gilson. Nevertheless, he is generally credited with having drawn attention to what he (and others) understood to be a shift in devotional practice at the start of the High Middle Ages.